I knew the moment they dragged her father into the room that I had lost her. Everything I had broken through, all the walls, the defenses, the fire I'd coaxed into tenderness...everything gone in an instant, as I watched her retreat into herself, too stunned to move.
Her eyes burned red, her dark waves falling like a curtain as she bared her fangs first at the priest, then at the guards. The way she's looking at us now...it was as if we were no longer her allies, but her executioners.
Beside me, my father merely chuckled from his seat.
"She hasn't even faced her trails yet," he said, amused.
It was all a game to him. I had stormed into his office earlier, demanding to know why he was turning something so simple into such spectacle. This was an archaic tradition no one had bothered to practice after my mother's tragedy, when she carried Rayna. Not for centuries.
