The words landed like a blade slipping between ribs.
Dravenna's eyes went narrow as slits. That sentence alone told her enough that Phei knew so much or enough of her past... and now he was comparing that past self to the current puppet and he felt... pity? Shame? Or worse?
Five words. Soft as a whisper. And she couldn't tell if they were aimed at her or at the fools who were making her do this.
Either way, they cut.
And the worst part?
The boy wasn't wrong.
She knew he wasn't wrong.
Four years. Four fucking years of bending. Of bowing. Of being the tamed dragon, the domesticated beast, the puppet who danced whenever Heavenchild pulled the strings.
And here was this child—this seventeen-year-old nobody with impossible eyes and an aura that shouldn't exist—standing in her office, saying out loud what she'd been screaming inside her own skull since the day they'd put the collar around her neck.
Phei reached her.
Stood before her.
