The silence after a battle is louder than the battle itself.
Arvella shifted back to human form in the gray light of dawn, and for a moment she stood in the clearing — surrounded by fallen Cult soldiers and shattered stone and roots that still pulsed with the fading violet of her power — and felt the full weight of what she had done.
Her legs gave out. Not from weakness this time — from release. Four days of captivity, four days of fear, four days of reaching for a power she didn't know she had and pulling it from the earth like drawing water from a well that had no bottom. It was over. She was free.
Lucas caught her before she hit the ground.
He had shifted back too — human form, shirtless, scratched and bleeding from a dozen superficial wounds, his dark hair wild, his eyes still burn
