THIRD PERSON POV
In the corner of a dark cell lay a worn-out woman.
She was not the woman she used to be, and anyone who had known her before would have struggled to recognize her in this version.
The sharp eyes that had once made grown men uncomfortable were dull now and fixed on nothing. The spine that had never bent, regardless of pressure, was curved against the cold stone wall. Her hair, once kept with the particular vanity of someone who understood the power of appearance, fell limp and unwashed around her face.
Elena Montreal had always been many things.
Dangerous. Calculating. Pitiless. Evil.
But sitting here in the grey silence and the smell of rust and old stone, she was none of those things anymore.
She was just tired.
The kind of tired that sleep could not touch, prid
