"Stay down," he said quietly.
I obeyed before pride could argue.
My own hands looked too small to belong to me. Scarred wrists. Thin fingers. Skin rising and falling too fast over ribs that ached.
I stared at them.
I had never looked at hands like they were a mystery before.
They should have felt ordinary.
They didn't.
These were the same hands that had just stood on frozen ground as paws broad enough to c***k earth. The same hands they'd bound, struck, worked raw, dismissed. They trembled now inside heavy dark fabric and I couldn't stop looking at them.
'Yours,' Vaela said.
My throat tightened.
Mine.
Sera came closer only when I didn't flinch.
"Can you sit upright?" she asked.
"Yes."
My voice came rough and thin. I hated that it sounded small after what I'd been.
Still, I p
