Melucia stood before the mirror in her darkened chamber, the glass fractured slightly in the corner from a spell cast in frustration days ago. It suited her now—the cracked reflection was more honest than anything else in this cursed palace. Her violet eyes burned, bright with fury and pain.

“They think I’m weak. That I’ve been tamed.

Fools. All of them. Especially the Elders,”

Her fingers encircled the obsidian pendant around her neck, the stone thumping with the energy of Weeping ...