Scarlett’s POV

The first thing I learn is that control is a lie.

Not in the way Killian means it—iron will, clenched fists, command layered over instinct—but in a quieter, more terrifying way. The kind that seeps into your bones and whispers that if you just breathe right, focus hard enough, submit enough, the power will behave.

It won’t.

The ancestral echoes don’t respond to force. They respond to truth.

I stand barefoot in the circle of stones at the far edge of Kieran’s ...