Chapter 32. Three Questions

Aria didn’t remember walking back.

She must’ve—her legs ached, her breath caught shallow from the cold stone stairwell—but the path blurred behind her, lost in the echo of those words. Not a curse. Not a threat.

An answer.

To what?

The thought coiled tight inside her, pulling like wire through flesh.

By the time she reached the chamber they’d assigned her—not a prison, not quite a home—she barely noticed the food waiting. She paced. Back and forth. Fingers twitching like a habit she hadn’t broken in years. Every time she passed the mirror above the basin, she caught glimpses of herself: shoulders too square, skin pale under firelight, eyes that never seemed to blink.

The test hadn’t just unsettled her.

It had peeled something open.

And it wasn’t done bleeding.

She washed her face with cold water that bit like claws. Then changed clothes. Darker ones—a tunic of charcoal, worn leggings, a belt she tightened too hard. No one had bro