Chapter 37. The Breaking Point

She lay curled in a fetal position beneath the thick, prickly shelter of a blackthorn bush, the forest floor cold and damp against her cheek. Neriah hadn’t found safety; she had found isolation. The primal instinct to hide had overridden every strategic impulse.

The wound on her shoulder was a constant, throbbing agony—a fierce battle being waged beneath her skin. The Moon Priestess’s seed, meant to be a key, was now a searing, living coal embedded in her flesh, trying to cleanse the dark, oily corruption that had come from Lyra’s dagger and Lysandra’s fear. Every beat of her heart was a hammer driving the pain deeper.

She was losing the war.

The shame was a cold, suffocating blanket. She, the Ashen Omega, reborn with the power to burn down the old world, had failed her first true test of leadership. She had rallied the broken and the hopeless, only to walk them directly into Thalia’s political execution. Her shield, Caius, was gone, sent away by her own command. A