Three days before Ashen Dawn returned from the Celestial Springs, the sky over the high-security prison turned grey and still.
Not the grey of rain—the grey of waiting. Clouds hung low and heavy, pressing against the watchtowers like they wanted to push them over. The guards on the walls pulled their collars tighter. The dogs in their kennels stopped barking.
Something was coming. They could feel it. They just didn't know what.
Voss sat in her cell, her back against the cold stone wall, her eyes on the door.
She'd been here for weeks. Long enough to memorize the cracks in the ceiling, the pattern of the floor tiles, the way the light shifted when the guards changed shifts. Long enough to learn the rhythms of the prison, the heartbeat of a place designed to hold people like her.
