I woke with one hand twisted in Isolde's robe. She was still there. That surprised me more than the pain. Most people in Blackthorn had learned to leave the moment my anger became inconvenient.

Isolde sat in the same chair beside the bed, reading a stack of yellowed pages b

The scout came back three weeks later. By then, I could walk the length of the sanctuary without a healer following me. Not quickly. Not without pain. But on my own.

My ribs had stopped feeling like knives every time I breathed. My shoulder still protested if I lifted my arm too

My first full shift happened five months after the fall. It was not beautiful. It was not graceful. And it definitely did not feel like coming home.

It felt like every bone in my body had decided to break at once.

"Again," Isolde said.

I was on my knees in the moonstone