The body lay where it had fallen, unnaturally still.
Maya couldn't stop staring.
Her chest felt tight, her breaths shallow, as if the air itself had turned heavy. Her hands—her hands were clean now, but she could still feel the weight of the stone, the sickening resistance as it struck flesh. The sound echoed in her head over and over again.
I killed him.
The thought hit her harder than the ambush itself.
She turned away abruptly, curling inward on the carriage seat, arms wrapping around her knees. Her whole body trembled, but she forced herself to stay silent. No screaming. No tears. When he finally stepped back into the carriage, the scent of blood followed him in.
He noticed her immediately.
She was pale. Too pale. Her eyes were unfocused, fixed on nothing at all.
"Princess Elowen," he said, measured but alert. "Are you injured?"
She shook her head quickly. Too quickly.
"No," she said. Her voice came out thin, but steady enough. "I'm fine."
Darcien did not believe her.
He had seen fear before—had lived among it, trained through it. Even female werewolves, hardened warriors, faltered when faced with their first kill. Their instincts rebelled. Their bodies remembered.
And she was human.
Fragile. Vulnerable. Untrained.
Yet she had moved without hesitation.
She had struck with force.
He studied her now, trying to reconcile what he had witnessed with what he knew. She showed no outward panic, no hysteria—only a quiet, shaken stillness, like someone holding themselves together by sheer will.
"You should not have left the carriage," he said, not sharply—carefully.
"I know," Maya replied. Her fingers tightened in her sleeves. "I wasn't thinking."
That part, at least, was true.
Silence stretched between them as the carriage resumed its journey, wheels grinding against the dirt road. The forest passed by in dark blurs through the window.
Minutes passed.
Slowly, the tremor in her hands faded. Her breathing evened out. The shock receded, replaced by something quieter—heavier.
Control.
Darcien watched it happen.
Watched her straighten, lift her head, smooth her expression into something composed. Too composed.
Most humans broke first… then recovered.
She had frozen—then mastered herself.
His jaw tightened.
She should have been sobbing. Sick. Terrified beyond reason.
Instead, she sat there in silence, eyes dark with thoughts she refused to share.
He looked away at last, unsettled by a realization he did not voice:
Princess Elowen was not reacting the way a human should.
And that frightened him far more than her fear ever could.