"My master is Master Damien Elford."
The words left her lips like stone from a siege engine—deliberate, absolute. Not a declaration. Not defiance. Just truth.
The screen on Dominic's end remained frozen in silence, but Elysia didn't look at it. Her eyes were on the canyon. On the place he had vanished. On the space where something had shifted—and not just in the air.
In her.
In them.
She inhaled once, quietly.
And beneath the silence of the call, her thoughts began to unspool.
He acknowledged me first.
That was the beginning.
Not with ceremony. Not with binding vows. No crest pressed into her palm. No branded seal of servitude. He had simply looked at her—truly looked—and said, "You are mine. And I will be yours."
A contract without a contract.
Recognition without chains.
And from that moment on, something changed.
It wasn't just her sword he trusted.
It was her judgment. Her voice. Her presence.
