Yakima walked slowly toward the steaming bathroom. As the heat began to rise, the silence of the room pulled her back to those final, hidden moments in the arena—the moments the world was never meant to see.
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[Some moments back, in the Arena.]
The fog was a wall of gray silence, isolating the two warriors from the hundreds of eyes in the stands. Yakima froze, her breath hitching as Mirabella materialized directly in front of her, the cold steel of a training dagger leveled with her throat. The "White Calamity" was at the mercy of a girl who shouldn't have been able to touch her.
"You?" Yakima gasped, her voice cracking with the realization of her total defeat.
"Shhh..." Mirabella whispered, her expression unreadable.
