All Chapters of The Banished Heiress Stands Unconquered : Chapter 1 - Chapter 4

The house slept, but Phyna did not.She waited until the last footsteps faded from the corridors and the low voices of the night watch drifted past her door. Then she rose, pulled on a dark cloak, and slipped into the narrow service stair that led to the rear of the grounds. Frost bit at her bare ankles. The moon rode high and white, turning every stone path into a pale ribbon. She knew the way by heart.Her grandfather’s cottage stood beyond the practice yard, tucked against the treeline where the pack rarely bothered to look. Smoke curled from the chimney even at this hour. He never slept much. Neither had Lyra.Phyna pushed the door open without knocking. The familiar scent of woodsmoke, dried herbs, and old leather wrapped around her at once. Grandfather Torin sat in his usual chair by the hearth, a thick blanket across his knees, eyes already on the doorway as if he had been waiting.“You’re late,” he said. His voice was rough gravel, but the corners of his mouth lifted.“They ke

Rain found her before the second night fully settled.It began as a thin needle-sting against her face, then thickened into sheets that turned the forest path to mud. Thunder rolled across the ridges like distant war drums. Lightning split the sky in white forks, briefly turning every tree into a black skeleton. Phyna pulled the hood of her cloak tighter and kept moving. The map Torin had given her was already soft at the edges from the wet, but the route remained clear in her mind. Three days to the trading post. From there, the Academy. First she needed the one thing the map could not provide.She needed to disappear.The old stories said a witch lived in the deep hollow where the two rivers met and the trees grew too close together for honest wolves to walk comfortably. Phyna had listened to those stories with half an ear as a child. Tonight she followed them like a blood trail. The air changed as she descended the last slope. It grew heavier, charged, tasting of iron and wet leave