Manon treated her body as she would any other weapon: she kept it clean and honed and ready at any time to defend and destroy. But even her training couldn’t keep her from being out of breath when she reached the atrium by the black bridge that connected the Omega to the Northern Fang. She hated the expanse of stone without even touching it. It smelled wrong. It smelled like those two prisoners she’d seen with the duke. In fact, this whole place reeked like that. The scent wasn’t natural; it didn’t belong in this world.
