Vaelinna Dorne

The desert city stirred under the newborn sun as Vaelinna Dorne walked its quiet streets, her crimson cloak lifting in the warm breeze and sand brushing past her boots. People stepped aside instinctively as she passed—tall, sharp-eyed, and carrying the calm, cold focus of a hunter who followed coin more faithfully than law. At twenty-five, she had earned a reputation that traveled faster than the wind, and her stride held the poise of someone who had survived every path she carved. Her emerald gaze stayed forward, the thin scar over her right brow catching the light, while her straight-cut black leather corset left her toned midriff bare with each shift of the cloak. Throwing knives rested against her thigh as she headed for the broker’s office, the air humming with the unspoken promise that another contract—and another dead man’s name—waited at the end of her steps.