Elowen’s POV
Sleep had been a fickle, unwelcome guest, teasing the edges of my consciousness throughout the long, restless night without ever offering true respite. My mind had been a battlefield of conflicting emotions, replaying the charged moments of the previous day in an endless loop—Alaric’s possessive kiss, the raw, untamed fury that had blazed in his eyes when he’d finally turned away from Lysander, and the persistent, dull ache in my chest, a knot of anxiety that had stubbornly refused to loosen its grip.
I sat on the edge of my bed now, the soft cotton of the sheets feeling strangely cold against my skin, watching the first tentative rays of sunlight tentatively paint the eastern sky in hues of pale rose and soft gold. The sprawling academy grounds outside my window, usually bustling with early morning activity, were still shrouded in a delicate, ethereal mist that clung to the shadowy edges of the ancient trees, lending the familiar landscape an almost dreamlike, otherwor
