Mag-log inChapter One Hundred and ThirtyAurelia's POVThe stairs creaked under our feet as we came down.The common room was busy, travelers hunched over bowls, a merchant in the corner sorting through a stack of coins like they personally owed him something, the innkeeper behind the bar working at a glass with a cloth. I did a full sweep before I let myself move further into the room. No guards. No colors I recognized. Nobody's eyes landing on us and staying.We found a table near the back with a clear line to the door and sat down.The food came and we ate without much talking. My head was running on its own the whole time, pulling at everything we still didn't have answers to. Rylan kept one hand resting on the table close to his blade without quite touching it. Torin chewed slowly and stared past the wall in front of him at something nobody else could see. Kaelen pushed food around his plate with his brow pulled low, somewhere else entirely.We finished and slipped out the back.The inn's
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-NineAurelia's POVWe stood in the wreckage of the alchemist's hut and nobody spoke for a while.The broken jars. The scattered herbs. The overturned furniture sitting where it had fallen like it had given up. None of it told us what we needed to know, where she had gone, who had come for her, whether she'd left on her own or been pulled out. The silence sitting in that room had weight to it, the kind that came with questions that had nowhere to go.Kaelen's face was pale. His jaw was tight,too tight. He finally spoke."We can't stay here," he said, his voice coming out hollow. He turned toward the door, one hand finding the frame. "The settlement inn. That's where we go." He looked back at us over his shoulder. "We need rest, food, and we need to find out what people in this settlement know. We can't do any of that standing in this room."Nobody argued.The walk took nearly two days.We stayed off the main roads, cutting through open fields and narrow
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-EightAurelia's POVWe left the cave at dawn.Our wounds were half-healed, the kind of half-healed that was good enough to move on but kept reminding you it wasn't all the way there every time you turned a certain way. Our stomachs were empty. The cold from sleeping against stone had settled into all the places the fight had already made sore.The plan was simple. Head toward Drakos. The forbidden land. The one place Kade might not follow without a council vote pushing him through the door first.Kaelen laid it out while we moved through the first stretch of trees, keeping his voice low even though there was no one around."It won't be quick," he said, stepping over a root without looking down at it. "Since we're going on foot, night take several days longer.""How many is several," I said."Enough that we'll need to eat on the way," he said. "Small villages. River crossings. We stay away from the bigger towns where Kade keeps people watching." He glanc
Kade's POVThe council chamber looked like a mini battlefield.Broken chairs scattered across the stone floor. Papers everywhere, some of them still drifting off the edges of the overturned table like they hadn't gotten the message yet that the meeting was over. There was a smear of blood near the far wall that nobody had touched, dark and dried at the edges, with servants stepping around it carefully like it might have opinions about being cleaned up.I stood at the head of the table and watched them work.My face was calm. My hands, locked together behind his back, were not."Clear the room," I said, not looking at anyone in particular and meaning everyone in the room at once. A servant near the window froze mid-step. "Everything. Every broken piece, every scattered paper, every chair that isn't standing where it belongs. I want this room to be clean before morning."The servant unfroze and moved faster."The wounded," I said next, turning his head toward the guard captain standing
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-SixAurelia's POVWe crashed into the thick undergrowth, branches whipping at our faces, catching at our arms, snagging everything they could grab. My lungs burned. My legs ached in the deep, specific way that came from running on nothing but panic and adrenaline for too long. And the tole of that was beginning to take shape in my chest. The sounds of pursuit were distant. Not fully gone, that's not a conclusion to be made in our current situation. Rylan slowed first, his hand coming up, and we all pulled to a stop between two thick trees, breathing hard."We can't just keep running," he said, voice dropped low, hands braced on his knees before he straightened. "We need to do more than that. We need to actually throw them off."Kaelen wiped dirt from the side of his face. "You have something in mind?" He asked. "Let's make a false trail," Rylan said. "We break branches, trample leaves, make it look like we went east." He looked between us. "Then we ac
Kade's POVThey walked in like they belonged there, which I had to respect even while it annoyed the hell out of me.All four of them. Kaelen first, unhurried, face giving nothing away, with Kaelen, I'd never been sure which. Rylan behind him, doing his exit-mapping thing the second he cleared the door, eyes touching every corner like he was already planning the part where he left. Torin, quiet, arms loose at his sides. And then Aurelia, spine straight, chin up, wearing the expression of someone who had made peace with something before walking through a door and had walked through it anyway.I watched them take their seats."Nice of you to come," I said.None of them said anything. Kaelen looked at me. Rylan looked at the table. I called the meeting to order.The first part went the way I'd planned, the law, the precedent, the ancient prohibition on Drakos, all of it laid out clean so that every elder in the room had the same foundation before I named who'd broken it. They nodded alon
Aurelia's POV.I couldn't move.I knew it wasn't him. Some part of my brain was saying that clearly, calmly, the way Kaelen would say it, this is not real, the ruins show you what you fear, Jaren told you this, you know this. That part was working fine.The rest of me was completely useless.Becaus
Aurelia's POV.I woke up to Torin's elbow in my direction and Rylan's back taking up more space and for a moment I just lay there staring at the ceiling thinking. "You're on my side." I said to no one specific."There are no sides." Torin said, from somewhere to my left, already awake, "I believe
Aurelia's POV.The cave was not comfortable but it was defensible, which was the only thing anyone cared about right now.The guard found it, or remembered it, pulling us off the main path toward a rockfall that looked impassable until he showed us the gap behind it, wide enough to get through in a
Aurelia's POV.I stared at him for a moment, just to make sure I wasn't imagining it. His eyes were open, glassy and confused, but open, and his hand was still around mine with that weak deliberate grip that meant he had chosen to reach for something and found it."Hold on." I said, and turned and







