Semua Bab Bloodied Ashes: Bab 61 - Bab 70

Lira (POV)I shifted, knees folding under me, coat pressing too tightly to my skin. My body felt foreign. Not invaded—but altered. Like it had survived something I didn’t give it permission to endure.I opened my mouth, then shut it again.“What?” Kael asked quietly.I shook my head. “Nothing.”But it wasn’t nothing.It was this: I’d called the wrong name. Not in a dream. Not in a nightmare. In the real world. With Kael’s arms around me and the bond fraying at the seams, I had called to Draven.And Kael had still carried me.I swallowed hard and shifted away from the wall. The fire pit in the center of the cave lay cold. No embers. No warmth. Just stone and silence.I crawled closer and reached for the bundle of dried tinder we hadn’t used. My hands shook. Not from cold. From memory. From shame.Kael rose slowly and came to crouch beside me. His movements were deliberate, quiet. He didn’t offer to help. He just waited.“I didn’t mean to,” I said.He blinked. “Didn’t mean what?”“Say h

Lira (POV) Something snapped inside me—guttural, primal. My vision fractured like old glass dropped against stone. I might’ve screamed. Or maybe the spiral did. Either way, I was falling.Then I was back. Knees to stone, breath choking in my throat, Kael’s hand frozen on my shoulder. His voice came rough and low. “Lira.”I couldn’t speak. The spiral flared once—violent, hot—then dimmed like an ember starved of air. I curled forward, arms around my ribs, trying to breathe through the weight of what I’d just seen. The mark didn’t fade. But it stopped pulsing, as if it had made its point. As if it had introduced itself.Kael didn’t move. His hand stayed there—cold from stillness, but trembling faintly. Not fear. Restraint. The kind born of wanting to do something—anything—but not trusting what touch might unravel. He didn’t pull me close. Didn’t speak. Just held steady because I wasn’t. Because he’d chosen to be the thing that didn’t break.I blinked slowly, raw. The darkness behind my

Lira (POV)It didn’t start with fire.It started with the absence of it—like something sacred had been pulled from my marrow, leaving only a hollow cavity where heat had once lived. My bones felt scraped clean, raw with something deeper than cold. My breath fogged—then stilled. The chill in the air wasn’t real. It was the warning.Then the wave hit.Not like a tide—like a strike.It tore through me—full-body, spiral-born, tether-fed. Not natural. Not timed. Just wrong. My vision whited out. My ribs bowed, and a sound escaped me that wasn’t a cry, wasn’t a growl—just raw. My hands slammed into the cave wall before I knew I’d moved, fingers splaying across stone slick with frost and sweat. My knees gave. The heat coiled outward from the mark under my ribs, from the tether still humming in my spine.The spiral didn’t burn.It bled.I tried to breathe. Tried to think. But the tether caught in my throat like wire, and everything in me wrenched toward something I couldn’t name.My body want

Lira (POV)The tether snapped first.Not with sound—but with sensation. A single pulse of pressure that rolled through my spine like thunder without rain. A cracking silence before the collapse. One moment, Kael’s arms held me tight, locked around my ribs like chains meant to contain. The next—he wasn’t holding me.He was gripping me.And I——I was clawing.Fingers in his shirt. Nails dragging across the scar beneath his collarbone. My mouth found skin and bit before I knew it. Not to tease. Not to mark. To stop the ache.Kael moved like a dam finally giving way. His mouth crashed into mine—not gentle, not seeking. Tether-fed. Spiral-fed. Us. Our hunger wasn’t foreplay. It was a wound that needed teeth to clot.Fabric tore somewhere—maybe mine, maybe his. I didn’t care.There was no rhythm. No easing in. Just collision. The sound of breath catching on tongue, of bone grinding against rock. We didn’t find each other—we took.Kael’s breath growled against my throat as he shoved me back

Kael (POV)She didn’t look back.Not once. Not when she stepped into the snow barefoot. Not when the wind cut sideways through the trees. Not when my blood was still drying on her shoulder.I followed.There was nothing else to do. Nothing else that made sense. My body moved without command, boots crushing old ice, steps careful and close—but not close enough to touch her. She left no trail, not in the way mortals did. Just the ache of her heat still clinging to my skin, a pulse in the marrow that hadn’t quieted since the cave.Lira walked like the world owed her its silence. Spine straight, head high, hair knotted with sweat and shadow. Her coat hung open. The spiral mark beneath her ribs pulsed under the fabric, dark as ink and twice as loud.I should’ve said something.But my throat refused.I watched the sway of her shoulders, the slight limp from stone-bruised feet, the glint of dried blood on her collar. My mark. My sin. My choice.She didn’t speak. Didn’t slow.Just moved forwa