Kai's POV Sleep was a traitor; it would not come. The pain in my side was a dull, relentless drumbeat, a constant reminder of my failure. I lay in the infirmary bed, the moon a cold coin outside the window. The world was too quiet. Every rustle of the night nurse’s skirt, every sigh of the wind was a potential threat. My mind was a cage, and inside it a beast named fear paced and snarled. I could still see her on the training grounds, the sun in her hair, a queen forging her crown. The pride I felt was a sharp, sweet pain, but beneath it a deeper, colder current pulled at me. I was not there; I was here, broken and useless, a shield of rotten wood.Then a new silence fell, a different kind of quiet. It was the absence of her. The bond between us, that humming wire of shared life, went still, not dead, but muted, as if she had stepped behind a thick curtain of stone. I sat up, a jolt of agony screaming through my ribs. Ignoring it, I pushed back the thin blanket, my feet finding the c
Last Updated : 2025-12-05 Read more