Semua Bab Echoes of Ruin: Bab 31 - Bab 40

Morning arrived lazy and gentle, as if the world itself didn’t want to disturb this. I squinted against the soft gold of the morning light coming through the tall dorm windows, warmth of it spilling over curled limbs and sweat-cooled sheets. Ronan’s arm was heavy across my waist, his hand splayed open over my hip as if he didn’t trust even sleep not to take me away. For the first time in what felt like forever, I didn’t wake up with a leaden weight over my chest. I didn’t wake with shame coiled in my gut or dread wrapped tight around my ribs. I just… woke up. In his bed. In his arms. With his scent clinging to every inch of my skin and the dull, satisfied throb of being utterly undone still thrumming through me. My body ached. My neck burned where his teeth had chipped skin. But my wolf? My wolf was quiet. Not gone into hiding. Not snarling in anger. Just… still. Calm. I would have expected panic, would have anticipated resistance from the part of me that had rebelled at every bind e

It was a difference you could feel. Not smell, not the sharp wild scent of pine and ash and oncoming storm that Ember Hills exhaled in a hot breath, but silence. The kind of quiet that didn’t settle against your ears or hammer in your chest. The type of quiet that, for the first time in weeks, didn’t have me wake up with a nightmare of skin and claws and survival. Of what marks I’d leave under my own skin or what kind of monster I might become if I let the war brand take control of me. In the very center of the Aurelian heartland, it was as if the connection between me and the darkness that clawed at our world had been dialed down. Not off. But down. I yawned and stretched, lounging in the half-light of the east wing hall, fingers tracing over the mosaic tiles below that glittered dimly with hidden wards. Magic in the castle didn’t thrum the way it did on campus. It pulsed. Thick and ancient. And it welcomed me in ways I didn’t expect. I wasn’t a dragon. But I was…perhaps the

Morning light poured in through the high windows of the castle bedroom, pale gold and dusty. Sunlight-dust drifted lazily around the room like ash falling in slow spirals. I was shirtless in front of the full-length mirror, arms loose at my sides. Cold stone beneath bare feet, but I hardly noticed. There were three marks. Three moments that had shaped me into something I hadn’t intended to be. The first. I could feel it faintly throbbing under the skin at the back of my hand. A rune. A complicated twisting knot of sharp points circling an eye, an eye that seemed to stare right back at me through my own reflection, even when I clenched my fist around it. Letters in some runic language twined around the outside of it, like moons orbiting a star. Letters that glowed faintly, barely perceptible gold, no matter how many times I tried to force myself to believe they were only scar tissue. They weren’t. They hadn’t been. That mark had come from the girl in the vision, the dragon girl, the

It was silent at first. The suffocating kind. The kind of silence that hurt the ears and crawled under the skin, thick with words no one wanted to speak. The horses knew it before any of us did. They paced more slowly as the Ember Hills fell away behind us, hooves thundering against the packed dirt road with jumpy cadence. The coach creaked and groaned with every shift in weight, wood groaning in protest as we rounded corners and the horses’ feet scraped against cobblestone. I sat across from Ronan, close enough that our knees touched every time the coach bounced, but neither of us spoke. He felt good there. Felt like home in a way I couldn’t quite explain. His smell was close and sure under the leather and wool, the ironwood smoke and pine tar keeping me grounded when my thoughts threatened to spiral. Winter’s grip had finally loosened outside the narrow window. No more snow. Just raw, muddy earth and the stubborn beginning of green pushing through soil frosted by a season’s

It was never more than pain, betrayal. The smile was a slash of teeth, eyes bright and predatory. Sampson pounded the back of my knees into the ground so hard I could have shattered the rock. I didn’t even choose to go down. I was still, on autopilot, reacting rather than thinking. The stinging in my shoulder flared, white-hot. The crawling burn of the brand on my spine rippling down my arms, seizing up my joints, freezing me like a statue. My wolf inside me paced, snarled, bucked against it, screamed to be unleashed, but the mark throbbed once more, and I choked back a sob. My body was not my own. I couldn’t punch. I couldn’t shift. I couldn’t fucking breathe. “You feel it now, don’t you?” Sampson’s voice was almost tender. As if this was a lesson. As if he were proud of me. “Father always said control was all that mattered. All your life you’ve been running from it.” I grit my teeth, willing my body to move, willing the sweat and blood from my eyes to blink away. My fingers tw