Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 181 - Chapitre 190

Letty's PovFor the first time in longer than I could remember, I woke up without the first thought in my head being a question about where my mother was.I opened my eyes slowly, in no hurry at all. Morning light spilled through the curtains in soft gold bars, touching the walls, the floor, the rumpled edge of the blanket, and for several long seconds I simply lay there and let myself look at it.I listened, just as I had learned to in the chaos beneath Black Ridge—instinctively cataloguing every sound before allowing myself to relax.There were no distant screams, no stone crashing somewhere out of sight, no ancient voice pressing against the edges of my mind from somewhere deep beneath the mountains.Only birds, somewhere beyond the window, going about their ordinary morning as if nothing in the world had changed.The sound was so achingly ordinary it nearly brought tears to my eyes.I turned my head against the pillow, Mason was still asleep beside me, one arm resting across his b

Mason noticed immediately. "What?""Alvin."He glanced toward the dais and huffed a quiet laugh. "That explains the sigh, then."We walked into the hall together, hand in hand, and found it packed wall to wall, with hundreds of people filling every available space, warriors and Pushers and elders and ordinary families who'd simply wanted to witness whatever was about to happen. At the far end of the hall, near the dais, my mother stood watching, stronger now than she had been even a week ago, still recovering but standing entirely on her own power.Alvin raised one hand, and the enormous hall fell silent almost instantly."For centuries," he began, his voice carrying easily to every corner of the hall, "our kingdom has believed the White Wolf was a weapon. Something to be controlled, feared, or wielded, depending entirely on who held the leash."He looked directly at me across the crowded hall."We were wrong. All of us, for longer than any of us care to admit."A murmur passed throug

Letty's povIt's been three hundred and sixty-five days since the ancient gate beneath Black Ridge had been sealed, three hundred and sixty-five days since Edwin's defeat, since I had stood in the middle of a collapsing fortress, dust in my lungs and stone raining down around me, wondering whether I would live long enough to hold my children again.A year was supposed to be enough time to heal but I had learned that healing didn't always mean forgetting. Sometimes it meant waking up without my heart pounding, sometimes it meant looking at the silver mark on my wrist and understanding that the power inside me no longer had to be my enemy.And sometimes it meant finding the courage to walk back into the life I had been forced to leave behind. I stood before the bedroom mirror, adjusting the collar of my blouse for the third time."You know," my mother said from the doorway, "if you keep doing that, you'll tear it."Thalia leaned against the frame with her arms folded, wearing the amused

Mason did not begin explaining right away. Instead, he took me home.The drive was quiet. He kept one hand on the wheel and the other wrapped around mine, his thumb moving in slow circles over my knuckles, as though he needed to keep touching me to believe I was real.The city fell away behind us, glass towers giving way to long avenues of old trees, and then to the dark green hush of the forest that bordered our property.Our mansion stood beyond the city center, wrapped in high stone walls and gardens that someone had tended with obvious care. The scent of pine and wet earth drifted through the open window, and for a moment, my chest ached with how familiar it was.I had imagined this moment a thousand times.Walking through the front doors, seeing our bedroom again and sitting beside Mason without worrying about war, or prophecies, or ancient creatures waking beneath the earth.But when the gates swung open, I noticed the guards. There were more than I remembered. Far more.They st

That evening, I returned home earlier than I had in months. The guards at the gate straightened as I passed, the rooftops were lined with silent figures, and somewhere in the trees, I could sense the quiet, patient presence of wolves on patrol. The house had become a fortress.I hated it but I would hate it more if anyone ever got close enough to my family to test it. I went through the house looking for Letty, and found her through the open doors at the back, in the garden.She stood barefoot on the grass with her eyes closed and her face turned toward the last light of the day. The wind moved through her hair and her hands hung loosely at her sides, and around her fingers, faint and silver, a soft light rippled like moonlight on water.I stopped beneath the doorway. For a moment, I simply watched, a year ago, she had struggled to control even the smallest part of her power. She had woken in the night trembling, afraid of her own hands. I had held her through those nights, and I had