SILAS POV“Strip the tunic off, Silas, or I will shred it along with your arrogant skin.”Her command was a frozen blade, slicing through the heavy, lavender-scented air of her private royal sanctum. Elara didn’t look at me as she spoke. She stood over a marble basin, aggressively crushing moon-lily roots and silver-sage into a thick, glowing paste. Her hands, usually so steady they could extract an arrow from a beating heart without a single tremor, were visibly shaking.“Elara, look at me,” I rasped, my voice sounding like crushed gravel. My ribs groaned as I hauled myself up against the headboard of the obsidian carving bed. The poison was mostly neutralized, but the phantom fire of Vane’s blade still licked at my nerve endings. “Please. We just survived a slaughter. Our son”“Do not speak his name with that mouth,” she snapped, spinning around so fast her white-haired braid whipped through the air like a silver lash. She slammed the stone mortar down onto the bedside table with en
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