جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 70

KillianI find Reya standing in front of the shelves on the far side of my room, she’s completely absorbed in one of the books that she pulled free.For several seconds, I simply stand in the doorway and watch her. She has changed into one of the soft dresses that was brought in for her earlier, and although she moves more carefully than normal, she looks far better than she had when I left. Her hair falls loosely down her back, still messy from sleep, and one of her shadows curl lazily around her ankle while another stretches beneath the shelves as if it were searching for a book of its own.The sight makes me smile before I can stop it. There’s something almost amusing about returning to my room and discovering her inspecting my belongings as though she has already decided everything inside belongs partially to her. I like that far more than I should’ve.Reya tilts the book towards the light coming through the window, completely unaware that I had entered the room. I fold my arms ac

ReyaI didn’t realize that happiness can make a person restless. For most of my life, I’ve pictured happiness as something quiet and steady. The kind of peace that settles on other people’s faces when they sat beside someone they love or return to a place that fits them. I thought if it would ever come for me that I would fold into it and stop thinking so much.Instead, I can’t stop smiling.That’s the embarrassing part. I have spent nearly half an hour propped up against the pillows with the book that Killian gave me spread open across my lap, pretending to read while he works at the small desk by the window. I made it through a whole two pages before my attention began to drift toward him. He has changed out of his meeting clothes and his sleeves are rolled up to his forearms. One hand holds the report while the other rests on the desk, and every few minutes his brows furrow at something that he dislikes. Each time I remember how he has the same expression whenever I tease him.T

Reya: The book Killian had brought me remained on the table beside the bed, closed now but somehow still present in my thoughts. We had spent hours bent over it, tracing symbols and maps until the edges of the pages blurred, and by the time Killian finally insisted I sleep, my head was full of forgotten settlements, vanished children, and places so deep in the mountains even the Council had struggled to reach them. Killian fell asleep with one arm loose around my waist; his breathing even and steady. My shadows lay quiet across the floor and along the foot of the bed, calmer than I felt. I watched the dark shapes settle and wondered, not for the first time, whether they knew something I did not. Eventually exhaustion pulled me under. The dream was not like the others. There was no Blackwood, no familiar bed, no warmth at my back. I stood barefoot on cold stone, swallowed by a mist so thick I could barely see my own hands. Shadows moved beneath the fog, but they were not mine, the

Killian: Reya’s dream lingered with me long after I left our room. I had told her it might be nothing more than a dream because that was what she needed to hear in the moment. She had been shaking when she woke, fingers white against my shirt, and the last thing I wanted was to feed that fear by treating every remembered detail as proof someone was reaching into her mind. Still, I could not pretend it didn’t matter. A girl made of shadow had appeared to her. She had warned Reya that we were looking in the wrong direction, that someone was deliberately guiding her toward a place that would become a trap. And then, most oddly of all, the girl had said two words that kept repeating in my head: Trust only Blackwood. By the time I reached Cormac’s office I had replayed Reya’s account so many times I could recite it without thinking. Cormac looked up from his reports and read the worry on my face before I spoke. “What happened?” he asked. “Reya dreamed again,” I said. “She saw a girl…

Bernice“I swear I am going to make you pay for your petty games,” Skylar says before he pushes me inside the office.His threat echoes in the room long after the door had closed.For a moment, I simply stand where he had left me, my fingers are curled around the edge of the table, watching the maps as if they might rearrange themselves into something kinder. They did not.Anger is useful, but only when it is sharpened into purpose. I let the anger burn for exactly as long as it needed to and then folded it into the next move.Skylar believes that he has me cornered.He thinks his men watching the corridor, his blunt demand, and the thinly veiled threat about protection has forced me to choose. He thinks I will stop because he has the power to make staying here uncomfortable. He thinks that I will be cowed by the idea of losing the shelter his protection provided.He is wrong.He has always been wrong about me when he has assumed that I would be grateful for anything that he has offer