บททั้งหมดของ The Last Warden: Chosen by Four : บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 36

The plan took shape over two days, most of it whispered in corners between classes, because Wren had decided, somewhere in the sleepless hours after the bond agreed to come with her, that she wasn't going to ask Aldric's permission for this one. She'd tell him after. Once they were already past the point where he could stop them with a locked gate and a stern lecture about patience.It cost her something to decide that. She kept circling back to the memory of his face in the office, the tired disappointment that had cut deeper than any punishment would have, and she made herself sit with the discomfort of choosing to earn that look a second time rather than letting it talk her out of going."You're quiet," Kaelen said, catching her alone in the corridor outside the armory where he'd gone to requisition supplies under a cover story about extended training drills. "More than usually, even for someone about to do something this reckless.""I'm thinking about what it's going to cost me wi

Aldermere revealed itself slowly, the way ruins tended to, a shape emerging from the hills that Wren might have mistaken for natural rock formation if Kai hadn't pointed out the deliberate lines still visible beneath centuries of ivy and collapsed stone. What had once been a house, sprawling and grand by the look of the foundation alone, now stood as little more than a skeleton, walls broken into jagged teeth against the overcast sky, a single tower at its center somehow still standing despite everything around it having long since fallen."It doesn't feel abandoned," Lysander said, stopping at the treeline's edge, something careful and alert replacing his usual easy confidence. "Fae senses pick up on lingering magic the way dragons pick up on power signatures. This place is old, and whatever was done here, it left a mark that hasn't faded in decades.""Wards?" Wren asked."Something like wards. Older, though. Less structured than anything the academy uses." He crouched, studying the

They heard the horses before they saw them, a controlled, disciplined approach rather than the chaotic rush of Sundering soldiers, and Wren understood, watching a line of riders crest the ridge above the ruined courtyard, exactly who'd finally decided to stop sending scouts and come himself.Commander Thalorin Vex looked nothing like the monster Wren had built in her head over the last two weeks. He was unremarkable in the particular way that made her skin crawl worse than open menace would have, gray at the temples, dressed plainly, sitting on his horse with the easy confidence of a man who had never once needed to raise his voice to be obeyed. He dismounted alone, unarmed as far as Wren could tell, and crossed the broken flagstones toward them with unhurried steps, as though the six of them weren't currently bristling with weapons and raw power aimed squarely at him."Sarah's daughter," he said, studying Wren with an expression closer to academic curiosity than hostility, which some