AYLA'S POV
The chamber was suffocating.
I sat in the center, surrounded by the sharp stone walls of the council hall. The air smelled of smoke and iron, but it wasn't from the braziers burning at the corners of the room. It was me. My skin, my blood, my breath—it all carried that faint scorched edge now, as if the abyss itself had threaded fire into my veins.
They were all staring.
Cassia, stiff-backed and pale, her silver eyes burning with questions she wouldn't dare voice. General Ryn, his scarred hands folded, jaw set as though bracing for the execution order. Even the council scribes shifted nervously behind their desks, quills frozen mid-script.
But it was Kael who bore the weight of the silence.
He stood just behind me, his shadow spilling into every corner of the hall, his presence a warning to them all. His gaze was fixed not on the others, but on me, as though daring me to collapse, daring me to lose the fragile grip I still had on control.
