AYLA'S POV
The moment his grip loosened, the forest exhaled.
I didn't. Couldn't. My breath was still trapped somewhere between his heartbeat and mine.
Kael's hand fell away, but the ghost of his touch stayed — heat and tremor and a faint hum beneath my skin, as if the air itself remembered his anger. The snow around us shimmered faintly where his magic had flared. The scent of burned frost still lingered.
He turned his back to me, shoulders tense, the muscles beneath his coat drawn tight as bowstrings. I could see it — the pulse of violet through the veins in his neck, the corruption moving slow and deliberate, like something testing its cage.
"Kael," I whispered, stepping closer.
He didn't answer.
The wind carried our silence back at me, laced with the scent of iron. His anger. My fear.
I closed the distance by degrees — careful, measured steps. The bond between us trembled, uncertain, as if unsure which of us it belonged to anymore.
