*Chapter 47:
ALESSIA
The night after the Ward-Stone made its decision, sleep didn’t come easy, and it wasn’t just because the valley felt too quiet, it was because the quiet had weight, a listening kind of silence that pressed against my skin and reminded me that the deal I’d made wasn’t over, it had only just begun. The wards around BloodNight were stable, but they no longer felt like something Blackwell maintained from a distance, they felt like an extension of the pull under my ribs, a low, steady thrumming that matched my heartbeat whenever I stood still long enough to notice it. I could feel where the stone was thin, where the ground had shifted during the night, where something had brushed against the boundary and moved on without leaving a mark that anyone else could see. Azriel
