*Chapter 41:
ALESSIA
Morning came to BloodNight wrong, the kind of morning that didn’t feel like morning at all but like the world had been paused and then dropped back into motion with the wrong timing, and everyone felt it even if they didn’t know why. The wards along the border had shifted during the night, and that kind of shift didn’t happen without reason, so by the time the sun was high enough to hit the rooftops, whispers were already moving through the packhouse like smoke, slipping under doors and through conversations that stopped the moment I walked past.
I didn’t try to explain, because explaining would have meant admitting how little control I actually had over what was happening, and admitting that would have given the fear something solid to hold onto. Azriel stayed cl
