ELARA POV
I woke up the morning after kissing Kai and immediately regretted everything I'd said. Every confession. Every moment of weakness. The emergency Council summons sat on my nightstand like a death sentence, and here I was declaring love instead of focusing on keeping my children alive.
"Stupid." I said it to the empty room. "So stupid."
The kiss had been real. The feelings were real. But I'd let fear and desperation make me vulnerable. Had let one moment of crisis strip away three years of carefully maintained walls. And now I had to figure out how to walk it back without destroying Kai in the process.
My phone buzzed. Dante, asking to meet. Saying he had information about the Council session. Saying it was urgent.
I met him in the garden an hour later, both of us keeping our
