Zayne’s POV
The hills should have spoken to me. They always did.
Every time I crossed this land, the wind carried stories, footsteps pressed into the soil, fear clinging to broken branches, the faint pulse of life moving through the dark. I had learned to listen long before I learned to rule. Long before I learned to lose.
Tonight, the hills were mute.
I ran anyway.
My boots tore through snow and frozen dirt as I pushed higher, my breath ripping from my chest in harsh, uneven pulls. The cold burned my lungs, but I welcomed it. Pain was easier than the growing terror inside me, the certainty that something was wrong.
Aurora had been here. I felt it in my bones. In the way my heart pulled forward like a compass needle stuck on her name.
I skidded to a stop and dropped to one knee, pre
