Chapter 53
****Elara’s POV****
Smoke curled around the ruins of Kael’s stronghold like dark fingers clawing at the sky. The air reeked of iron and ash, thick enough to sting the back of my throat. Beneath the roar of battle—the screams, the clash of steel, the thunder of war machines—my heart beat a frantic rhythm that almost drowned it all out.
We had breached the walls hours ago. Lucien’s forces poured through like a wave, disciplined, deadly. Yet amidst the chaos, one name burned in my mind, one shadow I couldn’t shake.
Kael.
The man whose whispers haunted the edges of every strategy meeting. The ghost behind every betrayal, every act of defiance against the throne. The same man who—according to the midwife’s truth—had once been tied to my family’s downfall.
Now, I was close enoug
