( Kael's POV )
The forest was too quiet.
Kael felt it the moment he opened his eyes to the pale gold of late morning. It wasn’t the silence of peace. It was the silence of a predator waiting just beyond the line of sight. The air hung heavy with damp moss and smoke from dying torches, and the mist that once slithered between the trees had thinned, leaving behind a hollow stillness.
Aria lay beside him on the packed earth, Storm asleep against her chest. His tiny breaths fluttered against her skin, steady and warm, a sound Kael anchored himself to as the world tried to remind him what they’d just done. His body ached with the weight of it. The Shadow path left marks, burning lines along his forearms where the silver threads had bound him, faint and pulsing like ghost veins.
He flexed h
