Elara’s POV
The old chapel breathed with me.
Every inhale echoed off the broken stone walls, every exhale drifted up into the ribs of the collapsed ceiling where moonlight dripped through like bloodless water. I curled tighter beneath Mrs. Hawthorne’s shawl, though the cold wasn’t what made me tremble.
The bond was.
It pulsed inside me—slow, steady, insistent—like a second heartbeat that didn’t belong to me at all. Every beat whispered his name.
Kael.
Kael.
Kael.
I dug my nails into the stone floor, trying to anchor myself to something other than him. But the thread between us tugged anyway, sharp and demanding, as if the distance itself hurt him… or me.
Maybe both.
I shut my eyes and leaned my head back against the ruined altar. The chapel had once been a place of worship; I cou
