Elara’s POV
My skull was splitting open.
That was my first conscious thought. The second was that my mouth tasted like something had crawled inside it and died.
I groaned and pressed my face deeper into the pillow. Sunlight stabbed through my eyelids like tiny daggers. Every muscle in my body ached—my ribs, my wrists, the bruise on my hip where Michael had shoved me against the wall.
Michael. The banquet hall. Isolde’s venomous smile. Kaelen’s arms around me in the dark carriage.
Oh no.
Oh no.
My eyes flew open. I was in my own bed. My own tiny bedroom with the stick-figure drawings on the wall and the cracked ceiling I’d been meaning to patch for a while. Someone had changed me out of that ruined ice-blue gown and into my soft cotton nightdress.
“Mommy!”
A small, warm body launch
