Chapter Fourteen
Unmasking Shadows
The night pressed against me like a suffocating cloak, heavy with the scent of rain and pine. Every breath I took seemed too loud, too fragile, as though the darkness itself might shatter if I disturbed it. The Blood Moon had waned, but its aftermath clung to me like a scar that refused to fade.
Kael hadn’t spoken to me since the oath. His silence was worse than his fury—colder, sharper, leaving me to wonder what he was hiding behind those obsidian eyes. Whenever I reached for him through the bond, I felt a wall. Not indifference. No, indifference would have been easier. What I felt was a storm chained in iron, a fury caged so tightly that even a whisper could set it free.
I couldn’t decide if I was terrified of that storm—or if some dark, reckless pa
