Elara’s POV
Two weeks pass like water through my fingers, and I finally understand the weight of being caged in gold.
I can’t leave the palace. Can’t venture beyond the carefully mapped territories Kael deems “safe.” My world has shrunk to a handful of rooms, corridors that lead nowhere, and the suffocating realization that I have nothing to do.
Nothing except tend my plants.
The herb garden Kael gave me is my sanctuary—the one place where I have complete freedom to move, to create, to exist without feeling like I’m being watched by invisible eyes. Here, among the moonbell, silverleaf, dragonfern, and carefully cultivated nightshade, I can pretend I still have purpose.
This is where I am now—or rather, I’m in the small laboratory that connects to the garden through glass doors that ca
