Elara’s POV
Nine weeks.
The number was more like a drum to my ears in the silent car, a metronome counting down to the very end of everything. Just 63 days to forever become either a god’s broken queen or a catalyst for the apocalypse. The heavy weight that suddenly emerged from Aron’s book on my lap felt like it would force the leather seat out of the car.
Lucian drove the car in silence, yet burning fiercely. His knuckles were pale on the steering wheel, his gaze fixed on the winding road that descended from the peaks as if in search of a missing destiny. The quiet, calm strategist is now nowhere to be seen. It has been replaced by a man looking forward to a countdown to annihilation.
With his voice taut and crackly, he said, “we don't go back to the mountain safe house, by knowledg
