~ELARA’s POV~
The smell of the palace was the same. But I wasn’t.
When I stepped through the broken main gate, something in the air shifted. It didn’t just get cold. It went still. Hard.
The shadows along the cracked stone walls and the dark corners of the courtyard didn’t stay where they were. They moved. They stretched out like long black fingers and slid over the ground until they brushed against my boots.
I didn’t feel like that scared girl they dragged to the cells. I didn’t feel small. I felt like a storm that had been waiting for years. Twenty-two years of silence. Twenty-two years of swallowing pain.
And now I was done holding back.
The first thing I saw was chaos. The Northern soldiers everywhere. Steel flashing. People screaming. I saw one of them grab an omega maid by he
