RAVENNA
I woke up to shouting.
At first, I thought it was a dream—my heartbeat galloping, my skin clammy from the inside out. For a second, I was back at Elvarim, hiding in corridors, heart pounding with the threat of pursuit.
But this wasn’t that.
This was muffled, broken by the thick wooden floorboards beneath my mattress. Not palace echoes, but real present ones.
A man and a woman, their voices tangled in anger below me, sharp like broken glass. The man—I knew that voice. Even laced with frustration, Elias’s tone never quite lost its steadiness. But the woman was frantic, pleading.
I slid out of bed slowly, careful not to creak the old floor too loudly. The tiny room above the carpenter’s shop, had the view of the street on one side and the stairwell on the other. From the thin s
