POV: Mason
The palace shifted the moment Damieon’s name was spoken.
Not physically—not at first.
But the wards trembled.
I felt it in my bones before the alarms screamed through the lower halls. A pressure in the air. The same suffocating pull I’d felt the first time the Shadow King reached for Alex and Riley.
“They’ve felt it,” I said grimly, already moving. “The heir’s presence.”
Alex was at Riley’s side in an instant, protective as a blade drawn from its sheath. Elara’s face had gone deathly pale.
“You have minutes,” she said. “Not hours.”
Then the screaming started.
A palace guard burst through the eastern doors, blood soaking the front of his armor. “Breach in the catacombs—shadow-born entities inside the lower wards!”
Of course they came from below.
They always did.
“Rile
