The world finally stopped shaking, and Nyra realized it wasn’t the silence she noticed first.
It was presence.
The air pressed in so thick, it felt alive, like she had somehow offended it just by existing. She suddenly felt squeezed out of her own space.
The storm hadn’t let up. Rain hammered down, thunder rumbled, lightning kept slicing angry lines overhead. But honestly, none of it mattered now. Everything had shrunk to the spot right in front of her.
Him.
That man.
The stranger who’d shown up and bent entire armies to his will, made monsters hush.
Nyra forced herself to look up. She was still shaky, breath uneven, muscles twitching from the quake. Mud stuck to her skin, rain kept getting in her eyes. But she stared anyway.
Something about him insisted, somehow, that she pay atte
