Alpha Lir POV
The silk tie feels like a noose around my throat. I tear it off, throwing it onto the mahogany desk of my private study, but the suffocating pressure in my chest doesn't ease.
I don't turn on the lights. The only illumination in the room is the cold, silver glow of the Northern moon cutting through the floor-to-ceiling glass, painting the room in sharp shadows.
I unclench my right fist. My knuckles are stiff, aching from how tightly I’ve been gripping the scrap of midnight-blue mountain wool.
I smooth it out over my palm. The silver-mist elder grid. It’s a defensive pattern so intricate, so flawlessly executed, that no ordinary weaver in the Sovereign courts could replicate it.
It’s hers. I’d know her stitches anywhere.
When my guards dragged Silas’s sister out of the s
