CHAPTER 30: SECOND CHANCE
The air was unlike anything she’d breathed before—clean, sharp with pine, threaded with faint traces of moonflower and moss. It wrapped around her like a prayer, quiet and ancient.
Catleya stirred.
Her body ached from the inside out, her limbs weighed down like they were carved from stone. But she was alive.
Alive.
Her eyes fluttered open to a ceiling carved of polished wood, faintly glowing with lichen that shimmered in the dim candlelight. Warm fur blankets cocooned her—soft as silk, lined with scent she didn’t recognize but found strangely calming.
A soft breeze filtered through a cracked window carved in the shape of a crescent moon.
Where am I?
The last thing she remembered was the frantic escape—the storm, the scent of blood and freedom, the cold bit
