The clearing was too quiet.
Amelia’s chest rose and fell in sharp bursts, the chains digging into her skin pulsing with a strange heat. The storm had passed, but the air was thick with the kind of silence that always came before something worse.
Charles lay half-conscious beside her, bruised and bleeding. The attack had come out of nowhere, but it was the voice that haunted her.
The voice of the man who now stepped out from the shadows like he owned the ground he walked on.
Kael.
He looked exactly as he had in her visions. Calm. Controlled. As if the chaos he left in his wake wasn’t his concern. His eyes flicked to the chains around her wrists, glowing faintly, then to the blood pooling beneath Charles.
"You heal everyone but yourself," he murmured. "Fascinating."
Amelia said nothin
