AYLA – POV
My breath was ash and ice.
The ruins lay silent around me—a graveyard of crumbling stones and scorched earth, where moonlight pooled in broken columns like spilled silver. My fingers still tingled where the Seer's ward had struck me hours before, a reminder that nothing in this war was sacred anymore.
I felt the First Luna stir.
A tremor of power spread beneath my ribs, pulsing through every fiber of my body. She was waking, restless as the forest at dusk, and I feared what that meant.
Because Kael...Last night, when he pressed his blood-soaked lips to mine, he reached into me—not for dominance, but for shared salvation. He offered himself. And I took him, willingly, unbearably.
Now my skin itched with new shards of power. A hunger curled in my gut—not for flesh, but for meaning. I wanted to protect, to claim, to transform. A ruler, a weapon, a myth.
But also... to feel his arms around me again.
