Chapter 45 Ashes That Speaks

• The storm did not wait for them to gather their breath. It broke over the palace with an anger that felt ancient—wind tearing at the towers, sky cracked open with lightning. Kael stood beneath the stained-glass window of the war room, fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of his sword, its weight a strange comfort in the wake of everything he had lost—and what he now stood to lose again.
• Elira entered behind him, her hair damp from the rain, her eyes sharp despite the exhaustion in her bones. “It’s not just weather,” she said, voice low. “I can feel it. Something dark rides the wind.”
• Kael nodded once. “He’s coming.”