Chapter 208

• Cassian
• The air in the council chamber was filled with tension, the kind that seemed to press down on your shoulders and make each breath a conscious effort. I could hear my own heartbeat thundering in my ears as I stepped over the threshold, my boots echoing off the stone floor with every deliberate step. Faces turned toward me, some wary, some hostile, but none as sharp as Elvira’s. She sat there like a statue carved from ice, her gaze locked on me, piercing through the layers of lies I’d spent a lifetime weaving.
• I swallowed, tasting the coppery taste of fear mingled with guilt. My dad was dead. The man who had shaped me, twisted me, who had taught me to be loyal to a family that had never really been mine—gone. And yet here I was, standing in the very hall where my betrayals would be laid bare.