Chapter 45

• “I won’t let them hurt you, Ava. I swear it.”
• His words were so quietly spoken that I almost thought I had imagined them. But when I turned to Crown, standing just a few feet away, his eyes were dark, filled with a resolve I had never seen in him before. He wasn’t just speaking from a place of duty or loyalty. There was something deeper in his gaze—something that tied his every word to an undeniable truth. He meant it.
• I swallowed hard, the weight of the moment pressing against my chest. The room was suffocating, the silence too thick for comfort. Outside, I could hear the faint sounds of the conflict, distant but unmistakable. Things were happening, things I couldn’t control. And yet, standing there with Crown, I felt like we were the only two people who mattered.