Chapter 21 The Blood Oath

• The forest was silent — too silent.
• Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, waiting, watching. Every crackle of dry leaves beneath our boots felt deafening, every snap of a branch like a gunshot in the stillness. Shadows pooled thick between the trees, stretching unnaturally, as if the forest itself had become a sentinel, keeping secrets too dangerous to speak aloud.
• Lucien and I had been running for hours, our bodies slick with sweat and cold, the scent of smoke and magic still clinging to our skin. The Council’s mark might be gone — shattered, broken by my own blood and power — but something far worse had taken its place: a bounty. A target painted on both our heads in the blood of legend and fear.