Chapter 180

• Ian’s POV.
• The room was silent, but it wasn’t the kind of quiet that brought peace. It was the suffocating, heavy silence that followed a storm, the kind that reminded you of the destruction left in its wake. I stood in the center of it all, bloodied, bruised, but alive. That was the only victory I could claim for now. Sophia, too, was alive. Our child was safe. But everything else… everything else felt like it was hanging by a thread.
• The scent of blood still lingered in the air. The bodies of the traitorous council members had been removed, but the stain of their betrayal remained, staining the very walls of the council chambers. Gregor and Helena had both been captured, though I knew that was only a small consolation. This wasn’t over. Far from it.