Chapter 74

Liam

The ruins didn’t stop settling until the second morning.

By the time the last team came out of the ruins, the sky was already gray. We had walked every corridor that was still standing and found only rogues: seven alive enough to chain, and more who weren’t. Every girl had gone down the mountain with Kade and the healers. Sloane hadn’t been among them, and she wasn’t among the dead either.

After that, the ruins wouldn’t let anyone back in. Whatever had cracked the chamber had weakened every passage around it, and every hour or so something else gave way deep inside: a muffled crash under the ridge, a fresh trickle of rock down the slope, another breath of dust from the entrance. Tiernan’s scouts said it needed a day to settle, and I had no argument good enough to send anyone inside before then.

So I did what t