Chapter 22. Silken Chains

They came for her at the first fragile light of dawn, when the sky was still a pale whisper of pink and gold. The wind carried a cool dampness up from the steaming river below, where the water still shivered as if it too had felt Lora’s scorching touch. All around her, the cliffs bore the acrid tang of ash and singed earth, the once-green grass now charred and brittle underfoot, crunching softly whenever she shifted her weight. Every muscle in her body quivered, residual tremors from the night’s battles still rippling through her limbs; and yet, despite her exhaustion, the Bonefire—that dark, crackling power that had claimed her soul—still danced at her fingertips, a silent reminder of how irrevocably she had changed.

Rael had kept his vigil through the long hours of darkness, his cool gray eyes never closing, alert as the horizon lightened behind him. He leaned on the crest of his sword, the polished steel at his hip gleaming faintly in the growing dawn, every line of his pos