CHAPTER 204
The morning light filtered through the heavy velvet curtains in ribbons of pale gold, dancing across the tangled silk sheets of the master suite.
Isabella stirred, her eyes fluttering open to the sight of the room bathed in that first, hesitant glow. She was tucked into Lucain's exposed chest.
He held her with a possessive, anchoring weight, his arms a fortress that had kept the nightmares of the previous night at bay.
As consciousness fully returned, so did the memory of the whirlwind that had been the day before. It felt less like twenty-four hours and more like a lifetime lived in the span of a single rotation of the sun.
She stared at the sunlight, her mind drifting back to the desperate hours spent in the library, fingers tracing ancient parchment in a search for a self she didn't yet recognize.
Then, the shift—the visceral, bone-deep transition from a girl who was "nothing" to a creature that commanded the very air.
