Petal's POV

The forest swallowed us whole.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I couldn’t hear the sound of pursuit with no snapping branches, no echoing howls, only the hush of wind sliding through the pines. Dawn was still a faint blush on the horizon when Aslaan finally stopped.

“Here,” he said, voice hoarse from hours of silence.

He pushed through a tangle of underbrush and revealed a half-collapsed ruin, stone walls wrapped in ivy, roof long gone. Whatever it had once ...