Verity's pov

I couldn’t sleep.

No matter how many times I turned over in bed, no matter how many deep breaths I took, the silence pressed against me. It was suffocating. Caleb had been gone for days now, busy with whatever duties kept him from our lessons, and without that daily rhythm, I felt… bored.

I slipped from the bed and padded barefoot into the halls. The castle at night was a different creature entirely—hushed, cold, yet strangely alive with whispers from the guards or ...