Malrik POV

I couldn’t leave Dravina after the cold bath.

She trembled against me, her body wracked by silent sobs, breaths uneven and broken. The look in her eyes wasn’t just shock it was ruin, the hollow devastation of a soul untethered and fraying apart.

I’d always known the severing of bonds could destroy, but this? This was something far worse.

She clung to me like I was the last solid thing left in a world that had crumbled beneath her feet. Her grief bled into me raw, ...