Damien POV
The lower bailey was a slaughter yard under moonlight.
Bodies lay in tangled heaps — loyalist gray and Darius's crimson mixed like spilled paint. The air stank of wet fur, blood, and the sharp ozone of spent shadow-magic. Howls still rose in ragged bursts, but they were fewer now, broken. The pack war that had festered since the fracture had finally reached its breaking point.
I stood at the top of the wide stone steps leading down from the keep's inner gate, shadows curling at my feet like living smoke. Nova was safe — upstairs, breathing, guarded by Liora and Elias — but the bond still thrummed with her exhaustion, her stubborn silver pulse. Every time it flickered, the last ember of the demon king inside me hissed in answer.
Darius waited at the foot of the stairs.
