#Chapter 35: We Should Talk

Logan I sat in my room long after the fire in the hearth had begun to die, watching the embers pulse like a heartbeat in the dark. The silence should’ve soothed me. Evelyn had decided to stay, and with her return came a flicker of hope, a sense that maybe things could still be set right. But my thoughts wouldn’t settle. They kept looping back to the rogue who had died so mysteriously before my eyes, presumably untouched yet convulsing as though he had been poisoned. His blood hadn’t even cooled properly, as if magic—something old and unnatural—had been clinging to him when he died. It didn’t add up. None of it did. The death, the timing, the territory he had been found in… It all felt staged. And then there was Emma. Lately, I’d begun to see cracks in her carefully curated exterior. Too smooth. Too quick to deflect blame. And far too interested in Evelyn’s downfall for it to be about political feelings alone. We used to be close, Emma and I. Not lovers, but extremely, i