Chapter 206

CHAPTER 48… VALENTINA The morning air was crisp, but it carried more than the scent of pine and earth. It carried intention. I could feel it in the subtle way the leaves trembled without wind, how the light fractured through the canopy above in jagged, uneven beams. Something had shifted. Not us— yet. but the world we moved through was listening. Luciano slept lightly against my chest. His silver pulsed faintly beneath the skin of his cheek, like a heartbeat mirrored in light. At first, I thought it was only the palace responding, but no. This was beyond the walls, beyond wards, beyond anything I had known. He had left the palace and carried a tether of influence into the wild. “They feel him,” Andres said quietly from beside me. His hand brushed briefly against my arm as an acknowledgment. “Do you feel it?” I nodded, though my heart skipped at the subtle, almost imperceptible pressure that seemed to rise from the ground itself. “I do,” I whispered. “It’s… different this time. He’s not