Chapter435:

###Chapter 435 SOPHIA The morning light came through our bedroom curtains the way it always did, gold and soft, catching dust motes that drifted lazy over the bed like they had nowhere better to be. I lay there a moment before opening my eyes fully, listening to Xenois's breathing beside me, slow and even, and let myself feel the simple, ordinary miracle of a quiet morning. We didn't get many of those anymore. Not since Jerome. He'd slipped through our fingers three weeks ago, in the final chaotic hour of the offensive we'd planned for months, vanishing into whatever hole men like him crawled into when their armies stopped answering their calls. I still felt a flicker of frustration when I thought about it—all that planning, all that bloodshed, and the man himself still breathing somewhere out there. But his coalition was gone. Scattered, broken, absorbed or destroyed. The war was over in every way that mattered to the people who had to live in its aftermath. And we were rebuilding. Go