#Chapter 34 A lost love

Dylan Ashes. All of it was in ashes. I nearly crashed the car when I first saw it. It was still running when I jumped out and ran to see the black spot where my dark house once was. I smelled it from miles away, but I tried to imagine it wasn’t this. I tried to imagine that my home wasn’t gone. The ash made its permanent mark up my nose and I knew I would never forget the smell no matter how long I lived. It looked like I was standing in a long abandoned graveyard—not the house I had grown up in. Not the house my mother loved even though she had died here. I looked through the ashes and found bones upon bones. My soldiers? My maids? Patara— No. She couldn’t have been here, I would have felt it in our bond. She wasn’t dead yet. Even though I couldn’t find her, I felt her heartbeat steady somewhere out there. I curled my fists at my side. I knew she hadn’t burned my house down, it wasn’t in her to do such a thing—unless I misread her entirely. Was there a beast be