Cypril.
I spun toward the door and stepped into the corridor, my voice sharp and commanding. To the first guard, I said without hesitation, “Seal the entrance.” My gaze shifted immediately to the other. “Call my brothers. Now.”
Neither of them dared to question me. They moved at once, boots retreating down the hall as the weight of my orders settled heavily in the air. The moment their footsteps faded, an unsettling silence followed, thick, tense, suffocating.
I turned back into the room.
The woman on the bed lay exactly where I had left her, chains biting into her wrists, her chest rising and falling unevenly. She still looked like Melissa. The same face. The same frame. And yet, the longer I stared, the more wrong it felt. Something about her presence grated against my instincts, set
