Zyra POV
I wake slowly.
Not the jarring kind of waking that rips you from sleep with panic clawing at your throat but the heavy, disorienting kind, where your body remembers pain before your mind remembers why. The bed beneath me is warm, too warm.
My lashes flutter open.
The ceiling comes into focus first, dark, high, unfamiliar. For one heart-stopping second, panic grips me. Then the memories rush back all at once: the gardens, the night air, the pain, the weakness, the humiliating collapse.
And then I see him.
Dael is sitting beside the bed, not looming.
Not standing like an executioner waiting for a verdict. He’s seated on a chair pulled close, his posture rigid, back straight, one ankle crossed over the other. His arms are folded across his chest, broad and unyielding, muscles
