Elena wakes to a battlefield turned graveyard — but she does not see Luca anywhere. Panic eclipses reason.

“If he’s dead, I don’t want to survive.”

She immediately hates herself for thinking it.

This is the first time she admits — even internally — that she cares.

She searches among the wounded and the ashes. Soldiers call her “Princess,” but she walks past them.

All she wants to find is him.

Finally she finds him — alive, but barely — collapsed against a shattered wall, armor ripped open, blood everywhere.

He tries to stand when he sees her.

Luca: “Don’t… come close.”

Elena: “You’re bleeding.”

Luca: “Better than bleeding because of you.”

He’s angry, hurt, and convinced she intentionally disobeyed orders and ruined the raid.

And he’s not wrong.

Elena is trembling.

Elena: “I chose to save a hundred lives instead of a city we couldn’t hold. If that makes me a villain in your eyes, fine. I’ll wear the crown of it.”

Luca looks like she stabbed him.

He whispers, with quiet devastation rather than rage:

Luca: “I would have rather died beside you than watched you walk away.”

This is the emotional gut-punch of the chapter.

While they fight, a dying soldier grabs Elena’s cloak and murmurs:

“The traitor… walks with you.”

Not among them.

With them.

This means someone close to Luca or close to Elena is orchestrating this from the inside.

They freeze.

This single line shifts everything.

Luca refuses treatment until Elena is safe — but Elena refuses to leave his side. They argue until exhaustion makes decisions for them.

She tends to his wounds.

He doesn’t stop her.

But when her hand brushes his, he grabs her wrist — not harshly, but desperately, as if he’s terrified she will vanish again.

Luca: “If you’re going to betray me… do it quickly. I can’t survive dying twice.”

Elena presses her forehead to his, voice barely audible:

Elena: “I didn’t betray you. But someone wants you to think I did.”

For a heartbeat, they breathe each other in like oxygen.

Then Luca pulls away — not because he doesn’t want her near, but because wanting her is the most dangerous thing he can do.

A messenger rushes in:

“The High Council is calling for a hunt. They’re naming the traitor… the Princess of Embers.”

(Elena.)

Instant death warrant.

Luca’s face goes cold — that royal, terrifying, unreadable stare.

Everyone waits to see what he’ll command.

He looks at Elena — the girl who could save the kingdom or destroy it — the girl he should hand over.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he says:

Luca: “No one touches her. Anyone who tries — dies by my hand.”

Gasps ripple through the camp.

He has now chosen her over his kingdom — and it will cost him everything.

Luca didn’t take my hand because he trusted me.

He took it because if I ran — he would follow me straight into hell.

And the world burned around us.