shadow and bone · fantasy · romance · polyamory · magic · grisha · darkling · alina starkova · mal oretsev · nikolai lantsov
Silence clung to the Little Palace, thick and suffocating as a burial shroud. Within its walls, every soul had surrendered to sleep—all but us, the sentinels, standing rigid with rifles slung tight against our shoulders. The full moon hung like a bleached bone in the sky, spilling a pale, ghostly light over the stone facades, just enough to trace the outlines of the slumbering windows. Out here, the night air was a blade, a biting, merciless wind that stung our exposed skin as we kept our frozen vigil in the dark.