Chapter 74: Helen
Lyria's POV
The streets of the capital were never truly quiet at night.
The palace had its own night sounds, its own specific dark, but out here the dark was a different thing entirely. It was warmer, more inhabited. Full of itself in a way that the palace's careful, managed silence never was.
I kept my head low and my steps quick and moved through it the way I always did — like someone with somewhere to be who was not particularly interested in being seen getting there.
I turned, quickly moving through the narrow passages that ran between the wider roads, barely wide enough for two people to pass each other comfortably, the buildings on either side leaning close overhead as though conducting a private conversation across the gap.
Lanterns hung from iron hooks and doorways, casting warm pools of gold across cobblestones worn smooth by years of traffic.
