Chapter 215: Staying Woke

Mercifully, Mark wasn’t forced to entertain Aedion again, and saw little of him outside of state dinners and meetings, where the general pretended he didn’t exist. He saw little of Mackenzie , too, which was a relief, given how awkward their conversations had been of late. But he’d begun to spar with the guards in the mornings. It was about as fun as lying on a bed of hot nails, but at least it gave him something to do with the restless, anxious energy that hounded him day and night.

Not to mention all those cuts and scrapes and sprains gave him an excuse to go to the healers’ catacombs. Manuel , it seemed, had caught on to his training schedule, and her door was always open when he arrived.

He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what she’d said in his room, or wondering why someone who had lost everything would dedicate her life to helping the family of the man who had taken it all away. And when she’d said Because I had nowhere else to go … for a second, it hadn’t been Manuel b