Phoenix -behind the whispers

They didn't grow up.
They survived.

A child beaten until his bones learned obedience.
A prince taught that blood is safer than love.
A sea-born heir who learned too early how many lives a crown can drown.
And a silver-haired boy whose body was carved open for power, magic ripped from his veins until even his screams were studied.

Book Two descends into the brutality that created them. Into cages, scars, blood-soaked rituals, and childhoods stripped down to instinct and endurance. Phoenix remembers drowning on land. Aldric remembers the first time he begged. Darius remembers the moment his heart was buried alive beneath duty. Orion remembers the day the ocean stopped feeling like home.

Now, in the present, those memories are waking up.

Nightmares turn physical. Magic turns violent. Love becomes terrifying because it demands vulnerability. And the bond between them-born from shared ruin-threatens to either heal what was broken...

Or shatter what is barely holding together.

This is a story of trauma, power, possession, and survival.
This is not a love story for the unscarred.