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FOURTEEN

CASSIAN

C assian hated ruins.

Not because they were old or haunted or half-collapsed into memory, though all that was true.

He hated them because they always smelled like death. Quiet, patient death. The kind that waited in the cracks and smiled with broken teeth.

The temple at the basin’s edge was worse than most.

Even with the blood key pulsing warm against Seraphine’s hip, the threshold fought them.

The air thickened the closer they got, until it felt like walking through a swamp made of memory and ash.

Sigils crawled along the stone, flickering in and out like they couldn’t decide whether to warn or devour.

As for Seraphine...

She was barely standing.

He watched her fingers tremble as she pressed the blood key into the altar lock, a thin sheen of sweat on her brow. She didn't complain. Of course she didn’t. She was always fire, always forward. But her flame was running low.

Too low.

The warded doors groaned open. Cassian drew his blade.

“Stay close,” she said without looking at him.

“Not going anywhere, Princess.”

The inside was worse.

Cold. Dry. Stale with dust and blood-magic.

The moment they stepped past the threshold, the ground shifted. The walls flickered with broken glyphs. Lira and Brann took flanking positions, but even they looked uneasy. Alek disappeared into the shadows ahead, too silent for Cassian’s liking.

Seraphine led them through a narrow hall that descended like a throat.

At the bottom was a chamber pulsing with violet light.

There, in a bed of carved obsidian, lay the first shard of the Heartblade—crimson crystal, fractured with light like lightning caught in glass.

They barely had time to breathe.

The guardians rose from the walls.

Hollow-forged constructs—part metal, part magic, all wrong. Their eyes lit with the same violet burn that had haunted his dreams since they entered the Veil. They moved with the precision of nightmares—too fast, too clean.

“Circle up!” Seraphine shouted.

Cassian was already moving.

He met the first with a full arc of Stormfire. His blade catching the edge of the thing’s armor and sparking like a thunderclap. It shrieked—a high, mechanical wail—and slashed at him with a blade-arm thick as a man’s torso.

He ducked, rolled, came up behind it and drove his sword deep.

Another lunged at Brann. Lira intercepted it with a roar, smashing her shield into its face and slamming it into a column.

Cassian turned to check Seraphine and saw her stagger.

She’d taken down two already, her glaive a blur of whitefire. But her limbs moved slower now, her face pale, and when the third construct lunged— She didn’t dodge.

“Seraphine!”

He got there too late to stop the blow.

It caught her across the shoulder, sent her crashing to the floor with a sound that broke something in him.

“Shit—no, no?—”

He surged forward, blade blazing, and unleashed .

Stormfire erupted from his body in a shockwave, throwing two constructs into the far wall. His blade found another’s throat—if it had one—and cleaved it through with brute force.

The world blurred.

Cassian fought like a storm possessed, not thinking, just moving , until the last Hollow-forged shrieked its death in sparks and smoke.

Then he dropped to his knees beside her.

Her breath was shallow. Eyes glassy. Too pale.

He lifted her gently. She didn’t stir.

“Damn you, Princess,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “You don’t get to die here.”

He slung her across his back, ignoring the way her armor dug into him. Brann clutched the shard they risked to get, Lira cursed the air, and Alek reappeared with a nod.

They ran.

Outside, under the dying light of dusk, Cassian laid her down beside the ruins, pulled off his coat and draped it over her. He pressed two fingers to her neck. Still beating.

Barely.

“Lira,” he said, not looking up. “Water.”

She tossed him a canteen.

Cassian tipped it gently against her lips. She coughed—just once—but swallowed.

Good.

Brann approached, wide-eyed. “Is she?—?”

“She’s alive,” Cassian said, too sharply. “She’s stronger than this.”

But even as he said it, he looked down at her pale face and felt something twist inside him.

She’d almost died.

He couldn’t get the image out of his head—the moment she fell, the way her body crumpled, like all the fire had gone out of her.

He sat beside her, silent for a long time.

Lira pulled the others away to set camp.

Only when the fire was lit and the stars began to creep out did Seraphine stir.

She turned her head slowly, eyes barely open.

“…Did we get it?”

Cassian leaned closer.

“Yeah. We got it.”

She gave a faint, crooked smile. “Told you I’d get us through.”

“You damn near didn’t.”

Her smile faded. She looked at him then, and something unspoken passed between them.

Fear. Relief. Maybe even something like affection.

He took her hand without thinking. Held it.

“Don’t do that again.”

“Then don’t let me walk in alone.”

He squeezed her hand tighter.

They sat there, two half-broken pieces of something they didn’t understand.

Above them, the stars watched in silence.

Far away, Cassian remembered Malrik’s words.

Six shards remain. But each one will cost you more than blood.

He looked at Seraphine, pale and still beside him.

He knew, deep in his bones he’d pay any price.