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TWENTY-FIVE

SERAPHINE

T he silence between them could’ve split mountains.

Seraphine walked with her eyes ahead, boots crunching over brittle stone and frost-laced grass. The wind had teeth up here—sharp and wild, howling through the trees like it knew their names.

She could feel the weight of him behind her. Could hear every ragged breath he didn’t want her to notice. The fifth shard pulsed from his belt, warm and steady like a second heart, but not alive. Not really.

They were two shards away from the end. But for the first time, she wasn’t sure she’d survive it. Not because of the Hollow. But because of him.

They stopped by a frozen creek when the light started to die. Cassian built the fire again, methodical, quiet. She set the perimeter wards. Neither said a word.

This silence was worse than any fight.

She sat across from him as the flames crackled, casting orange light over the sharp angles of his face. His jaw was tight. Shoulders coiled like he was waiting for something to fall apart.

She’d made him that way. She hated herself for it.

“Cassian,” she said quietly.

He didn’t look at her.

“Back there… you should’ve told me the voices were getting louder.”

He shrugged. “You had enough to worry about.”

“I worry about you.”

Her voice cracked, barely above the wind curling around the fire’s edge. But it was enough to draw his eyes up. Slowly. Warily. Like someone waiting for the punchline of a joke they didn’t want to laugh at.

Cassian stared at her across the flames, and Seraphine felt the weight of every breath between them.

Her throat burned, and her heart thudded against her ribs like it wanted out—wanted him .

She pushed the words past her lips like they were a curse.

“I love you.”

The fire popped like a warning, embers snapping skyward.

Cassian—he looked as if she was holding a dagger to his throat.

His expression twisted, unreadable. Part hurt. Part awe. Like love was foreign. Like it had always come too late, or left too soon. Like he didn’t know what to do with something that wasn’t pain.

His voice came rough and raw.

“Don’t.”

Her spine stiffened. “I have to. Because it’s true.”

She stood too fast, the suddenness of it stealing the warmth from her seat. Her boots ground into ash as she paced to the firelight’s edge. Her hands curled into fists so tight, she felt her nails press into skin.

The trees didn’t listen. The stars didn’t care.

“My father—if he finds out—I don’t know what he’ll do. To you. To us. ”

“Let him come,” Cassian said without hesitation.

She spun. “Don’t say that.”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

Her laugh was sharp, bitter. “Well I am! ”

Her voice cracked. She didn’t care. “Not for me. For you. For the part of you that still thinks he’s just a man with a title. He’s not. He’s a monster wearing a crown, Cassian. He’s burned entire bloodlines for less than what we’ve done.”

Cassian stood now too, his expression hardening. “You think I can’t handle a tyrant with a gods complex?”

She stepped into his space, eyes gleaming. “I think he’ll rip your soul out and make me watch. I think he’ll use you to punish me. I think if he suspects even a flicker of what I feel for you, he’ll chain you to the Hollow and call it justice.”

Cassian flinched like she’d slapped him. “Gods, Sera…”

Her rage collapsed under the weight of her grief. She reached up, fingertips trembling, and brushed his jaw. The stubble there was rough, familiar. Real.

That was the worst part.

He was real. And she was about to lose him.

“This can’t happen,” she murmured, softer now, the fire’s glow making her tears glint. “Not now. Not with him watching. Not while the Hollow is feeding on every bond we build.”

His hand came up and caught hers—firm, warm, alive. He pressed it to his cheek, grounding her.

“But it already did,” he said.

She broke inside. Because he was right.

It had happened. It was happening. And it was going to destroy them.

The fire burned low between them, and for a breathless moment, neither of them moved. Neither of them blinked. They just stood there , tethered by something as wild and dangerous as the world trying to tear them apart.

That night, sleep didn’t come easy.

When it did, it brought the Hollow with it.

Not as a monster. But as a mirror.

She stood in a world half-swallowed by ash, sky cracked open like bone. Flames flickered in the ruins around her, and in the center of it all?—

Cassian.

But not the man she knew.

His eyes were black voids, rimmed in blue flame. His skin shimmered with cracks of light like veins full of storm. He stood with the Heartblade in his hand, and a smile that wasn’t his, stretched across his face.

He looked at her like he remembered her. But didn’t love her. And she couldn’t move.

She raised her glaive, but her arms wouldn’t respond. Her body frozen.

The Heartblade flared in his grip.

Still—she couldn’t strike.

Even as the thing wearing Cassian stepped toward her. Even as it opened its mouth and spoke in his voice, “You should have let me die.”

She woke with a scream trapped in her throat. Her skin was cold. Her chest burned.

Across the fire, Cassian slept with a hand on his dagger and his brow furrowed like he was fighting battles even now.

She sat with her back to the stone and watched him for the rest of the night, his silhouette barely moving in the fire’s last embers. His chest rose and fell in quiet rhythm, but even in sleep, there was a tension to him—like the battle hadn’t left his body, only slipped beneath the skin.

Seraphine—

She couldn’t close her eyes.

Not with the vision still clawing at her mind.

If the prophecy was true…

If Malrik’s fragmented memories were more than just twisted relics of the past—then Cassian wasn’t just part of the weapon meant to seal the Hollow.

He was the sacrifice.

The stormfire in his blood wasn’t just a fluke of fate. It was a tether. A link between what had been lost and what was coming. The forgotten prince of a cursed bloodline. The spark to awaken the blade.

The price to end it all.

Malrik’s words haunted her: “The blade does not seal the Hollow. It chooses the one who will.”

She’d assumed it meant her. But the blade had begun to pulse in his presence. Reacting. Resonating.

If that meant what she feared it did—she might be the one who had to end him.

To wield the Heartblade against the man she loved, and drive it into the source of the Hollow— into him —to keep the world from unraveling.

Her chest ached with it. And gods help her. She didn’t know if she could.

She watched the slow, steady rise of his chest as he slept, and whispered the only prayer she still remembered.

“Let it be me.”

Let it be her who paid the price.

Because if it came down to Cassian— She’d burn the world before she watched it take him.