Page 34

THIRTY-FOUR

CASSIAN

T hey’d run until their lungs burned and their legs shook and the trees stopped whispering threats. The Wyrdlands swallowed sound, swallowed scent, swallowed pursuit like it fed on it.

At last—they were alone.

Cassian collapsed beside a fallen stone outcropping, his breath ragged. Seraphine slumped to the ground near him, wiping blood from her jaw. Not hers. Not this time. Her hands trembled slightly as she rewrapped the hilt of her glaive.

Eventually, Seraphine drifted into sleep, curled near the ashes of their dying fire. Her body was still tense even in rest, jaw clenched like she might fight even her dreams. Cassian sat watch, his back to the stone, blade across his lap, mind on fire.

They were close.

Too close.

He could feel the blade now—every shard humming, alive and near-complete. All except one.

One.

The final shard.

He didn’t have a damn clue where it was.

The crack of a footstep behind him made his grip tighten.

He didn’t look. “You’re late.”

“Could say the same to you,” came the reply. A voice he hadn’t heard in years but would’ve known in his sleep.

Roen.

Cassian turned slowly.

The man standing there hadn’t changed much. Same smug half-smile, same too-loose gait, like the world was just something to lean on. But there was something else in his eyes now.

Steel. And sorrow.

Cassian stood, careful not to wake Seraphine. “You still breathing? I’ll call that a miracle.”

Roen laughed quietly, the sound bitter and brittle like something cracked too long ago to mend. “Takes more than a bounty to kill me.”

Cassian didn’t smile. “Even a royal one?”

Roen’s grin faded, eyes dropping for the first time. “You heard, huh?”

Cassian’s jaw clenched. “Hard not to when they start branding your name into execution orders. Saw one pinned to a gate in Aethermoor.” His voice lowered. “Right below mine.”

Roen rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing. “Yeah. Well. I told myself I was just buying time. But time runs out, Cass.”

“You picked one hell of a side.”

Roen raised his brows. “I didn’t pick a side. I picked survival. Something you used to be pretty damn good at.”

“She’s not a cause,” Cassian snapped, his voice sharp and raw. “And I didn’t pick her because she was the winning hand.”

“No,” Roen said softly. “You picked her because she made you want to stop running.”

The silence between them crackled.

Cassian’s voice dropped to a warning growl. “You said you could help.”

“I can ,” Roen answered. “But not like you think.”

Cassian took a slow step forward. His chest tightened like it already knew what was coming. “Roen?—”

Roen swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to come here.

I wasn’t going to. But he’s everywhere now , Cass.

Your Emperor? He’s in people’s dreams. Their blood.

He promised to lift the bounty on my whole line.

Said my sister could come out of hiding.

Said my name would be cleared if I just…

” His voice cracked. “If I just brought you to him.”

Cassian’s stomach dropped like a stone. “So you led them here.”

Roen’s hands shook as he reached inside his coat. “That was the deal.”

Cassian’s shoulders tensed—ready for a blade, a spell, something sharp.

But Roen didn’t pull a weapon.

He pulled out a shard.

Smooth. Dark. And humming with that same low, ancient pulse Cassian had begun to feel in his veins, deep as marrow.

The last piece of the Heartblade.

Cassian staggered back a step. “What the hell—how?—”

“My family,” Roen said quietly. “We weren’t just smugglers. We were Watchers. Keepers of things that shouldn’t be forgotten. One shard. One bloodline. We’ve been waiting generations for the stormborn to rise.”

Cassian’s breath caught. “And you gave it to him ?”

Roen shook his head hard, eyes glassy. “No. I came here to give it to you. But I—” His words trembled. “I took too long.”

Cassian’s hand twitched toward the shard.

That was when the shadows behind Roen thickened. Moved.

Cassian’s instincts screamed too late.

Mirael emerged like smoke with bones. Not walking. Not floating. Unfolding. Her Hollow-born form wavered between beautiful and monstrous, the ruin of something once divine. Her eyes were pits—hungry, endless.

Roen turned. Too slow.

She didn’t touch him.

Didn’t raise a hand.

She just looked at him.

Roen’s body went still—then limp. His eyes rolled back, and he dropped to his knees like a puppet with its strings cut.

Not dead or hurt.

Just… emptied.

“ Roen! ” Cassian lunged, fire leaping from his palms.

Mirael caught him mid-charge with a flick of her fingers.

Magic— wrong magic—wrapped around his ribs like barbed wire. His breath left him in a wheeze. Her claws brushed his jaw, and the chill of her magic raced through his veins.

“Hello again, stormborn,” she purred.

He snarled, struggling against the binding. “You think you can take me again?”

She tilted her head. “Oh, Cassian. I’m not here to take you.”

Her other hand reached for the shard Roen had dropped.

“I’m here to complete you.”

Her magic slammed into his chest. Deep. Sharp. It didn’t just burn—it remembered. Every death. Every life. Every lie .

He gasped.

The darkness then came.

He saw Seraphine—sleeping by the fire. The ember in her palm. The way she’d looked at him like he was worth saving.

He tried to speak her name.

But the Hollow swallowed it.

His limbs went weightless. His body numb. Only the heat of the shard remained, and even that began to fade.

He was being carried. He knew that.

Not by hands.

By shadow.

By fate.

Cassian Veyne was gone.

The final shard had chosen him.