Page 38

THIRTY-EIGHT

CASSIAN

H e didn’t know how long he’d been here.

He’d screamed once, at the beginning—when Mirael had first bound him in chains made of shadow and silence.

He didn’t scream anymore.

He just watched Seraphine die.

Again. And again.

Sometimes it was a blade to the chest, blood flowering across her armor like crushed roses. Other times, she burned—Whitefire consuming her from the inside out, her eyes pleading as she reached for him. Once, he watched her fall from the edge of the world, her body shattered against obsidian rocks.

Always just out of reach.

Always his fault.

Cassian knelt in the dark, wrists raw from fighting bindings he couldn’t see, couldn’t name. They weren’t physical. Not really. The Hollow didn't work that way.

This place didn’t need chains to trap you.

It just needed doubt.

“You look tired,” Mirael purred.

Her voice came from nowhere and everywhere. A breath against his ear, a whisper beneath his skin. Sometimes she appeared. Sometimes she didn’t.

This time, she stepped from the wall—like a shadow peeled from stone. Tall, beautiful, in a way that made your stomach turn. Her eyes were empty wells. No light. No soul.

He didn’t lift his head.

She knelt in front of him, tilting her head.

“Are you ready to stop fighting yet?”

He didn’t answer.

She smiled. “You were always going to break, Cassian. I was just curious when.”

“I’m not broken,” he rasped.

She laughed. “You will be.”

Then she showed him another vision.

Seraphine screaming. Calling for him as Vaela held her down, as her father raised his blade. Whitefire igniting too late, too fast, consuming her like kindling. And her last word was his name.

He flinched, teeth gritted hard enough to crack. The image faded—but the scent, the sound, stayed. Burnt blood. Her voice.

“You could end this,” Mirael murmured. “All that pain, all that loss—you could stop it. Just say yes. Let the Hollow in. Let it use you.”

He spat blood at her feet.

She sighed. “Still so stubborn.”

Then, as always, she left him alone.

The darkness swallowed her. And left him. Alone.With grief. With guilt.

He didn’t cry. Not anymore. There were no tears left. Just the rotted echo of who he used to be.

Until he felt it.

Not in the air. Not in the crumbling stone. Not in the dark that clung to his skin like rot.

In his chest.

A ripple. A break. Like something sacred had clawed its way through the veil of death and cracked open the place where his heart should’ve been.

It wasn’t pain. It was her .

A whisper, faint as a breath against his neck.

“Cassian.”

His name—her voice.

Not conjured by the Hollow. Not some cruel mimicry meant to unravel him. Real.

His fingers twitched against the stone. His throat worked around a sob, but no sound came out.

“I’m coming.”

The words hit like lightning. Like fire in his blood. Like the echo of a promise forged in flesh and love and everything they hadn’t had time to say.

The illusions didn’t shatter all at once. They cracked .

Cassian staggered back from the brink. Eyes wide, chest heaving.

The vision of Seraphine lying dead at his feet dissolved into ash.

The bindings. The invisible ones that had shackled him to hopelessness, to surrender—they strained. Frayed.

But they didn’t break.

His body wouldn’t move. His magic pulsed wild beneath his skin, but it was buried. Buried under shadow and grief and lies so thick they had become marrow-deep.

She’s alive.

He dug his nails into the ground. Blood welled. The Hollow whispered louder— She's gone, she's gone, she’s gone —but he felt her. Like a tether tied to his ribs, yanking him back to the world.

Cassian grit his teeth and pushed.

Stormfire coiled inside him, furious and caged.

“No,” he rasped. “Not like this.”

The shadows bit deeper. Mirael’s enchantments tried to smother the spark. His lungs burned. His bones groaned. The Hollow screamed .

He screamed louder .

Lightning cracked behind his eyes. Magic surged, violent and uncontrolled. The cell walls shook. Something gave way inside him—a seal he hadn’t realized had been placed.

The fire came. Not Hollow. Not borrowed.

His.

Born from death. Forged in love. Fueled by her .

Cassian roared, and Stormfire exploded out of him like a detonation. Silver lightning laced with raw flame, incinerating the illusion shackles. The walls rippled with force. Shadows shrieked as they peeled away like scorched skin.

The world buckled. And then, silence.

He collapsed to his knees, gasping, body shaking violently. Magic sparked uncontrolled through his veins, crackling beneath his skin like broken glass. His palms smoked. His lips bled.

But he was free.

Alive.

His fingers dragged across the floor as he pulled himself upright, muscles screaming with every inch. He coughed, pain flaring in his chest—cracked ribs, maybe worse. Didn’t matter.

He felt her .

That bond—scorched and battered, but whole . It throbbed like a second heartbeat in his chest.

She was close .

He pressed his back to the wall, barely breathing. Skin blistered, vision swimming, magic snarling under the surface like a caged beast.

But Seraphine was coming. And that meant he had one job: survive.

Not to win. Not to fight. Just to hold on .

He then heard footsteps.

He stiffened.

But they were soft. Steady. Familiar. Then a voice—muffled by distance, but it cut straight through the dark.

“Cassian—”

His breath caught.

Seraphine.