Page 9

NINE

SERAPHINE

T he Hollow-corrupted dragon crashed into the clearing like a godsdamned earthquake.

Cassian didn’t hesitate.

He bolted forward, reckless and roaring with Stormfire.

His blade lit up in crackling arcs as he ducked beneath the dragon’s claws—swinging wide with terrifying force.

Sparks exploded when he slammed it against the creature’s foreleg, biting through rotted scale.

The thing bellowed, a sound that warped the air like it was splitting apart reality itself.

“Flank it!” he shouted over the din.

Seraphine was already moving.

She surged from the shrine’s cover, glaive spinning in her hands. Whitefire leapt along the blade’s edge, humming with righteous heat. The corrupted dragon’s tail snapped toward her like a whip, but she ducked under it, slammed the glaive into the exposed sinew just beneath the hip joint.

The smell—gods, it was worse up close. Rot, sulfur, and something else. Something voidal . Like the Hollow itself was leaking out through the dragon’s skin.

“Hit the core,” she barked. “It’s in the chest—see the glow?”

“Easy for you to say,” Cassian snapped, dodging another gout of twisted flame. “I’m a little busy not getting my head bitten off!”

But he was smiling. He always did when death was breathing down his neck it seemed like.

They moved together. Her with clean, precise arcs of flame-bound steel; him with wild bursts of lightning-infused fire and savage, unpredictable strikes. The beast howled, bucked, thrashed—but they were unrelenting.

A dance of flame and fury.

Until Cassian feinted to the left, drew the dragon’s head low—and Seraphine vaulted off a shattered root, leaping onto the beast’s back. She drove her glaive straight into the exposed corruption glowing beneath its ribs.

Whitefire erupted from the wound.

The dragon screamed. A sound that wasn’t just pain, but rage , grief , something ancient being forced back into death.

It collapsed seconds later in a spray of ash and twitching limbs.

Just stood there in the clearing, breathing hard, the ground littered with smoldering remains. Brann and Alek emerged slowly from the treeline, wide-eyed but alive. Lira joined them a beat later, face grim and scorched from ward backlash.

Seraphine dropped to one knee beside the creature’s corpse. Not out of exhaustion. Out of mourning. This had once been a guardian of Drakar skies.

“What the hell happened to it?” Brann asked, voice trembling.

Cassian knelt beside her, rubbing soot from his cheek. “The Hollow doesn’t just eat bodies,” he said softly. “It eats souls. Turns old things into weapons.”

Seraphine didn’t look at him, but her voice was hoarse. “I’ve never seen a corrupted dragon survive this deep into the Veil.”

“They’re getting braver,” he said.

She nodded once.

Said nothing more.

That night, they made camp at the river’s edge.

The shrine was a mile behind them, but Seraphine still felt the memory of it like cold water under her skin.

She took first watch.

Not because she needed to—but because sleep didn’t feel like a kindness she deserved.

She sat by the fire, whitefire ward flickering at the edge of the glade, the glaive resting beside her. The others were already asleep. Cassian lay on his bedroll, one arm slung over his chest, mouth parted slightly in dreams.

She tried not to look at him.

Failed.

He had fought like no one else she'd known—more instinct than training. Like he'd been born for chaos, for impossible odds. And he’d trusted her.

Worse, she’d trusted him back.

It was dangerous. Letting someone close. Letting someone in. She knew where that road led.

Seraphine thought back to when she was 10 years old in the Drakar Citadel. She knelt in the molten circle with her palms pressed to dragonsteel. The metal burned, but she didn’t flinch.

Zareth stood above her, eyes glowing like coins fresh from the forge.

“What do we sacrifice for power?” he asked.

Seraphine swallowed hard. “Comfort.”

“And?”

“Love.”

“And?”

“…Ourselves.”

“Good.” He nodded, pleased. “Now, burn the blood from your skin. Prove you’re not ruled by pain.”

She gritted her teeth and summoned the whitefire.

It hurt.

Every time, it hurt. But she did it. Because daughters of Drakar didn’t cry. They conquered.

Later, she’d sat alone in her chamber, hands blistered, shaking.

Her mother had died the year before. No one came to soothe her.

That was the day she stopped looking for softness in the halls of fire.

A twig snapped.

She blinked, dragging herself back into the present.

Cassian stood behind her now, cloak around his shoulders, eyes shadowed by flickering firelight.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

“That wasn’t a lie I saw on your face today.”

She didn’t answer. So he sat beside her.

“You looked at that thing like you knew it.”

“I did,” she whispered. “Or... I knew what it was. ”

Cassian’s voice was quiet. “Is it the mission that’s got your head spinning, or something else?”

Seraphine stared into the flames.

She could lie.

Say it was strategy, or fatigue, or pressure. But he was still watching her like he saw past all of that.

“…I don’t know who I’m supposed to be anymore,” she said.