Page 47

??Smoke Before the Storm

Kreed

The mirror shattered as my fist flew through it.

A thousand reflections scattered across the floor, each one catching on the faint red glow simmering beneath my skin. My breath came fast, short, sharp pulls like a dying animal, but the rage?

That stayed steady.

“They know,” I snarled, turning toward the thing that roped me into this. “She fucking knows.”

Cassian, no, the demon inside him, didn’t flinch. Just leaned back in the high-backed chair like he owned the fucking world.

Which, in his mind, he did.

“Of course she knows,” he said calmly, dragging a clawed nail down the armrest, leaving a line of scorched velvet. “She’s the Watcher of the Veil. She was always going to figure it out. She was born to.”

“And Dorian?” I hissed. “He’s the Keeper. That smug bastard forged a bond with her. Do you realize what that means?”

The demon’s lips twisted into something almost resembling a grin. “That we’ll need to separate them. Painfully.”

I paced the length of the room, boots kicking up ash from the last body we burned. The hideout reeked of smoke, iron, and rotting magic, the byproduct of summoning what we did last week.

“They’ve found allies,” I spat. “The Bone Seer. The serpent bitch. That half-wraith Mirek. Even Noxen.”

Cassian finally looked up. His eyes, no longer Cassian’s soft blue, but pits of darkness threaded with red, narrow.

“Then let’s burn them down. One by one.”

I grinned, sharp and humorless. “You’re getting sloppy. The last creature you pushed through the Veil didn’t make it. Dorian and Ember tore it apart.”

He stood now. The air bent around him. Flesh flickered, Cassian’s image momentarily warping into what he really was. Horns. Teeth. Eyes that remembered the Before.

“You think I care about casualties?” he said, voice now echoing like a blade dragged across bone. “The gate will open. It was always meant to.”

“And she’ll be the cause of it,” I said, quieter now, more focused. “She’s the storm. We just need to nudge her a little further. Push her until the dam breaks.”

Cassian nodded. “She’ll unravel. Love always makes them bleed.”

I chuckled under my breath. “Especially when they don’t even know what they’re loving.”

A beat of silence settled between us before I turned back toward the broken mirror. My reflection was jagged now, fractured. And I liked it that way.

“They think they’re ready,” I said. “They think they’ve found power, connection, some greater truth.”

I raked my fingers through my hair, blood drying on my knuckles.

“But what they’ve found is a ticking clock. And when the last chime sounds,” Cassian finished the thought for me, his voice a guttural promise. “...we’ll be the only ones left standing.”