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CHAPTER THIRTY

“ I think she’s waking up,” a deep male voice said.

“Yeah, thanks. I can see that,” an annoyed female voice answered, closer by.

Cassandra’s lids fluttered open, her eyesight adjusting.

Ronin was leaned against the dresser in her bedroom at Mireille’s, arms crossed, a worried expression tightening his features.

Mireille was seated next to the bed. “What happened?” The concern on her face belied the lack of sympathy in her tone.

“I…I don’t…” Cassandra started, her mouth dry and her tongue thick. Mireille handed her a glass of water from the nightstand. Cassandra pushed up, electric pain sparking in her head, but took the glass and gulped down half. “Where did you find me?”

“Nowhere you were supposed to be,” Ronin said, eye narrowing. “You were laying at the end of the bridge into the city. At the edge of the mists. What were you thinking? Why did you go down there?”

Cassandra handed the glass back to Mireille, then circled her fingers against her temples, willing away her headache.

Willing away the vision she’d seen in that pool.

Tristan.

With Ione.

Kissing Ione.

Those fissures in her heart deepened and she wished she could slip back into unconsciousness. Maybe forever.

She crashed back onto the pillows. “I went back for Reena. I thought?—”

“Foolish,” Ronin snarled. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve gone with you.”

And even though she knew where his frustration was coming from—his search for Selene had yet to bear fruit—she bristled. “I wasn’t aware I needed your permission .”

Cassandra looked toward Mireille, expecting to find the same anger she’d heard in Ronin’s tone, but instead found a soft understanding.

Ronin ignored Cassandra’s jab. “Obviously you didn’t find her. What. Happened ?”

Cassandra told them what she’d seen in the mists, the red desert that Reena had led her to. The vision in that pool surrounded by the multi-colored trees.

“How is any of that possible?” she asked.

Ronin and Mireille shared a wary glance.

“It sounds like you may have visited the Halfway,” Mireille said carefully.

“The what?”

“The Halfway. The realm between worlds ruled by the Creator. It’s where our souls go when we die. While we wait for Adelphinae to deliver us into a new body in a new world. Some believe that the black mists surrounding Tartarus are made up of the souls of prisoners who’ve died here. That they’ve been trapped since death, unable to breach the wards.”

Cassandra shuddered, remembering those voices she’d heard. She turned a panicked glance to Ronin. “Reena was there. In the Halfway. Does that mean she’s…”

“Was she glowing?” Mireille asked. “Was there a multi-colored halo around her?”

“No, not that I?—”

“Then she was just a visitor. She’s not dead,” Mireille said. “Perhaps the Goddess asked Reena to lead you there. Showed you that vision on purpose.”

At the moment, Cassandra couldn’t imagine what that purpose could possibly be.

She turned to Ronin, her heart squeezing though she forced herself to ask the question. “Ione Saros,” she said, the name burning up her throat. “She’s alive, then?”

Ronin gave her a stiff nod. “She’s the leader of the Teles Chrysos. Along with Trophonios.”

Cassandra slumped back against the pillows, shock stealing through her. “Trophonios?”

“It’s a long story. They’ve been working on the continent together for centuries. Preparing for Tristan’s return. Ensuring he would have enough support throughout the continent to take his throne back from Eamon.”

“So, she’s been…” Cassandra could barely finish the sentence.

“Waiting for him for centuries,” Ronin said, his voice softening. “She is the Delphine the Goddess’s prophecy speaks of. Born of phantom wings and mortal bones . Turned by the very Prince whose cause she’s dedicated herself to.”

Cassandra squeezed her eyes shut, a tear stealing down her cheek, and Ronin sat down on the end of the bed.

“Why didn’t she come to the colonies in all that time to find him? Why now?” Cassandra asked.

He placed a hand on her ankle. “She felt it was safer for him down there, to be out of sight and reach of Eamon and Leonin while she and Trophonios worked to grow the movement. Once they’d amassed a sizeable enough force, she sent me to recruit him. You saw how that plan ended. She must have had some final trick up her sleeve after Eamon arrested him.”

“So, they’re what?” Cassandra asked, her throat closing. “Fated to one another?”

Ronin shrugged. “She certainly seems to think so. But no one knows how the prophecy ends.” He gestured to Cassandra’s wings. “And his Turning you as well has certainly called the entire thing into question. Too bad no one outside these wards knows you’ve been Turned.”

“Why didn’t you tell him that Ione was alive?” Cassandra snapped. “When you met with him at the Serpent’s Den?”

Ronin dipped his head. “She asked me not to. Wanted him to come to the decision on his own.”

Cassandra ran a hand through her damp, tangled hair. High Gods , she needed a shower. Needed to shut the entire world away.

All those fears she’d had back in Thalenn, before she’d given herself to Tristan, had been confirmed.

Tristan wasn’t hers .

And even though she believed that the feelings he’d expressed at the time had been genuine, what did they matter in the face of the all-powerful Goddess who controlled their fates?

Perhaps that had been the purpose of the vision; Adelphinae showing her Tristan’s true destiny.

And encouraging Cassandra to let him go.

Her heart began to pound, and she felt like she was suffocating. How was she supposed to continue training, continue working toward her appeal, if Tristan wasn’t waiting for her on the other side?

Mireille said gently, “The only way to know the truth is to survive. Win that hammer. And hope we can get out of here .”

Cassandra scoffed. “I’d actually have to defeat the Koenig to have any chance of that. And we only have twenty?—”

“Nineteen,” Ronin chimed in.

She shot him a glare. “Nineteen days left to train. It seems…”

She couldn’t get the word out.

Impossible, that’s what it seemed.

She pushed up out of bed, her head swimming. “I need to shower. Then I’d like to be left alone, please.”

Mireille grimaced. “We should really continue training?—”

“It’s pointless !” Cassandra shouted. “I didn’t ask for any of this. Not to be Turned, not to be sent here, not to be given this death sentence that’s only giving you all false hope. I can’t do it. And the sooner you both accept that, the better off we’ll all be.”

Ronin and Mireille exchanged a weighted glance as Cassandra stormed past them and out of the room.

“If Tristan is meant to be with Ione,” her voice nearly broke and she didn’t dare look at them as she reached the door, “if that is what’s going to save this world, then the best thing I can do for him, for everyone , is to just accept my fate. Let the Koenig end me. One less complication for everyone to deal with.”

“Cassandra,” Mireille whispered, reaching for Cassandra’s hand, “you can’t?—”

As soon as their fingers touched, Cassandra’s eyes slammed shut and a memory ripped through her mind.

One of Mireille’s memories.

Mireille was…in the backyard of Cassandra’s childhood home?

And holy High Gods. That was Cassandra’s father she was looking upon.

She didn’t know how it was possible to feel any more grief than she already felt, but the sight of her father—his crinkled blue-gray eyes and long braided beard—debilitated her.

There was a haziness to the memory, and Papa was surrounded by a kaleidoscopic halo.

She nearly croaked out his name before Cassandra herself—spectral, but not multi-colored—rushed over on spindly pre-teen limbs wielding her wooden practice dagger.

Mireille had seen a vision of Cassandra and her father in the Halfway? And she’d never told her?

In the memory, Mireille turned toward another glowing presence: a man with dark hair and familiar smoky eyes. The view immediately shifted.

Something pierced Cassandra’s chest, and she jolted into a different mind.

A mind in the present, not a memory. She could tell the difference.

Memories had a long-simmered flavor that deepened with age.

This vision tasted fresh.

Whoever’s mind she occupied was sharpening a broadsword with a skull-head pommel on the porch of a cabin in a snowy, moonlit forest.

Wind bit her cheeks and the soft stillness smelled of frosted pine needles.

The view shifted and Cassandra jolted back into her own mind.

“—give up on yourself like that,” Mireille finished, as if no time at all had passed. Her features twisted with confusion at Cassandra’s shocked expression. “What?”

Cassandra’s grief morphed into the most righteous fury.

Mireille had been hiding things. And Cassandra’s powers were changing, more quickly than she could keep up with.

It was all too overwhelming.

She ripped her hand out of Mireille’s grip, then fled to the bathroom, slammed the door, and turned on the shower.

She stripped off her clothes and sank beneath the spray.

And wished for the water to melt her into oblivion.

Ronin drummed his tattooed fingers on the dining table while Mireille fiddled around in the kitchen.

“What happened when she touched you?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” Mireille admitted, not turning to him. “There was a tickling pressure in my head. Honestly, if her expression hadn’t changed so dramatically, I’m not sure I would have even noticed it. It almost felt like…like she was tiptoeing through my brain.”

Ronin chewed on a fingernail. “She’d been restoring obliviates in the colonies. Her power had been evolving even before she was Turned. Between becoming Fae and whatever happened to her in that pool in the Halfway…”

Creator, he felt terrible. Cassandra was navigating this confusing transformation—not to mention the devastating news she’d learned about Tristan— with two strangers she’d just met.

And he’d scolded her the minute she’d woken up.

Fuck, he wasn’t very good at offering comfort when someone was in pain.

Or he wasn’t anymore. He’d done so once, for the female heating a pot of water over the hearth. Though the stubborn she-wolf had barely wanted to accept his help at the time.

“I don’t know what to say to help her,” Ronin said on a ragged exhale.

Mireille placed a steaming cup of tea in front of him, the comforting, herbal scent settling his nerves.

“I don’t either,” Mireille said, blowing the steam off her own mug. “Did you know about Tristan and Ione being fated to one another?”

“Of course I did. But the minute I saw Cassandra with those wings, knew who’d Turned her and what it could mean… Everything the Teles Chrysos and Ione believes is now uncertain. Cassandra could be even more important than any of us ever thought. If she breaks here, if we can’t find a way to get her through this…”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Saw the same anxiety steal across Mireille’s striking features. Still the most striking he’d ever seen.

“She needs something to fight for,” Mireille said. “A reason to hope after everything she’s just learned. Something stronger than the heartache trying to drag her under.”

The familiarity in Mireille’s tone, as if she’d had to do the same in here, stirred his anger.

How fucking dare she allude to her own heartache after she…

He shook away those useless thoughts. They’d do nothing to help him, or Cassandra, get through this mess. And if he were being really honest with himself, he was so fucking tired of holding on to this anger. Didn’t know what to do with it.

I know what you could do with it , his wolf chimed in.

A memory bubbled to the surface of Ronin’s mind. Of the punishments he’d once delivered to Mireille. Of her flesh reddening beneath his palm as she quivered in ecstasy across his lap.

He snarled at his wolf, pushing the vision away, though not fast enough to stem the powerful wave of want that tore through him and shifted his scent.

Mireille’s nostrils flared, but she didn’t acknowledge it. Dipped her eyes to her mug and took a short sip.

So he wouldn’t acknowledge it either. Just let it sit there between them. A writhing beast he didn’t have the strength to tame alone.

“How did you do it?” he asked, tentatively.

She raised her eyes, and he nearly roared at the centuries of fatigue dulling them.

At one time in his life, he’d wanted nothing more than to remove any shred of fatigue or anger or disappointment from those eyes. Fuck, maybe he still wanted to.

“It was never about me,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Never about what I wanted. I knew I needed to survive. To prepare myself for her.” She nodded her head toward the bathroom.

The water had been running for too long. Maybe he should go check on Cass. But he knew as well as anyone that sometimes a person needed to shatter in private.

“And that’s the secret, isn’t it?” Mireille whispered, sipping from her mug and brushing a strand of copper hair off her face. He could almost feel it running through his fingers. Liquid silk. “We don’t do it for ourselves. We need something bigger to fight for. Something that makes us forget our petty wants and selfish desires.”

Ronin leaned back, cracking his knuckles and trying to imagine what might relight Cassandra’s spark, give her the courage to fight. Or to at least try.

“Have you told her who she is to you yet?” Ronin asked.

Mireille scoffed. “And when, exactly, would I have had the time to do that?”

Mireille had had plenty of time to tell Cassandra about their shared ancestry. He knew that wasn’t why she’d been hesitating. She’d never been good with the interpersonal stuff.

He shrugged. “Might help.”

“Maybe,” Mireille said thoughtfully, cupping her mug. “What was she like in the colonies? Before she was Turned.”

“She…” Ronin hesitated. He hadn’t known Cassandra for very long. Hadn’t spent much time with her in Thalenn. But he’d heard the rumors of the risks she’d taken as the Savior Sister. “She lifts up the lowest of us. Fights for those who cannot fight for themselves. Often to her own detriment.”

A dazzling smile spread across Mireille’s face. A spear to his heart he wasn’t prepared for. He looked away.

Her soft whisper floated across the table, laden with the barest hint of hope. “I think I know how to help her. But I’ll need a few days to prepare.”

Ronin had led soldiers onto and off of the battlefield. Was very familiar with those numb, twitchy looks that signaled a mind nearing the breaking point. Cassandra had worn far too many of those looks tonight.

“Good,” he said. “Give her a few days to rest. To grieve.

“Then show her why the world is worth fighting for.”