Smiling like death itself.
As hard as he tried to hold on to his vision, to his strength, everything went black with exhaustion and rebirth.
FORTY-ONE
SERAPHINE
“Well,” Mirael said, her voice curling like smoke and ice, echoing with a dozen stolen souls. “Isn’t this touching?”
Seraphine rose slowly, hands gentle as she laid Cassian down onto the cracked obsidian floor, brushing the sweat-matted hair from his brow. His skin was pale, his breathing shallow. But he was alive. Her flame had saved him once. She wouldn’t let him slip away now.
She turned, her spine straightening, her fingers curling with the spark of Whitefire.
The Heartblade glinted in her hands. Still fresh from its rebirth. Still humming with the magic of two bloodlines finally bound.
Mirael stepped forward, pale feet gliding over the stone as if gravity didn’t apply. Her cloak of shadows rippled like smoke, her eyes empty hollows brimming with malicious light.
Seraphine stepped in front of Cassian’s body and let the flame flicker up her arm—faster this time. More familiar. Less pain. It welcomed her now. The fear was gone.
This wasn’t the girl who had run from her crown. This was the queen the Hollow feared.
“You take one more step,” she said, voice like stone cracking under pressure, “and I’ll show you what fire really means.”
Mirael tilted her head. “Bravado looks good on you. But he’s dying.”
“No, not anymore,” Seraphine said. “You just want him to.”
The creature paused. “He was always meant to break the seal. That’s why I let him live. You think it was your strength that brought him back?”
Seraphine smiled, slow and dangerous. “No. It was love. And that’s something you’ll never understand.”
Mirael’s features contorted—part fury, part something older. Something afraid. “You cannot stop this. You are one body. One blade. I have the Hollow. I am the Hollow.”
“And yet,” Seraphine said, raising her hand, “you’re standing there talking instead of winning.”
She moved.
Whitefire surged from her in a tidal wave, lighting up the entire sanctum with raw, divine heat. It slammed into Mirael, who shrieked—really shrieked this time. As the flame wrapped around her like chains, burning not flesh, but essence.
Mirael clawed through it, summoning jagged bolts of corrupted magic. They flew toward Seraphine like arrows, but the fire swirled to meet them—deflecting, absorbing, turning them to ash.
“Why him?” Seraphine shouted, stepping forward as the ground beneath her feet cracked and smoked. “Why chase him across dreams? Why not just take the blade and be done?”
Mirael stumbled backward. “Becauseheis the key. His blood. His power. You were never meant to wield it.”
Seraphine advanced again, her hands glowing brighter, the Heartblade rising behind her like it sensed her rage.
“I wasn’t meant for a lot of things,” she said, “but I’m here anyway.”
The temple trembled as their magic collided—corrupted Hollow fire and blinding Whitefire erupting in a furious storm that scorched the air and fractured the ground beneath their feet. Each flare of Seraphine’s flame struck like a heartbeat of the world itself fighting back against centuries of rot. Each lash of Mirael’s darkness shrieked through the space like the sound of history bleeding.
Above them, the Veil cracked.
Thin slits of raw magic opened like wounds in the sky, leaking brilliance and despair. Threads of time, memory, and fate laced overhead, chaotic and too ancient to name.
“You can’t contain me,” Mirael screamed, her voice suddenly more than one. Echoing with the thousands she’d consumed. Faces flickered through her—children, warriors, queens. Her body shimmered, not solid but a curtain of shadow, of regrets and rage, held together by spite alone.
Her form began to flicker. Parts of her turned transparent. Her limbs spasmed, losing shape as something—someone—tried to claw out of her.
