She went on, quieter.
“I used to think I wanted to be just like him. Cold. Unbreakable. But lately... I think he’s broken in places that never healed right. Maybe I am too.”
Cassian stepped closer, his voice gravel-edged. “You don’t seem broken.”
She glanced back at him, startled. “You were eavesdropping.”
“I was listening.”
“You know that’s the same thing, right?”
Cassian shrugged, smirking. “Depends who’s doing it.”
She sighed and turned back to the altar. “I used to come here as a kid. Thought the spirits would keep me safe from nightmares.”
“Did they?”
“No,” she said. “But I learned how to fight the things in them.”
He took another step forward. Close enough now to see the tension in her hands, the way her fingers curled a little too tight against the stone. The way she blinked just once too long, like it held back something she wasn’t ready to say.
“You ever just wish someone wouldchooseyou?” she murmured, almost to herself. “Not because of what you are. But...whoyou are?”
He didn’t answer.
Their eyes met. For once, it wasn’t fire and barked orders. It wasn’t posturing or politics. It was just quiet. Real.
She was the first to look away.
“I should check the perimeter,” she said.
“Seraphine—”
The trees screamed.
A sound unlike anything Cassian had heard ripped through the air—a deep, reverberating roar that shook the canopy. The ground trembled beneath his feet.
It then burst into the clearing.
The dragon had once been majestic—massive, scaled, glorious. Now it was a corpse given motion.
Its wings were ragged membranes, torn with rot and streaked with black. Bones jutted at odd angles from its chest. Hollow corruption glowed violet in its eyes and pulsed through the cracks in its hide like veins filled with voidfire.
“Down!” Cassian shouted, shoving Seraphine behind the altar as the corrupted beast spewed a blast of twisted flame across the shrine.
The heat was unreal—wrong. It burned cold, sucked the life from everything it touched.
He drew his blade and flared his Stormfire, sparks snapping across his knuckles. The dragon reared back, mouth still leaking that void-stained smoke.
“Brann! Sigils,now!” Seraphine yelled, rolling to her feet, glaive in hand.
“I’m trying—I don’t—fuck!”
The dragon lunged.
Cassian didn’t think—he ranstraight at it.
NINE
