“Yeah,” Cassian said, meeting her eyes now. “I think she’d have liked you, too. Probably told me to shut up and listen to you more.”
Seraphine chuckled. Just once. But the sound was real. Honest.
Her gaze drifted back toward the treeline. Toward the place where the Hollow-dragon had fallen.
“I knew him,” she said softly.
Cassian stilled.
She didn’t wait for him to press. Just kept going, voice low and steady.
“That dragon. Before the corruption. His name was Velisar. He served as my flight tutor when I was thirteen. Used to take me into the upper stratosphere, where the air went thin and cold enough to hurt.”
She reached up, touched the pendant at her throat—something simple, black stone set in copper.
“He taught me how to fold with the wind. Said fire wasn’t enough. That a true Drakar heir had to learn how tofalland not break.”
Cassian was silent, listening.
Seraphine swallowed. “He disappeared five years ago. They said he went rogue. Abandoned his post. No body. No farewell.”
Her eyes glittered in the firelight, not from tears—but from something heavier.
“I didn’t believe it then. I thought maybe he’d just… had enough. Left. I used to dream he found a new sky.”
She looked down again. “Instead, I burned him today.”
Cassian didn’t speak. He reached across the fire, slowly, and placed his hand on hers. Not tightly. Just enough to say:I’m here. I get it.
She didn’t pull away.
For a long time, they sat like that—no armor, orders, or blades between them. Just silence. Just the ghosts of what they’d lost.
Finally, Seraphine exhaled. “You know what scares me more than the Hollow?” she whispered.
He tilted his head. “What?”
“That after this is over… I’ll have to go back to being who they expect me to be.”
Cassian met her eyes. “Then don’t.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
She smiled again—but it was tired. Honest.
ELEVEN
SERAPHINE
The morning air still smelled like ash and old fear.
Seraphine tightened her cloak against the cold bite of dawn as she crested the ridge with Cassian beside her, the rest of the team trailing just behind. The path through the Veil’s scar had grown darker with every mile—trees too quiet, earth too soft. Shadows hung wrong.
Still, the ruins of Thal’s Hollow appeared like a jagged promise through the mist.
Sablewing territory.
