Either way, she was too tired to pretend she didn’t notice.
She watched the way his back moved under the weight of his gear, the quiet efficiency of his gait. There was a confidence in him—not born of arrogance, but survival. That kind of calm wasn’t taught. It wasearned.
In a moment of weakness—just one—she let herself be quietly impressed.
He bled for you today,she thought.He gave up pieces you didn’t ask for.
He didn’t flinch.
They pressed on, the marsh growing narrower, darker. The trees pressed in like sentinels. Cassian cleared the path ahead with a blade glowing faintly with residual Stormfire. Behind them, Lira muttered war chants under her breath, Brann clung to a bottle of spirit salt, and Alek was, as always, half-shadow.
They’d make it to the shard’s resting place by dusk, Malrik had said.
If Malrik was right.
She hated that those odds were the best they had.
Cassian glanced back again. “You sure you don’t want to sit down for five minutes? You’re swaying.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“Youlooklike a pissed-off corpse that forgot how to fall over.”
She glared. “Why are you still talking?”
“Because if you keel over and die on me, I’m not dragging your royal ass through mud.”
“I’d haunt you.”
He smirked. “You already do.”
Seraphine exhaled sharply.
Damn him. He made her want to smile when she didn’t have the energy tostand.
They passed a row of drowned statues—former guardians, she guessed. Once proud sentries now covered in moss and hollow-eyed from centuries of staring into rot. One of them had a cracked shield still clenched in a skeletal grip. Another’s face had been scratched off entirely.
“I hate this place,” Brann whispered behind her.
Seraphine couldn’t blame him.
The air was thick with memory. It clung to her skin, heavy as guilt.
By the time the sun had begun its descent behind the jagged black trees, the terrain changed.
A slope of broken stone opened to a natural basin shrouded in gray mist. The ground had long since sunken into a shallow pit, where half-submerged ruins glimmered with faint, otherworldly blue light.
The temple.
Cassian stopped beside her, eyes narrowing. “That it?”
“It’s what’s left of it.”
“It’s also glowing.”
“Magic wards.”
“Friendly?”
