Her hands curled into fists. “You’re not welcome here.”
He stepped closer. “I think you’ll find that, as heir to House Drakar, you are nevernotunder the Emperor’s watch.”
Two soldiers moved to flank her.
She didn’t flinch. “If he’s trying to drag me back to the Citadel, he’ll have to send more than couriers in costume.”
Varros smiled wider.
“Oh, we’re not taking you back,” he said. He nodded.
The soldiers surged forward.
“We’re locking you up. Oh, and your cousin, Vaela sends her regards.”
They shackled her in sigil-forged manacles that suppressed her flame. They wrapped her eyes with silk marked in Veil ink to blind her from glamours. They caged her magic with a cruelty only her House had perfected.
They didn’t take her far.
Just to a sealed tent north of the ruins—enough to silence her, humiliate her, remind her who owned her blood.
“You brought this on yourself,” Varros had whispered before they left. “All that fire. All that rebellion. It was only a matter of time.”
She said nothing.
Not to him.
Not even when the tent flaps sealed shut and the light died.
Because inside her chest the burn had only gotten hotter.
She didn’t sleep.Didn’t cry or beg.
She sat cross-legged on the cold earth, breathing slow, counting heartbeats. Because sheknew.
Cassian was out there. Alone. Headed into whatever nightmare the Hollow had laid in wait. And she was wasting time.
So when the sigils on the manacles began to flicker—when her Whitefire pulsed in her veins like it wanted tofight—she smiled in the dark.
“I’m coming for you,” she whispered.
“To hell with thrones.”
TWENTY-TWO
CASSIAN
Cassian saw them before he smelled the iron.
Dark shapes cresting the hill above Skyforged. Not Hollowborn—too clean. Too organized. He ducked lower in the trees, heart hammering in his chest. Then he saw the sigils.
Drakar.
His pulse turned to ice.
They moved in tight formation, steel gleaming in the early light. At the front rode a smug Captain Varros, his silver cloak dragging like shadowfire. The man smiled like someone who’d already won. Cassian knew him purley based on reputation and as someone who had not been able to capture Cassian each time he had been ordered to. But still, he was good. And by good, he meantlethal.
Cassian’s gut sank.
