She stepped into his space, eyes gleaming. “I think he’ll rip your soul out and make me watch. I think he’ll use you to punish me. I think if he suspects evena flickerof what I feel for you, he’ll chain you to the Hollow and call it justice.”
Cassian flinched like she’d slapped him. “Gods, Sera…”
Her rage collapsed under the weight of her grief. She reached up, fingertips trembling, and brushed his jaw. The stubble there was rough, familiar. Real.
That was the worst part.
He wasreal.And she was about to lose him.
“This can’t happen,” she murmured, softer now, the fire’s glow making her tears glint. “Not now. Not with him watching. Not while the Hollow is feeding on every bond we build.”
His hand came up and caught hers—firm, warm, alive. He pressed it to his cheek, grounding her.
“But it already did,” he said.
She broke inside. Because he was right.
It had happened. Itwashappening. And it was going todestroythem.
The fire burned low between them, and for a breathless moment, neither of them moved. Neither of them blinked. They juststood there, tethered by something as wild and dangerous as the world trying to tear them apart.
That night,sleep didn’t come easy.
When it did, it brought the Hollow with it.
Not as a monster. But as amirror.
She stood in a world half-swallowed by ash, sky cracked open like bone. Flames flickered in the ruins around her, and in the center of it all?—
Cassian.
But not the man she knew.
His eyes were black voids, rimmed in blue flame. His skin shimmered with cracks of light like veins full of storm. He stood with the Heartblade in his hand, and a smile that wasn’t his, stretched across his face.
He looked at her like herememberedher. But didn’tloveher. And she couldn’t move.
She raised her glaive, but her arms wouldn’t respond. Her body frozen.
The Heartblade flared in his grip.
Still—she couldn’t strike.
Even as the thing wearing Cassian stepped toward her. Even as it opened its mouth and spoke in his voice,“You should have let me die.”
She woke with a scream trapped in her throat. Her skin was cold. Her chest burned.
Across the fire, Cassian slept with a hand on his dagger and his brow furrowed like he was fighting battles even now.
She sat with her back to the stone and watched him for the rest of the night, his silhouette barely moving in the fire’s last embers. His chest rose and fell in quiet rhythm, but even in sleep, there was a tension to him—like the battle hadn’t left his body, only slipped beneath the skin.
Seraphine—
She couldn’t close her eyes.
Not with the vision still clawing at her mind.
If the prophecy was true…
