Seraphine repeated them. She didn’t know what they meant. But they tasted like promises her ancestors had broken.
With one bleeding hand, she traced the runes Malrik whispered—symbols seared into her bones from her mother’s old prayers, half-forgotten lullabies that once tucked her into bed with firelight kisses.
She pressed her palm to Cassian’s lips. Then to his sternum. Then to the shard, which began to glow again—slowly, thenviolently.
The moment she whispered his name—Everythingstopped.
The fire vanished. The shadows coiled tight. And the worldblinked.Darkness swallowed the chamber.
Blinding light.
Cassian’s body arched like lightning had struck it.
His mouth opened on a scream that never came out—his back bowed, muscles locking, fingers twitching. The shard pulsed wildly against his ribs.
Seraphine held him tighter, whispering his name over and over.
“Cassian. Cassian, come back. Comeback.”
Fire surged beneath her hands.
Shadow swirled through his veins.
Light stitched through his broken bones.
Stillness.
His body collapsed back into her arms.
She froze.
“Cassian?”
Silence.
Then he gasped. A rough, pained,realsound.
One broken breath. One sound. But it shattered her world.
“Cassian…” she whispered.
His eyes fluttered open, dazed.
“...what the hell…?” he rasped.
She sobbed again as Malrik disappeared into smoke, just as he had came.
But this time, the sob was hope that choked her, not grief.
TWENTY-EIGHT
CASSIAN
Breath came like broken glass.
Cassian gasped, lungs seizing on air that felt too thick, too sharp. His eyes snapped open—but the world wasn’t right.
The shadows were brighter. The fire, quieter. Thedarkness,alive.
