His limbs went weightless. His body numb. Only the heat of the shard remained, and even that began to fade.
He was being carried. He knew that.
Not by hands.
By shadow.
By fate.
Cassian Veyne was gone.
The final shard had chosen him.
THIRTY-FIVE
SERAPHINE
The wind had changed.
Seraphine knew it the second her eyes snapped open.
The ruins were too quiet. The air too still. It was that pregnant kind of silence that came before disaster—thick, suffocating. Like the world was holding its breath.
She sat up, cold stone digging into her back, heart hammering.
Cassian wasn’t beside her.
She didn’t panic at first. He had a habit of pacing at dawn, stalking the perimeter like a restless flame. But the fire had long burned out, and the wards they’d set were cold.
A groan echoed to her left. She turned sharply, already moving, reaching.
A man lay sprawled across the moss-covered stones. Not Cassian.
Not even close.
She was on him in a second, blade drawn, pressed to his throat.
“Move, and I carve your spine out through your front,” she said coldly.
The man blinked up at her. His face was blank for a moment as if he had no idea where he was or what had happened.
“Whoa. Whoa. I’m not here to fight you.”
“Where’s Cassian?” she snapped.
“I—”
“Where is he?” Her glaive pressed deeper. A trickle of blood slid down his neck.
The man swallowed hard. “He’s gone.”
The world tilted.
Her heart dropped somewhere near her boots. “What do you mean gone?”
The stranger looked at her then, something like guilt bleeding through the pain in his eyes. “She took him.”
“Who?” she demanded. “Say her name.”
