Seraphine didn’t move.
Then, slowly, she turned to him. Her eyes, once tired and rimmed red from grief, were sharp now—hard as obsidian. Her glaive still glinted at her back, but it was the weight of her gaze that silenced him.
“No,” she said.
Roen frowned. “I can help.”
“You helped by handing him over.”
“I didn’t know?—”
“You didn’ttryto know.” Her voice was quiet, venomous. “You didn’t protect him. You gave him a shard with one hand and turned your back with the other. That doesn’t make you loyal. That makes you dangerous.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. For once, the smooth thief had no defense.
She stepped forward, just enough that he had to look up at her from where he still knelt. “I don’t trust you. I won’t let you near him again.”
“I didn’t sell you out,” Roen muttered.
“No,” she said coldly, “but you would’ve. If the Emperor had asked first, if the bounty had been heavier… you’d have bartered Cassian’s life like a coin purse. And mine.”
Roen didn’t argue. Didn’t deny it. Which only proved her point.
She leaned in, close enough that he could feel the heat of her breath. “I will deal with my father. With every gilded coward sitting on a throne made of bone and blood. But first—I get him back.”
“You won’t make it alone.”
“I’m not alone,” she said, turning her back on him. “Not where it matters.”
She could feel Roen watching her as she moved, but she didn’t look back.
She had no time for redemption arcs. Not his.
She had a war to start.
A storm to get back.
Together, they would do what no House had dared: they’d end the Hollow, bury the Drakar lies, and set fire to everything that had tried to chain them.
Her father’s reign was a dying star.
Seraphine was coming to tear the sky apart.
THIRTY-SIX
CASSIAN
Cassian had lost track of how long he’d been inside the Hollow.
Time didn’t work here—not the way it should. It folded in on itself, slipping sideways and unraveling like frayed thread. Shadows pulsed with a heartbeat that wasn’t his. Sometimes, they whispered in his voice.
Other times… they screamed.
The stone beneath his boots was slick with memory, not water. He didn’t sleep. It didn’t come in a place like this. The sky, if there ever had been one, was gone. Only darkness remained. A breathing, pulsing kind of dark. One that knew his name.
He walked in circles, or maybe straight lines. Couldn’t tell anymore.
All he knew was her name. And that it kept him sane.
