Hescreamed louder.
Lightning cracked behind his eyes. Magic surged, violent and uncontrolled. The cell walls shook. Something gave way inside him—a seal he hadn’t realized had been placed.
The fire came. Not Hollow. Not borrowed.
His.
Born from death. Forged in love. Fueled byher.
Cassian roared, and Stormfire exploded out of him like a detonation. Silver lightning laced with raw flame, incinerating the illusion shackles. The walls rippled with force. Shadows shrieked as they peeled away like scorched skin.
The world buckled. And then, silence.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping, body shaking violently. Magic sparked uncontrolled through his veins, crackling beneath his skin like broken glass. His palms smoked. His lips bled.
But he was free.
Alive.
His fingers dragged across the floor as he pulled himself upright, muscles screaming with every inch. He coughed, pain flaring in his chest—cracked ribs, maybe worse. Didn’t matter.
Hefelt her.
That bond—scorched and battered, butwhole. It throbbed like a second heartbeat in his chest.
She wasclose.
He pressed his back to the wall, barely breathing. Skin blistered, vision swimming, magic snarling under the surface like a caged beast.
But Seraphine was coming. And that meant he had one job: survive.
Not to win. Not to fight. Just tohold on.
He then heard footsteps.
He stiffened.
But they were soft. Steady. Familiar. Then a voice—muffled by distance, but it cut straight through the dark.
“Cassian—”
His breath caught.
Seraphine.
THIRTY-NINE
SERAPHINE
Smoke split the air like a scream.
Seraphine felt it before she saw it—Cassian’s magic unraveling the dark like thunder through a cracked sky. The air shimmered where his stormfire had flared, burning away the illusion walls that had tried to swallow him whole. The Hollow shrieked around them, but she didn’t hesitate. Her boots hit the ground hard as she shoved open the ruined gate of the prison carved into the Hollow’s spine.
"Cassian!" she yelled.
Gods help her, he answered.
A raw, shuddered breath from the cell’s shadows. She rushed in, light bleeding from her hands, illuminating the crumbling cell.
