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And when she pulled away, her lips barely brushing mine, she whispered, her voice a silken threat. “I’ll take you on this mission, Guardian… But we’ll only pretend.”

Her taste still lingered on my tongue, a brand of fire and ash.

And I said nothing.

Because we both knew, in the ruins of that ancient fortress, that this had never been a pretense. Not for a single damned moment.

14. Cassia

I didn’t wait for Remiel to leave. To linger in the same air, which was thick with the scent of our ruin, would have been a self-sacrifice I wasn’t yet prepared for. So, I fled from my parlor, its stones still echoing with his pleas, his surrender. Breathless and trembling, I ascended the velvet-lined stairs two at a time, a frantic, graceless climb in golden stilettos that clicked like accusing heartbeats. His taste was still a brand upon my lips, and fury coiled in my chest like a living, venomous thing.

My chamber greeted me with silence—though not the comforting kind. No fire graced the hearth. No warmth softened the room. Only moonlight slashed across the floor through the parted curtains.

I slammed the door behind me and turned the lock with a sharp twist—a barrier. Whether I’d locked him out or myself in, I wasn’t sure.

In the tall age-silvered mirror, my reflection ambushed me, and I froze. My lipstick was smeared, a raw streak across my mouth. My gown hung disheveled, the corset slightly loosened and the slit parted higher than intended. Strands of my loosely waved hair clung to the flush of my cheeks, disheveled from his touch.

I looked like a woman undone. Worse, I looked like his.

Fury bubbled up without warning. My hands flew to the remaining pins in my hair, ripped them out, and flung them across the room. One caught on a curtain, and another disappeared somewhere beneath the vanity.

I hated him. I hated the way his golden eyes saw too much, stripping away the wall I’d so carefully constructed. He saw something tender, something breakable within me, something I’d thought long dead. And I hated myself more for letting him find it.

Without thinking, I marched to my writing desk, yanked open a drawer, and rummaged through letters and old parchment until my fingers closed around cold steel: a celestial dagger. It was a relic from the time before—slender, elegant, merciless. Its hilt bore a faint, scuffed etching of wings. I held it to the light, the blade catching the moon like a whisper of judgment. My hand trembled, not from fear but from the crushing weight of memory.

This was the celestial blade that had severed my wings, the very one that had cast me into the endless night. It was still sharp, still singing with the ghost of that day’s agony.

I slowly twisted the hilt in my grip, but the comfort was gone. The metal felt hot, vibrating against my palm with a low painful hum, as if it was a celestial warning. The blade knew something I did not. I wasn’t just the woman who had been cut by it anymore.

I was becoming the thing it was forged to kill.

He says he burned for you, Little Flame, the shadows cooed, circling me like smoke. He says he chose you.

I sank into the edge of my bed, the dagger still clutched, and stared at it for a long moment. Then I slowly rose again and crossed to the ancient armoire that smelled of cedar and sorrow, where I kept my most dangerous memories. With trembling fingers, I wrapped the blade in dark velvet and placed it inside. Gently. And locked it away.

He kissed you like you were still whole, one shadow murmured, curling around my wrist, as if he hadn’t watched you fall.

And you let him, another said with a sigh. You let him taste your ruin.

Tears threatened, but I crushed them before they could form. I lay back in the ruined dress, tangled hair spilling over the pillows. The chill remained, even without the blade. It had imprinted itself on me as surely as his mouth had.

“I hate him,” I whispered into the darkness.

The shadows went quiet for a breath.

Then one whispered, almost reverently. But you never stopped dreaming of the hand that let go.

I turned my face away, and sleep came slowly, an uneasy tide.

“Wakey, wakey, Mistress,” Leta sang with far too much brightness for the hour. “The sun’s up, the fire’s dead, and you look like a murder ballad.”

I groaned, a dull throb blooming behind my eyes as the room swam in and out of focus. I was still in the ruined gown, though my shoes had vanished somewhere. My unruly hair, which had never loosened except by my deliberate hand, was a wild sea about me. It wrapped my limbs in heavy waves, coiling tight around my wrists and throat until I had to fight my way free of it. I had never gone to bed with my hair undone. The fact that I had, the fact I could, was proof enough of how utterly unmade I was.

Leta stood at the foot of the bed, her arms crossed and her expression sharpened by equal parts horror and outrage. “You slept in it,” she whispered, aghast. “The dress. My dress. My work. You absolute heathen.”

I tried to sit up but regretted it and fell back against the pillows with a groan. “It’s not your dress, Leta.”

“It was before you dragged it across stone floors and sweated in it like a common tavern wench,” she snapped.