Chapter 59
FIFTY-NINE
It starts as a whisper, her name folding into the edges of my mind before I can tell who says it first.
Then I see her. She stands in the dark before a door that should not be, blood-red and slick. Steam clings to the seams like a living thing. My hands go cold from the sight of it.
“Lillien, don’t,” I call, stepping forward. For a long second she does not look at me. She only stares at the door, like it promises something she believes she needs.
When she turns, our eyes meet. They are wide and wet and full of apology.
Don’t, I try to say again, the sound strangling inside my chest. Do not go through that door.
She hesitates and her fingers hover above the handle. She leans toward me, whispering, “I’m sorry.” Then she turns the handle.
The door opens with a hiss. Wrong light spills out, red folded over black.
The moment she steps through I feel it: a blade sliding between my ribs. The bond between us tears. I lunge and my hands close on empty air.
And then he is there. Zepharion stands just beyond the threshold with one hand on her shoulder as if she already belongs to him. He looks at me and his smile is triumph.
I wake with a sound in my throat. One breath before, she lay warm and small against me, fingers curled in the edge of my shirt. The next breath is empty.
I sit up so fast the sheet drags across my skin. My hand gropes at the linen and finds only heat left behind. I reach through the bond. Nothing answers. No spark. No thread. Cold, like rope that has been severed and left to fray.
“Lillien?” I whisper. The word dies against the stone.
Bastion sleeps with one arm thrown where she should be. Cassiel rolls in shadow. Only I feel the absence.
I swing my legs over the bed and stand. My whole body screams. I call again, louder. “Lillien.” No answer. My stomach turns to ice.
On the floor by the bed a faint dark smear crawls across the stone. Ash. Fresh, curling upward as if it still breathes.
“No,” I say. My voice is thin.
I shove harder through the bond until my palms burn. I try to pull her back. She is not just gone from the bed. She is gone from us. The fortress seems to hold its breath. Every promise I ever made to her hammers inside my skull. We are not going to let anything happen to you. I promised.
I promised, and she is not here. This time I scream her name. “Lillien!”
My shout rips the night. The sound strikes stone and returns soured. Bastion jolts upright, eyes blown wide, a blade in his hand before he is fully conscious. Cassiel snaps upright from shadow, all measured motion and sudden focus.
They feel the change now. The lack. I choke out the truth. “She is gone. She—she is gone.”
Bastion launches from the bed and throws the blanket aside.
He stomps toward the door, bare feet slamming the floor, hands clenching until the knuckles whiten.
“She was right here. She was with us. She would not leave without—” His voice tears itself apart.
He punches the nearest wall and the stone answers with a hollow sound.
Blood wells at his knuckles. He laughs, a short, dangerous sound.
Cassiel moves slower, all the more terrible for that calm. He kneels over the faint trail of ash, lifts two fingers through it, and breathes. The movement is small and careful and precise. “She did not struggle,” he says. The words are quiet but they fall like judgement. “She went willingly.”
Bastion snarls and paces, hair matted, eyes like flint. “No. She would never—not like this. Not alone.”
“She would,” I say, and the sentence breaks me. “If she thought it would save us. If she believed she could stop him from taking us.”
For a long instant none of us speaks. The truth sits heavy between us. We have taught each other what she will give. We have watched her give and have told ourselves it was brave. Now the cost has been paid and it tastes like iron.
Cassiel stands. His face is a mask. The evenness in him is not comfort. It is an engine. He looks at Bastion. He looks at me. When he speaks, his voice has no softness left.
“Then we go to war.”
His words are a blade. In them is the unspoken next: we take her back.
We burn what stands in our way. I feel something cold and fierce uncoil under my ribs, a promise made of fury and vows.
I swallow it down, and the fortress answers with the sound of three men becoming a single thing bent on one terrible aim.