Chapter 33
CASSIA
Cassia crossed Eldryn Gardens like someone moving through fog—barely seeing, barely thinking.
Her silk skirts clung to her legs. The buttons down her back were undone, gaping beneath her coat, but she hadn’t been able to fix them on her own.
Cold air seeped through the wool, but she didn’t have the strength to pull it tighter.
She wanted to feel nothing. Instead, she felt everything.
She reached into her pocket and found the empty drawstring bag.
The sight of his hair scattered across his floor must have hurt him.
She’d known it would—that had been the point.
She’d needed him to let go. But standing here now, with the empty bag in her hand, she felt the weight of what she’d done.
She had hurt him. And it had worked.
Her chest ached. She kept walking.
The hour was early enough to keep the gardens mostly empty. She ignored the few strollers who passed her by, casting sidelong glances at her evening gown. Her feet carried her forward, familiar even when her mind wasn’t. Past the hedge-lined paths and toward the stone gate.
Starlight.
A warm beacon across the frost-laced grass.
The kitchen would already be humming, the dining hall filled with children—hands sticky with jam, mouths full of warm buttered rolls and soft scrambled eggs. Laughter would rise with the scent of hot chocolate. Routine, safety, and laughter.
A place that somehow always made sense, even when everything else didn’t.
She had just stepped into the foyer when she heard the hurried patter of footsteps.
Lilibeth rounded the corner a moment later, her dark hair piled into a haphazard bun, a smear of butter still glistening on her cheek.
Mrs. Thimble and Matilde had asked for the morning off, so her friends had offered to handle breakfast.
“Cassia!” Her face lit up. “We were wondering if you might—”
She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes scanning Cassia’s face. Whatever she saw there changed everything. No questions. No prodding. Just that wordless instinct best friends develop after years of weathering each other’s storms.
Lilibeth opened her arms without hesitation. Cassia didn’t speak, didn’t try to explain. She just stepped into the hug and let it hold her together.
A moment later, Opalina appeared, already reading the room with a glance. She didn’t ask anything either. She simply crossed the space and laid a steadying hand between Cassia’s shoulder blades.
“Go upstairs,” Opalina said gently. “Take a long soak. We’ll make you a plate.”
Cassia nodded, gratitude rising sharp. She knew she should at least offer to help with the children’s breakfast—Opalina and Lilibeth were clearly busy—but she just didn’t have it in her.
An hour later, she stepped out of the tub in the teachers’ bathroom and found a pile of her spare clothes waiting, along with a note: ‘Come downstairs when you’re ready.’
The kitchen’s warmth enveloped her. Through the window, she saw the children playing outside. Someone had set a plate for her: toasted milk bread, eggs scrambled loose with butter, a spoonful of blackberry jam glistening on the side.
She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she smelled the food.
Lilibeth was standing at the stove, stirring something into a saucepan. Opalina sat at the table, her needle flashing steadily through a bolt of deep-plum fabric draped over her lap. They didn’t look up right away, treating it like any other morning.
Cassia sat. Her chair, as always, faced the garden. She wrapped her hands around a cup of tea and let the heat soak into her fingers. In silence, she ate—each bite mechanical. When she set the fork down, the cutlery clicked too loudly against the plate.
Her friends looked up. She drew a shaky breath.
“Ark’s father is dying.”
Lilibeth’s wooden spoon clattered against the pan. “The Daemar? He’s been ill?”
Cassia toyed with a crumb. “I shouldn’t be saying anything. It’s supposed to be a secret. But I need your help.”
“Of course,” Lilibeth said immediately. “Anything. But . . . is Arkenoth alright?”
Cassia looked down at her cup. The warmth was fading. “I don’t know. I had to send him away.” She met their gazes. “To spend what time he has left with his father.”
Lilibeth’s brow furrowed, and they both came to sit with her. Opalina reached out and squeezed her hand. “But he loves you.”
Her chest tightened. Tears brimmed in her eyes.
Love. What would their love become if it cost him his family? Would they ride off into the sunset knowing he’d severed any chance of making peace with his father during these final months? Would she? Even if she wanted to, even if she could, what kind of person would that make her?
The kind who took a son from his dying father. The kind who let her own desires make her selfish. The kind her mother raised her not to be.
She couldn’t be that person.
So she would be the other kind instead. The kind who walked away, so he didn’t have to.
“The Daemar loves his family,” she whispered. “Maybe not in ways that are easy to see, but it’s there. I saw it. And if I stayed, even with the best intentions, I’d cast shadows over the time they have left. I’d never forgive myself.”
“But it’s so unfair,” Lilibeth whispered.
Cassia almost smiled—a bitter, weary thing. Unfair was her oldest friend. Rejection letters. Empty pantries. A father who died too young and a mother who died thirty-five years too early. Why would this be any different?
She pushed Ark from her mind. It felt like dying, but the children needed her to live.
“There’s more,” she said. “Alderrath offered us one of his buildings. Cheap rent, stability, the works. In exchange, I shall never speak to Ark again. Pretend everything we shared was a lie.”
Lilibeth’s voice softened. “Are you accepting the offer, then?”
“No.” Cassia met their gazes. “I don’t trust him. One day, he’ll find a way to take it back, and I won’t let anything of his touch these children.”
Their faces paled. Lilibeth began to speak. “Then . . . what—”
She tried to smile. “Don’t worry. I still have one last idea to keep them together. But we don’t have much time. He gave us only fourteen days to move out.”
The silence that followed was absolute, a vacuum that sucked the air from the room. And in that silence, she heard it—the tiny, hitched breath of a child trying not to cry. The sound was a needle to her heart. She’d once made that same sound.
“So . . . that’s it, then?”
Cassia turned. Devlin stood just inside the kitchen, arms crossed, jaw set. The sleeves of his too-small hoodie were pushed to his elbows. His gaze, always too perceptive, was locked on her. A few smaller children huddled behind him, eyes wide.
“Starlight is gone?” Devlin repeated. His voice cracked slightly at the end, but he didn’t flinch. He just stood there—almost thirteen and furious and afraid, trying not to show either.
Cassia stood slowly. Her throat tightened, but she kept her voice even.
“No,” she said. “It’s not gone.”
“Really?” Devlin asked, tone clipped. “Because it sounds like we’re being thrown out.”
Lilibeth started to rise, but Cassia gently lifted a hand.
“No,” she said quietly. “It’s not over. Starlight was never just this building. It’s not walls or windows or a kitchen that smells like bread and cinnamon.” Her voice wavered, but she steadied it. “It’s all of you. It’s all of us. Starlight exists wherever we choose to stay together.”
Silence settled for a beat—fragile and expectant.
Then Imogen stepped forward, her small hand still curled around the edge of Devlin’s sweater. “But how can we stay together . . . if we don’t have anywhere to live?”
Another voice followed, higher-pitched and nervous. “I don’t want to go to a different house.”
Someone else whispered, “I don’t want to be alone again.”
The fear in their voices struck her—because she remembered it, knew it intimately. She’d once stood in their shoes, uncertain of the future, praying some miracle would keep her family together.
Before she could speak, her knees were already lowering to the floor, her skirt fanning softly around her.
She opened her arms, and they came. Not all at once—but one by one, they crossed the room.
Devlin’s shoulders hunched forward as if unsure, until Imogen tugged at his sleeve and he followed.
A few of the younger ones reached her first—clutching at her sweater, burying their faces in her shoulder.
The older ones came last, hesitantly, with pride and hurt mingled in their eyes.
Cassia wrapped her arms around as many of them as she could. They smelled like honey and smoke and the herb sachets Mrs. Thimble and Matilde placed between their sheets and clothing—like the Starlight she knew. Something hot pricked at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked it back.
“I don’t have all the answers yet,” she murmured, “but I promise you this: we are not being torn apart. We’ll find somewhere new. Somewhere warm. Somewhere ours.”
She didn’t know how, not precisely. But the way their small bodies leaned into her—trusting, believing—she knew she couldn’t let them down.
Not now. Not ever.
Slowly, the children moved to the entertainment room, temporarily reassured by her embrace and promises. But Devlin lingered near the door, arms crossed, his brows drawn.
Cassia rose slowly, brushing off her skirt, and crossed the room to him.
He looked away. “They believe you,” he said, voice rough with something too old for his age. “Even when it sounds impossible.”
“They do,” Cassia agreed. Then, she tilted her head. “But . . . do you?”
He hesitated. “I want to.”
She smiled at him. “I’m scared too. Not because I don’t think we’ll survive this. We will. But because I don’t know what comes next, and I hate not knowing. Especially when there are people depending on me.”
He glanced up, just enough for her to see the understanding in his expression.
“I’m not a kid,” he muttered. “You don’t have to explain things to me like I’m five.”
“I know you’re not. I’m telling you because I trust you. And because I need your help.”
That caught him off guard. His brows pulled together, eyes narrowing like she’d spoken in a language he didn’t quite believe.
“My help?”
She nodded. “You’re everyone’s older brother, Devlin. Even when you think they’re not paying attention. Especially Imogen. When she doesn’t know how to feel, she copies you.”
His throat moved as he swallowed.
“I can’t be in every room at once,” she said. “But you can be there for them, the way you always have been. I need you to hold them together while I do what I have to. Can you do that for me?”
He looked at her for a long beat, then finally nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
Cassia rested her hand on his shoulder—not a light, careful touch. A steady one, like she was trusting him with an important task.
“You’re one of them,” she said quietly. “But now, you’re also part of what holds this place up.”
His jaw tightened a little. But when he walked away a moment later, it was with straighter shoulders. Cassia drew a long, steadying breath. When she turned, Opalina and Lilibeth were already behind her.
“What do you need us to do?” Lilibeth asked, her tail flickering anxiously.
“I’m going to ask Mrs. Thimble and Matilde to help the children start packing their things,” Cassia said, voice clearer now. “In the meantime, I need both of you to come with me. To the seaside.”
Their brows lifted in unison, but neither needed to ask why.
Opalina gave a sharp nod. “We’ll head home, gather supplies.”
Lilibeth added, “It’s going to be a long night.”
Cassia managed a faint smile. “Yes, it is.”
At home, Cassia moved quickly, gathering what she needed without thinking. Dried herbs. Candles. Salt. Her mother’s ritual knife, its silver edge dulled but still sharp. Everything went into the wooden box, then into her bag, alongside the notebook that always found its way there.
She stepped into the kitchen and made a few calls. She kept her voice steady, but her grip on the phone was white-knuckled. She asked about timelines. Paperwork. How quickly things could move. Each answer made her stomach clench, but she didn’t let it show.
When she hung up, she stood still for a moment, dizzy with the decision already made.
Anuck lifted his head from the armchair and blinked at her, thoroughly unimpressed. He had watched her bustle around the house with the deep offence only a cat could muster. When she finally lifted him into his traveling crate, he gave a grumpy grunt and refused to look at her.
“It’s just for the night,” Cassia tried, closing the grate. He glared at her through the bars, ears twitching. He was off to Mrs. Tilly’s, as he often was when Cassia had to be away.
She set the crate down and patted it. “I’ve packed your favourite treats. Mrs. Tilly promised to set out the pillow you like best on the windowsill. Think of this as a vacation.”
Anuck sniffed and turned his back on her entirely.
It was nearly two in the afternoon when she returned from Mrs. Tilly’s. The sun had emerged from behind the clouds, the day finally warming up.
Her friends were already waiting in the driveway.
Lilibeth waved from the driver’s seat, while Opalina leaned against the open passenger door, the wind tugging at her coat.
For a moment, when their eyes met, Cassia caught something in Opalina’s expression—a flicker, gone before she could name it.
Her jade-coloured eyes looked away too quickly.
But she had no strength to question it. It was probably all in her head anyway.
“Ready?” Opalina asked, sliding into the passenger seat.
Cassia nodded. “Let’s go.”