Chapter 38
CASSIA
Days bled into one another. The calendar insisted only a week had passed since the surgery, but her body counted time differently—in boxes packed, in bread baked, in rooms slowly emptied of the life they’d held.
She filled every hour with work. The orphanage’s packing. The bakery’s demanding rhythm. The quiet, methodical preparation of her house. There was little time to rest, and she made sure there was even less time to feel.
The bond mark had gone quiet. Not vanished—she could still get a vague sense if she pressed her fingers to the spot, a faint ember buried deep.
But he wasn’t reaching for her anymore. The absence of those small, wordless pulses was its own kind of grief—like a room that had once been full of music, now gone silent.
The instruments were still there, but there was no one to play them.
No shadow ravens either. The silence where his voice used to be had carved something hollow beneath her ribs that no amount of bread or busy hands could fill.
Rhodes had sent a message the morning after the surgery:
The surgery went well. New organs are adapting. There’s real hope.
It was the best news she’d received in months. She’d read it three times, pressed her hand to her mouth, and returned to packing boxes.
On the eighth morning, she woke before the alarm and didn’t go to the bakery. She’d decided the night before to take today off. There was something she needed to do this afternoon, and she needed the morning to steady herself for it.
Her hands, as always, refused to be idle.
She pulled yesterday’s bone broth from the cold box—the batch she’d made for the children’s supper, but had somehow made too much of.
She’d known even then, stirring the pot, that the extra wasn’t accidental.
She poured it into a thermos and placed it in a basket.
On the way out, she gathered a small bouquet from her mother’s garden.
Chrysanthemums, winter poppies, and a single stalk of silver lavender—stubborn things that grew out of season.
She’d chosen them without thinking, only realizing later how fitting they were.
Persistent. Stubborn. A little out of place.
A little like her, and perhaps . . . a little like Ark.
The train to Angelene was half-empty at this hour.
She sat with the basket on her knee, watching the frost-laced countryside blur past the window.
Twice, her fingers drifted to the mark at her neck.
Twice, she pulled them away. From the station, she walked—past Yulefrost market stalls being assembled, past cafés fogging their windows with steam, past the turning that would have taken her to Aegis that was the task.
Deliver the broth, make sure he drank, leave.
She repeated it like a recipe—step by step, ingredient by ingredient—because recipes she could follow.
Recipes didn’t make her pulse stutter or force her to remember someone else’s warmth.
Clean and quick. She could manage that.
Probably.
She found the right room easily. His name was on the door, elegantly etched onto a silver plate: ‘Lord Varil Kassenor.’
The door was slightly ajar, though the room was silent. She raised a hand to knock, but just as her knuckles hovered, a voice behind her halted her motion.
“Excuse me, miss.”
An elf nurse in a pale-blue uniform stood behind her. Her tone was polite, but firm. “I’m sorry, the Daemar is not receiving visitors outside the family.”
Cassia blinked, momentarily thrown. “Oh. I see. I’m sorry. I’m—”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She wasn’t family. Not really. Not in any way that mattered to a hospital’s policy, especially now that their fake engagement was no more.
The nurse’s face was gentle but unyielding. “If you’d like me to deliver what you’ve brought—”
“She’s my daughter-in-law,” came a voice from inside the room. Rough, weakened, but the command in it was unmistakable. “Let her in.”
The nurse blinked, surprised. So was Cassia. The nurse cleared her throat softly and stepped aside.
“Go on in, miss.”
Cassia hesitated in the doorway, her heart a frantic bird against her ribs. The words—daughter-in-law—echoed like a eulogy for a future she’d dreamt of. What a strange thing to mourn, when it had never truthfully been hers.
Quietly, she stepped inside. The room was nothing like the sterile wards below.
Soft-toned fabrics and heavy velvet curtains filtered the sun into warm amber.
A polished sideboard held a crystal decanter and several glass vials of potion, each labelled in an elegant hand.
A large vase overflowing with snowy white orchids rested beside them, still fresh.
Ark’s father reclined on the bed, his back propped against a stack of richly embroidered pillows. He looked paler than she remembered. The surgery must’ve exhausted him. Yet, his eyes still held power. A tenacious sort of force.
Cassia had seen that kind of stubbornness before—had watched it cling to wheezing breaths in the brittle hours before dawn. Her father. Her mother. People who had no right to keep living and yet did, if only to prove fate wrong one more time.
She wouldn’t underestimate it now.
Slowly, she approached the bed and sank into the armchair beside it. “You’re alone,” she observed softly.
He shifted against the pillows. “Delphyne is attending a council meeting. She still has to maintain the illusion that I’m in full health. My sons”—he arched a brow—“I dismissed. They have their own matters to attend to. I’m no longer on death’s door. It seems only right they return to their lives.”
“I’m sure they want to keep you company. To spend time with you, now that they still can.”
He scoffed. “I’ve no desire to be coddled or hovered over like a dying dog. Concern is a precious thing. I’d rather not dilute it with pity.”
His golden gaze shifted to her then. “And you? Why are you here?”
Cassia hesitated, then reached into her basket and withdrew the silver thermos. “I wanted to see how you were doing,” she said. “And to bring you this.”
He stared at the container as if it were an explosive device.
“It’s restorative bone broth,” she clarified. “Made with chive blossom, astral roots, and a handful of very stubborn herbs.”
His expression didn’t change, but his silence stretched long enough to make her consider retracting the offer. Still, she opened the lid and poured a steaming cup, setting it gently within reach. To her surprise, he took it, lifted it to his lips and drank.
The change was minute, but she saw the faint widening of his eyes, the subtle lift of his posture as the warmth coursed through him.
Satisfaction curled at the corners of her mouth. “It’s a cure-all. The recipe’s from the orphanage—we feed it to the children whenever they get the chills.”
When she offered more, he didn’t speak—just held out the cup again.
For a moment, they sat without speaking.
Her thumb traced the ridge of the thermos cap while she watched the steam curl upward.
What did one say to a Daemar? The man who commanded shadows, who had just defied death.
She couldn’t ask about the weather—that felt insulting.
Couldn’t ask about his health—that felt too intimate.
“There’s a wooden box inside that cabinet,” he suddenly said, gesturing toward the far wall. “Bring it here.”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
“A box. You’ll see it.”
Cassia rose and crossed the room. The cabinet in question was carved with subtle vinework and polished to a mirror sheen. When she opened the door, she immediately saw what he meant—a square wooden box, smooth and deep red, inlaid with small brass stars.
It was heavier than it looked. She brought it back to the bed and set it on the small table over his lap.
Inside was a half-finished jigsaw puzzle: a constellation map, judging by the tiny, star-spattered fragments nestled in velvet lining.
“Sit,” he said.
She pushed her chair closer to the bed and sat.
They worked in silence, save for the soft snick of pieces finding their home.
It soothed the rawness in her chest. There was a simple, undeniable logic to it.
A problem that could be solved with patience and a steady hand, unlike the beautiful, messy catastrophe of her own life.
His hands moved slower than hers, still recovering, but he had a steady eye for shape and negative space. A strategist’s approach. Deliberate. Exacting.
Cassia let herself focus on the puzzle for a while until she felt the Daemar’s eyes land on her. She glanced up. He was quiet for a long moment, studying her with an intensity that made her want to curl her shoulders to her ears.
He asked, “Who were your parents? Do you know anything about where they came from?”