Alistair POV
The wards weren't breaking.
I was.
My hands were already bleeding, knuckles torn open from striking the invisible barrier again and again, but I didn't feel the pain.
Only the absence.
Only the jagged, hollow panic tearing through my ribs with every second she was on the other side of this cursed wall.
"Sarafina!"
Her name tore from my throat. Raw. Uncontrolled.
The echo hit the ward and vanished like smoke.
Cassian was beside me, eyes narrowed, breath steady but shaking at the edges.
He wasn't shouting like I was.
But he was breaking too.
"Stop hitting it," Cassian said through clenched teeth. "The ward feeds off hostile force. You're making it stronger."
"Then help me collapse it," I seethed.
"I am helping….just not like a lunatic."
I shot him a glare sharp enough to cut stone.
He didn't flinch.
He never did.
The air around us hum vibrated—Arcanum guards watching from the shadows, wands raised, runes burning bright on their sleeves. They weren't attacking us.
Not yet.
But every second we stood here, they grew more tense, more ready.
We were running out of time.
I slammed my hand against the ward again.
It rippled—faintly—like disturbed water.
Cassian exhaled sharply. "Alistair, for the love of—"
"I felt her collapse!" I snarled. "I felt her flare! You didn't!"
Cassian went still.
Deadly still.
His voice dropped low and dangerous.
"Don't think for a second I didn't feel it."
My jaw clenched.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice.
"I may not have your… connection," he said carefully, biting back something darker. "But I have known Sarafina her entire life. I felt it when she screamed."
His chest rose, fell. Controlled. Barely.
"And I felt it when she went silent."
The world tilted.
For a heartbeat, we weren't enemies.
We were two creatures searching for the same star in a collapsing sky.
A pulse surged through the ward.
Not from me.
Not from Cassian.
From inside.
Cassian's head snapped toward the door.
My heart lurched violently.
"She's awake," he breathed.
Alive.
My throat tightened.
And then— the door opened.
Not for us.
For him.
Thalen stepped through the barrier like it was smoke, the ward parting around him in a silent ripple.
Every Arcanum guard bowed.
My vision blackened around the edges.
Cassian stiffened beside me.
Thalen looked at us with calm eyes that made my hands curl into fists.
"Step back," he said. "You are destabilizing the wards."
I ignored him completely.
"Where is she?"
"Safe."
Not enough.
"Where," I repeated, voice splitting.
Thalen didn't blink. "Inside."
That was when my control snapped.
I lunged forward—
The ward slammed me backward with a violent crack, sending me crashing into the opposite wall.
Cassian swore and grabbed my arm before I could throw myself forward again.
"Stop, Alistair—STOP—"
"She's afraid!" I roared. "She's alone—she thinks we left her—"
Thalen studied me with unsettling patience.
"She is not alone," he said softly. "She is awakening."
He said it like awakening was a blessing instead of a death sentence.
My vision blurred red.
"I'm getting her out," I growled. "I don't care what prophecy you think she belongs to."
Thalen's gaze sharpened.
"And that," he said, "is why you will not enter."
Cassian stepped forward then, jaw tense.
"Thalen," he said darkly. "She's terrified. She doesn't understand what's happening. Let me see her."
"No."
It was a single word.
An absolute word.
Cassian's eyes flashed—anger, guilt, desperation tearing through the mask he always wore.
And Thalen—the bastard looked at him knowingly.
"You should not be here, Cassian."
Cassian didn't answer.
Thalen stepped closer.
"You swore an oath," Thalen murmured. "To the Order. To protect the Heir. Even from yourself."
Cassian's breath hitched.
My head snapped toward him.
"Oath?" I demanded. "What oath?"
Cassian didn't meet my eyes.
He didn't have to.
The truth was written in every tightening muscle along his spine.
He knew.
He had always known.
"You knew what she was," I said, voice lowering into something lethal. "You knew she wasn't human."
Cassian's shoulders tensed.
"Alistair—"
"How long?" I hissed. "How long have you been lying to her?"
Cassian finally looked at me.
Haunted. Guilty. Broken in a way I had never seen.
"Since she was five."
The ground disappeared beneath me.
Five.
He'd watched her grow up knowing what she carried.
Knowing what hunted her.
Knowing she was never safe.
My voice scraped out. "You didn't tell her."
"I couldn't," Cassian said, throat tight. "If I did, she would've been killed."
"And now?" I demanded. "Now she's trapped in a warded room with a stranger—because no one told her the truth?"
Cassian flinched.
Thalen watched us silently.
A predator watching two others devour each other.
And then—
Sarafina's voice.
Faint.
Muffled by wards.
But hers.
"Cassian?"
Cassian froze.
My heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to bruise.
Thalen stepped between us.
"That is enough," he said quietly. "Neither of you may enter until she is stable."
"No," I rasped. "You don't get to keep her from us. Not from me."
Thalen's gaze locked on mine.
Unyielding.
"You," he said softly, "are the most dangerous to her."
Cassian stiffened.
I took a slow breath, forcing the fury down—
Then met Thalen's eyes with a truth I had never spoken out loud.
"I am the one who held her when she died."
Cassian inhaled sharply.
Thalen's face didn't change.
But the ward pulsed—shaken by the memory I spoke into the world.
"I saw her blood spill onto my hands," I whispered. "I felt her heartbeat stop against my chest."
The world went very, very still.
Cassian stared at me like he'd just been stabbed.
Thalen closed his eyes.
And somewhere behind that barrier—
I felt her shock.
Her pain.
Her fear.
She heard me.
She heard everything.
"Let me in," I said hoarsely. "Please."
For the first time—
Thalen hesitated.
Just for a heartbeat.
But it was enough to feel the world shift.