My hand sinks into her curls. I press my lips to her temple. No words needed. Only this, my heartbeat against hers.
19
CASSIAN
The drawer creaks open slower than I expect, the old wood resisting like it knows what’s waiting inside and doesn’t want me to take it out. There’s a draft that comes with it too, something colder than the wind outside, colder than the ice pressed against the northern wall. I brace one forearm on the edge, leaning in, breathing slow through my nose, and the scent that rises hits me harder than I want to admit—iron, salt, old pine sap. The kind of smell that clings to rituals and forgotten oaths. The kind that doesn’t fade even after a decade of trying to forget.
The Crimson Seal lies in the velvet-lined box like it never left my grip. Round, no bigger than my palm, but heavier than it has any right to be. Its edges gleam faintly under the lantern light, the lines carved into it deeper than they look, too precise to be hand-forged, too old to be traced back to anything written in any book that survived the firestorms in Europe. There’s a heartbeat in it. Not metaphor. Not imagination. It pulses. Low. Constant. Like it’s been waiting for my touch.
I reach for it, and it warms beneath my fingers instantly. Not hot. Not burning. But familiar in the most unwelcome way.
Angie stands behind me, her reflection caught in the frosted mirror by the cot, arms crossed, hair a mess of firelight curls, watching the way I hold it like it might shatter or bite or both.
“You okay?” she asks, voice low, not pitying, just honest, like she’s been walking with me long enough to know I don’t need softness—I need truth.
“No,” I say, closing my fingers around the Seal, the pulse doubling the second I make contact. “But that doesn’t matter.”
She moves to my side, her palm brushing my shoulder, and when I glance down at her, the way she looks at me makes my throat ache. She’s not scared. Not cautious. Not even curious anymore. She knows this matters. And she knows it’s killing me just to hold it.
“You’ve been avoiding that thing since I met you,” she says, tilting her head toward it. “Is it because of what it means? Or because of who you used to be when you carried it?”
I don’t answer right away. My fingers tighten around it until the metal presses into my skin, a sharp edge nicking the base of my thumb. The sting helps. A little.
“It’s not just a symbol,” I say eventually. “It’s not a badge. It’s a contract. The kind you don’t walk away from, not really.”
Her hand slides from my shoulder to my chest, resting right over my sternum. I don’t flinch. I just breathe.
“Then maybe it’s time you stop walking.”
Her words hit harder than the wind ever could. Harder than Harrow’s threats. Harder than anything that’s come since I first saw her standing in the snow with that damn camera, determined to unearth ghosts.
“You think they’d take me back?” I ask, voice barely a rasp now. “You think the Pact wants a man who lost control? Who ran? Who let them die?”
Her brow furrows, and her fingers dig into my coat like she’s holding me together with nothing but grip and will. “You didn’t let them die. You survived. That’s different.”
But I remember. I remember every face.
Rafe, with his cracked grin and knuckles always bruised, the one who used to tell me the world was held together with monsters and luck. Malek, sharp-tongued and faster than any of us, with a laugh like wildfire and a voice that could turn commands into absolutes. And Darius. Our leader. My brother in all but blood. Darius, who stood beside me in the village before it burned, who reached for me when I shifted, who didn’t run when the bear rose and devoured everything that made me human.
I’d buried them in snow and silence and lies, convinced myself the Pact was dead because they were. Because without them, the mission had no meaning.
“They were my family,” I say aloud, throat raw now, the words scraping out like confession. “They trusted me to hold the line. I lost them all in one night.”
Angie doesn’t speak. Doesn’t try to soften the weight. She just stays there, palm flat over my heart, and lets me feel it.
And then she says, “Maybe they’d want you to fight for what they never got to finish.”
I can’t speak. Can’t even nod.
She slides her hand up, cups my jaw, thumb brushing just beneath the scar that runs from my cheek to the corner of my eye. Her eyes burn like truth and stubborn fire and something sacred I’ve never deserved.
“If the Pact is broken,” she says, steady and sure, “then maybe it’s not about finding it again. Maybe it’s about rebuilding it. From scratch. With better people. With better hearts.”
I exhale, finally, breath fogging up between us, my body too tired to argue anymore, too full of things I’ve run from tokeep pretending the world outside this cabin can stay out there forever.
“I don’t know if I’m still worthy,” I say.
She shakes her head. “You’re not. Neither am I. But that’s not the point. The point is, you’re willing to be.”
