Rawn’s answer sliced through the threads of his heart. It rebuked him when delicate tears spilled down Aerina’s cheeks.
He closed his eyes as she fled the throne room, leaving him with the weight of his remorse.
CHAPTER 45
Cassiel
Cassiel sensed her before he opened his eyes. His heart rate quickened as he peered through his lashes. His vision was unclear, his eyes heavy. He winced at the ache throbbing in his skull. Where was he? How long had he been unconscious?
He swallowed and licked his dry lips. The shift of his arm met resistance and the clink of metal. He was in shackles and fastened to a brick wall with much thicker chains.
Dyna’s cool voice drifted from the shadowed corner. “Those are made with Skath metal, so don’t bother attempting to break them.”
His pulse immediately leaped at the sound. A single candle rested on top of a set of barrels, casting flickering patterns on the stone wall. His mate sat on a bench with her arms and legs crossed, her face draped in shadows.
She was a hallucination, had to be.
Because he couldn’t fathom what it meant for them to be standing in the same room.
“I had time to think about what I would say if I ever saw you again,” Dyna said. “But now that you are here, I find I have nothing to say except one thing.” She was in front of him in an instant, and the icy touch of her blade met his throat. “Remove the barrier.”
The weight in Cassiel's chest deepened, pulse racing in his veins at the sight of those emerald eyes as sharp as jagged gems. An invisible fistgripped his heart until he couldn’t breathe. “Dyna…” Her name caught in his throat, and the back of his eyes stung. “You’re real.”
“As real as this knife. Now remove the barrier, Cassiel!”
He blinked at her shout, taking in the fury in her eyes, the burning against his throat, and her shallow breath on his skin. Her shield on the bond was so solid, he didn’t feel any of her emotions through the fragments of their bond.
But he saw them on her face.
It carried the full force of her rage, and he finally realized that she knew exactly what he had done.
She remembered.
Everything.
“You’re real,” Cassiel said again with sudden clarity. “When did you regain your memories? I had no sign.”
Dyna sneered. “You think I would give you one? Only so you would return to do it again?”
It was the hatred burning in her eyes that finally made everything fall clear for him.
Cassiel shook his head, his chest heaving. “Dyna, I … I’m sorry. I—” His throat clamped shut, and he had to force himself to breathe. She was looking at him with such disgust he was desperate to say the right words, and terrified to say the wrong ones. “Your magic is a beacon. They would have kept coming after you until you were dead. I had to make them believe you already were. The barrier was for your protection. You were supposed to stay dead to the rest of the world, but you came to Nazar. You exposed yourself to everyone…” His voice caught as he felt a sudden fear for her safety. “Why would you do that?” he exclaimed. “Why would you show yourself?”
“Because I had to,” Dyna said tightly. She looked away, as if she couldn’t look at him, as if his presence offended her. “I wanted nothing to do with you anymore, but not even I could escape what you have become.”
His eyes widened as he recalled what she had done to stop him. The things she must have seen him do…
Cassiel’s quiet question fell in the silence. “What happened after you rendered me unconscious? Did they hurt you?”
“No one was keen on challenging me once they witnessed ourreunion. I am now the Queen of Fire.” Dyna retorted as though she found it absurd, but he couldn’t think of a better title.
The way she had appeared in the smoke, encompassed in green flame as she walked through his Seraph fire—there existed no other way to describe her.
“Lord Gadriel was merely glad to be rid of you.” Her hard gaze rose to him again. “As will I be once you return to me what you stole.”
The day he constructed the barrier and erased her memories was still clear in his mind, carved into his bones. And as Cassiel looked at her, he found she was no longer within his reach.
“I—” He cut off at the ice-cold steel pressed at his jugular.
