Rage didn’t burn in Casimir Cimmerian.
Fire was human. Fire had edges,limits. This wasn’t fire. It was something colder. Deeper. Like the pressure at the bottom of the ocean, miles beneath the surface, where light and warmth don’t exist.
And he held it back.
Every single day. Every second. Every heartbeat.
It was why he rarely raised his voice. Never let go completely. Never fully lost his temper. It wasn’t restraint.
It was containment.
He didn’tdarelet that thing off its leash.
I already guessed what happened. Despite my own fury and need to kill, I’d seen Zane’s hands shaking. Tracked his shallow breathing. Noted his pallor and sweat-beaded brow. Our fireweed had dug too far into Eluned’s shitshow brain and stayed too long, and now he was paying the price.
He’d done it before, several times now, and he always woke up, demanding wings and a beer. But if this was the time hedidn’twake up?
Cas would tear the skin off every Dark witch still breathing, Harrow or otherwise. He’d carve out hearts, dismember bodies, rip through every coven like a plague of locusts, and he wouldn’t stop until the Dark world choked on its own dead.
If the thing inside him ever got loose, if Casimir ever stopped holding it back, it would raze everything. No mercy. No limits. Nothing but blood and ruin.
AndIsaw it.
Everyone else just thought he was cold. Detached. A stone-faced, unflinching killer. Even Zane thought that. But I knew better, and Seri was starting to.
Casimir wasn’t a stone. He was leashed annihilation. And the only thing keeping that creature from leveling the world was his sheer, unbelievable willpower.
But someday?
Someday, I knew, that leash would snap.
“Hurt?” Cas finally spoke, his voice low and sandpaper-rough.
I blinked hard, shaking the horror off me like water.
Me, I realized.He’s asking about me.
“A bit.” I swallowed thickly. “They’ll heal in a few minutes. You know that.”
His black eyes didn’t change. His knuckles flexed. Then he exhaled. His fingers uncurled, then curled again in a movement that looked painful, like his hand didn’t understand it was supposed to let go. Like he wasone inchfrom snapping a neck.
“Finished her?” His voice was a corpse-rattle.
“Yeah. Need to burn the pieces. I made ’em small enough to fit in the crucible. We need to install an incinerator.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t even breathe.
The thing inside him just coiled.
“She didn’t touch Seri,” I added quickly, like that would stop it. “Didn’t touch Zane, either. They’re both safe, and they’re both going to be fine.”
He nodded once, then turned like he was just going to walk out. Like nothing had happened. Like there wasn’t a tidal wave of slaughter clawing at the inside of his chest.
I panicked.
“Cas.”
He didn’t stop.
