It didn't just grow warm. The oxygen was violently sucked from the atmosphere, replaced by a suffocating, blinding heat. The shadows of the garden were instantly obliterated by a flash of blinding, magma-orange light.
A hand, glowing as bright as a dying star, clamped onto the back of the Wraith's neck.
Kassian ripped the creature off Vera with the sheer force of a hurricane. He didn't use a sword. He didn't use a spell. He simply unleashed the "Eternal Ember."
The moment his hand squeezed the Wraith's neck, the creature erupted into a pillar of blinding white fire. The heat was so intense that Vera had to shield her eyes, throwing her arm over her face as the shockwave hit her. The flesh, bone, and rags of the assassin were incinerated in less than two seconds, leaving absolutely nothing behind but a shower of black ash drifting down onto the freezing cobblestones.
Silence slammed back into the courtyard, save for the heavy, ragged sound of Kassian's breathing.
Vera lowered her arm, her entire body trembling.
Kassian stood amidst the falling ash. He was in his shirtsleeves, the fabric singed at the edges. The orange veins of his curse were fully illuminated, glowing fiercely against his pale skin, climbing all the way up his neck to his jaw. His eyes were not their usual cool blue; they were solid, terrifying red.
He turned his head slowly to look at her.
He didn't look like her savior. He looked like a monster that had just been violently reminded of what it had to lose.
Vera scrambled backward against the frozen stone bench, clutching her bleeding shoulder. The numbness from the poison was spreading rapidly down her arm, making her chest feel tight. "Kassian..."
In the blink of an eye, he was kneeling in front of her. The heat rolling off him was staggering, almost suffocating. He grabbed her shoulders, his grip bruising, dragging her up until her face was inches from his.
"I told you," Kassian roared, his voice a demonic, vibrating rasp that shook the very ground beneath them. "I told you to stay in the room! I commanded you!"
"I needed... to practice," Vera slurred, the poison making her tongue heavy, her eyelids fluttering. "I couldn't... breathe..."
Kassian saw the blood. He saw the sluggish, dark venom mixing with the red on her tunic. The red in his eyes flared brighter, pure, absolute terror finally overriding his rage.
"No, no, no," he chanted frantically, his burning hands moving to cup her face, his thumbs smearing the soot on her cheeks. "Stay with me, Vera. Look at me!"
"I'm cold," she whispered, her head lolling to the side as the darkness finally pulled her under.
Kassian didn't hesitate. He scooped her up, crushing her against his blazing chest. He didn't care about stealth or protocol. He kicked the heavy iron gates of the garden off their hinges and sprinted toward the Royal Wing, bellowing for Damon and the Imperial healers with a voice that promised to burn the entire world to ash if she stopped breathing.
***
Vera awoke to the suffocating smell of eucalyptus, bitter herbs, and burning firewood.
She was lying in the center of the massive bed in the Royal Suite. The room was humid, with an enormous marble fireplace roaring with unnaturally high flames, yet a deep, bone-chilling chill still lingered in her veins. Her left shoulder throbbed with a dull, heavy ache, tightly wrapped in white linen.
She blinked her heavy eyes open, staring at the canopy above.
"You are awake."
The voice was rough, scraped raw, and utterly devoid of warmth.
Vera turned her head slowly. Kassian was sitting in a high-backed velvet chair drawn up next to the bed. He looked like he had aged five years in a few hours. His shirt was gone, his platinum hair was a chaotic mess, and the orange veins of his curse were still faintly pulsing, indicating his magic was deeply, dangerously unsettled. He was staring at her with an intensity that felt like a physical weight.
"The poison?" Vera rasped, her throat feeling like sandpaper.
"A paralytic mixed with shade-venom," Kassian said darkly, not moving an inch. "The healers neutralized it. You have been unconscious for fourteen hours."
Silence stretched between them, thick and unbearable. It wasn't the charged, electric silence they usually shared. It was a bottomless pit.
"If I hadn't felt your terror through the Blood Bond," Kassian continued, his voice dropping to a lethal, quiet whisper. "If I had been detained in the war room for one minute longer... the healers said your heart would have stopped. The Wraith would have carved the Catalyst mark straight from your collarbone."
Vera pushed herself up against the pillows, wincing as her shoulder protested. The weakness in her limbs only fueled the sudden, bitter spark of anger igniting in her chest.
"I had it," Vera lied through her teeth, her voice trembling with frustration. "I was freezing its blade. If I had just a little more time—"
"You had nothing!" Kassian exploded, shooting out of the chair. The sudden movement made the flames in the fireplace flare violently. He paced to the edge of the bed, looming over her. "You were lying on the ground, seconds away from having a serrated knife driven through your heart! You were defenseless!"
"Because you made me defenseless!" Vera shouted back, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, throwing the heavy silk sheets off her legs. "You locked me in a cage, Kassian! You surrounded me with guards and silk and told me to just sit there and wait for the assassins to come!"
"I put you there to keep you alive!" he roared, slamming his fist onto the wooden bedpost. The wood cracked under the force. "Lysander is hunting you! The Church wants you burned! And your solution was to sneak out into an abandoned garden, alone, with magic you cannot even control?!"
"My solution was to try and learn how to survive!" Vera yelled, her green eyes blazing with unshed tears of pure, helpless rage. "I survived the Grey District for years, Kassian. I learned how to fight for scraps, how to run, and how to hide. Then you brought me here, bonded me to you, and turned me into a pet!"
The word hung in the air, sharp and cruel.
Kassian physically flinched. The anger in his face fractured, revealing a raw, bleeding wound beneath the Emperor's mask. He stared at her, his chest heaving.
"A pet?" he repeated, his voice dangerously soft, laced with a profound, terrifying hurt. "I have given you everything. I put you at my side. I destroyed half my Council for you. I would tear this Empire apart with my bare hands to keep you breathing."
He reached out, driven by the agonizing, addictive pull of the Blood Bond, his burning hand reaching for her uninjured shoulder, desperate for the connection, desperate to feel her pulse.
Vera shrank back, pulling her knees to her chest, pressing herself against the massive oak headboard.
"Don't," she whispered, her voice cracking.
Kassian froze. His hand hovered in the empty air between them.
The rejection hit him harder than any blade ever could. He looked at her—at the woman who had walked into a furnace for him, who had offered him her blood, who was now looking at him not with fondness or desire, but with the cornered, desperate eyes of a prisoner.
"You are suffocating me," Vera said, the anger draining out of her, leaving only a hollow, bitter despair. She didn't look at him; she looked at her own trembling hands. "Every time I look out a window, there are guards. Every time I try to understand this... this ice inside me, you tell me to stop. You want to wrap me in velvet and hide me away so you don't have to worry about your anchor breaking."
She finally looked up, a single tear escaping, tracking down her pale cheek. "I am not just your cure, Kassian. And I cannot live in a glass box. If I can't protect myself, then Lysander has already won. Because he has turned the man I... the man who saved my brother, into my warden."
Kassian slowly lowered his hand.
The fire in his eyes receded, retreating deep into his core, leaving behind a cold, desolate blue. The terrifying, possessive warlord was gone.
He took a slow step back from the bed, creating a physical distance that mirrored the massive emotional abyss that had just ripped open between them.
"I see," Kassian said. His voice was completely devoid of emotion, a dead, flat sound that terrified Vera more than his yelling.
He turned away from her, walking toward the balcony doors. He stood looking out at the darkness, his broad shoulders rigid, his back a wall of impenetrable stone.
"You think I enjoy this?" Kassian murmured to the glass. "You think I want to look at you and see a target. But you do not understand the politics of this world, Vera. And you do not understand the Blood Bond. When that blade pierced your shoulder tonight, I felt the venom in my own veins. If you die... I do not just grieve. I burn."
He turned his head slightly, giving her a cold, hard profile.
"But you are right about one thing," he continued, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "Your magic is a liability. You are a danger to yourself and everyone around you."
Vera flinched as if he had struck her. The clinical, detached tone was unbearable.
"Tomorrow," Kassian said, his voice echoing in the stifling heat of the room, "I will summon Archmage Solon from the Academy. He is the only man alive who has studied the Heart of Boreas. If you are so desperate to turn yourself into a weapon, he will teach you."
He walked toward the heavy oak doors, not looking at her. He didn't offer a reassuring touch. He didn't offer the comfort of his heat.
"Kassian..." Vera whispered, her heart twisting with a sudden, sharp ache. She had wanted space, but the absolute coldness radiating from him felt like a different kind of punishment.
Kassian stopped with his hand on the brass doorknob. He didn't turn around.
"Rest, Vera," he commanded, the Emperor addressing a subject. "The guards will remain at your door. You will not leave this room without me. I will not cage your magic anymore, little thief... but do not mistake my distance for surrender. You are still mine to protect. Whether you hate me for it or not."
The heavy door opened and closed with a definitive, echoing thud.
Vera was left alone in the sweltering, massive bed. The fire roared in the hearth, throwing wild shadows across the ceiling, but as she pulled her knees tightly to her chest, she had never felt so utterly freezing cold.