The rain began as a scent before it was a sound—the clean, mineral perfume of dust and ozone kissing the air. It seeped into the edges of my dream, a cool whisper against the windowpane. I drifted in the deep, quiet warmth beneath my down-filled quilt, lost in the slowness of sleep, reluctant to leave its sanctuary. Then, a change. Not a noise, but a subtle dip in the mattress, a displacement of air that was too deliberate for a shifting draft. I am not alone.

My eyes flew open, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs.

He was a figure carved from twilight and sorrow, a silhouette against the rain-streaked grey of the window. Cassius. He was perched on the edge of my bed, motionless, one leg crossed over the other in a pose of forced casualness. The chill from the glass seemed to pour around him, yet he carried the scent of the storm itself—damp earth, wet stone, a fragrance of freedom that was entirely his own. As my vision sharpened in the gloom, I saw a light in his eyes I’d never seen in the harsh despair of the prison. It was a fragile candor, a raw vulnerability, as he simply watched me breathe. The frantic drumming in my chest slowed, not just with relief, but with a strange, aching recognition. Not a threat. Not an enemy. Just… Cassius.

My own eyes felt gritty, my voice a dry rasp. “What are you doing here?”

His gaze didn’t waver, and his voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder. “I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted, the sound vibrating through the quiet room. “The silence is too loud. I had to be sure… that the walls were truly gone. That this wasn’t another phantom conjured by my mind to torment me.”

Propping myself on an elbow, I felt the heavy silk of my hair spill over one shoulder. “It’s real, Cassius,” I assured him, my voice softening. “You’re free.” My gaze swept over him, truly seeing him for the first time outside a cell. The stark lines of his face, the tension in his shoulders. “How… are you?”

“I am… adjusting,” he said, the word a vast understatement. A shadow of profound disorientation flickered in his eyes. His right hand, as if with a mind of its own, drifted to his left arm. My attention snagged there, and the air seemed to grow colder. Against the pale canvas of his skin, sickly, orange-gold veins crawled and writhed with a faint glow. They were not flat marks, but a living tracery, like lightning trapped and writhing beneath the surface, a parasite etched in light. They snaked up from his wrist, disappearing under the sleeve of his tunic. I shouldn’t ask. It’s cruel, a part of me thought. But another, fiercer part knew I had to. I can’t help him if I’m blind.

“Cassius,” I began, my voice barely a whisper. I pushed myself up to lean against the carved headboard, the cool wood a stark contrast to my sudden anxiety. I held his gaze, willing him to see the desperate necessity in mine. “Your arm. Will you tell me what happened to it?”

His eyes fell, and the muscles in his jaw knotted. “It is not contagious, if that is your fear.” He hesitated, the silence stretching until it felt thin and brittle. “I have carried this mark for a very long time.”

“That wasn’t my question,” I said, my voice gentle but unyielding. “What is it?”

A sigh shuddered through him—the sound of a man setting down a burden he knew he must immediately pick up again. When he finally met my eyes, the brief candor was gone, burned away by a pain so old it had become a part of him. “It is a curse,” he confessed, each word a stone dropping into the still pool of the room. “Placed upon me the day I was imprisoned. It severs my connection to my mana, leaving me… hollow.” His gaze drifted back to the sinister, glowing tracery on his arm. “It is also designed to kill me. The lines spread, feeding on my life force. Once they reach my heart… I will cease to exist.”

The air thinned, turning to glass in my lungs. My face felt like a porcelain mask I was struggling to keep from shattering. Killing him. Slowly. The realization was a physical blow. The man who survived the inhumanity of the prison was still a prisoner in his own skin, carrying his own executioner with him every second. My eyes darted to his shoulder, trying to gauge the distance. It’s so close. How long does he have? How many years? A deep, anxious crease formed between my brows.

He leaned forward, the mattress dipping. He gently pressed a single, calloused finger to the space between my eyes. The touch was startlingly warm. “You’re doing it again,” he murmured, a ghost of a smile haunting his lips. “Be careful with your face, Princess. It shows everything.”

A blush bloomed on my cheeks, a startling bloom of heat that momentarily chased away the icy dread. As he drew his hand back, the terrible gravity of his secret resettled between us, heavier than before.

“Who?” I breathed, the question tasting like ash. “Who would create something so monstrous?”

The brief softness in his face shattered, the warmth receding to leave behind the stark geography of his anger. “The old human king,” he said, his voice flat and cold. Then he hesitated, and the second name was a blade he had to force from his own throat. “And… an elf I once considered my brother.” He stared at the rain-lashed window, his gaze a thousand years away. “It is a wound I have carried alone for a very long time.”

My heart clenched, not with pity, but with a fierce, burning rage on his behalf. Betrayal. The deepest cut. “Why, Cassius?” I pressed, my voice a strained whisper. “Why would a friend do that?”

His expression became a mask of chilling stone. “Because I discovered their secret,” he said, his quiet voice laced with venom. “They were conducting experiments. On our people. On humans and elves alike.”

“What kind of experiments?” I whispered, an awful premonition making me lean closer.

He dragged a hand through his dark hair, the gesture ragged with the strain of the memory. “Abductions. They took commoners, artisans, farmers—people from the fringes they believed no one would miss—and locked them away in a hidden laboratory.” His jaw tightened. “They were using forbidden, life-stripping magic. Draining the mana from their bodies until all that was left was a soulless person.”

A sharp, sick gasp hitched in my throat. “And the mana? What were they doing with it?”

“Hoarding it,” he said, bitterness charring every syllable. “Absorbing it. Pouring stolen mana into themselves.”

The words hit me with the force of a physical blow. The ghostly memory of Lyra’s power—that unnatural, overwhelming torrent—flooded my senses. That feeling… it was a violation. Was that what I felt? Stolen mana? A terrifying, world-altering thought wormed its way into my mind, cold and venomous. Is this what my father and Blair are doing? Is the luxury of my palace, the comfort of my life, built on a foundation of corpses?

“I confronted them,” Cassius continued, pulling me from my spiraling horror. “I told them their ambition was an abomination. They offered me a place at their side. When I refused… my reward was this curse and a life sentence in a cage, ensuring their secret would die with me.”

“You did nothing wrong,” I insisted, my voice ringing with a conviction that was as much for me as for him. “You chose the people.”

“I would always choose the people,” he replied, his gaze meeting mine, clear and absolute.

I will not let him die, a silent vow formed in my soul. I will tear down legends and rewrite maps if I have to. “Is there a way to break it?” I asked, my voice steady with newfound purpose.

He shook his head, a flicker of old despair in his eyes. “This magic is ancient, elven, and forbidden. If a counter-spell exists, it would only be found in the elven kingdom of Aelindoria.”

My carefully constructed hope faltered. “Cassius… in the human kingdoms, Aelindoria is a wisp of a forgotten song. Elves are just bedtime stories.”

He sighed, the sound heavy with a familiar frustration. “That complicates things. I once knew the paths, the ways between… but a lifetime in the dark has fractured my memory.”

“We will figure it out. Together. I have to go to the royal library today. I’ll start there. You could come with me? My father never goes near the place.”

For the first time, a genuine smile reached his eyes, chasing away some of the shadows. “I would—.”

His words were cut short by a knock on my chamber door. It was not a tentative request, but three sharp, precise raps that cut through the fragile atmosphere we had built.

“Princess,” a voice called, low and urgent. “It is Amelia. Forgive the intrusion, but I must enter.”

“You may, Amelia.”

She stood like a stiletto, her gaze sweeping the scene with unnerving efficiency—my disheveled state in bed, Cassius’s stark presence, and back to my face. She closed the door, the latch clicking shut with metallic finality.

Her expression was grim, her duty overriding any curiosity. “I have information,” she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that prickled the air. “Information on Lyra, and the company she keeps.”