I felt the weight of Ronan’s words press into me, thick and suffocating, like the very air in the camp had turned to stone. The Elders were coming. A purge was already in motion, and we were at the center of it. No more hiding. No more planning for some distant future. The fight was here, right now.
But it wasn’t just Ronan’s words that kept me rooted to the spot. It was the look in his eyes. The conflict. The something behind his cold, detached gaze that made my heart skip a beat. He wasn’t the man I remembered. No. He was a shadow of that man. But the flicker of guilt—the vulnerability that flashed in his eyes for a fraction of a second—was enough to make me hesitate.
Cassian didn’t hesitate.
He was already moving, stepping toward Ronan with a purpose I knew all too well. Cassian had
