The morning light broke through the trees like a reluctant visitor. Pale, unsure. It washed over us, but I barely felt it. The night had been long, too long, and I hadn’t slept a single second of it.
Cassian lay there, propped up against the rock wall of the ravine, his body tense, still too broken to move without grimacing. Blood had dried on his clothes, on his skin—on me, too. But I’d long stopped caring about the mess. We were still alive. And right now, that was all that mattered.
I’d kept watch through the night, heart racing with every c***k of a branch, every distant howl that stirred the air. But nothing came. The enforcers had pulled back for now.
I glanced over at Cassian. He was stirring, eyes fluttering open, then closing again. The exhaustion hung on him like a cloak. His
