It was chaos. I was still in it, but I couldn’t think. The blood, the sweat, the metallic tang of fear, and the smell of damp earth mixing with forest pine—it all bled together, indistinguishable.
The enforcers had come with too much force. They weren’t expecting a fight, not a real one. But we gave them one.
Cassian and I worked like a well-oiled machine—he moved first, faster than I could track, already closing the gap on the first enforcer before I had a chance to react. He was a blur—silent, lethal. His knife flashed, cutting through the air like he was born for this. It was everything I’d expected, but at the same time, it wasn’t. It never was with him. He didn’t just fight. He became the fight.
I matched his pace, but it was different for me. I wasn’t just going through the motion
