For a long time, Mason and Scarlett walked in silence away from the wreckage of the battlefield. The terrain where they walked was uneven, mined by the battle just finished. The sky, still healing, the wound above them finally beginning to seal shut, leaving only traces of golden light where the Ascended had vanished. Mason stared straight ahead, but his thoughts were a long way from clear. The burden of all that had happened weighed on him like an iron chain. The throne was gone. The cycle was broken. The Emperors were power less. And yet something gnawed at him. Scarlett must have picked up on it, because she looked at him, her tone low but firm. “But you think too much again.” Mason let out a wind through his nose. “You keep saying that as if it’s something I could just stop doing.” Scarlett smirked slightly. “You can’t, but you can discuss it.” He hesitated. What was he supposed to say? That, though he had done everything he could, it still didn’t seem over? That some p

In the cold night air Mason seemed burdened with this decision, iron shackled. He had said the words, made the choice, but the hot knot in him hadn’t stopped. If anything, it had only increased.Scarlett stayed by his side, her presence strong and consistent. Campfires flickered below, casting long shadows over the ruins, reaching toward the horizon where dawn would soon arrive.“What’s on your mind,” Scarlett said, her voice lower now, as if trying to gently calm the spirit.Mason breathed slowly, his breath clouding in the crisp air. “What if I fail?”Scarlett frowned. “Fail how?”His eyes darkened as he focused on her. “But what if I make the wrong decisions? What if, despite it all, I turn into exactly that which I vowed to destroy?”Scarlett watched him for a while, then shook her head. “That won’t happen.”“You don’t know that.”“I do.”Mason laughed without mirth. “How?”Scarlett stepped forward, fierce in her expression. “Because I know you. Because I have bled with you. Becau

The ice cold stone under her burned with frost, and yet she dripped with sweat down her spine. Each breath Scarlett took was a struggle, her defiance roused in its contest with fatigue. Her wrists were bound double with immensely thick iron chains that dug deep into her flesh so that the wounds were open raw and bled freely at the slightest movement of her arms.Her head throbbed. Blood matted her hair. Time had lost all meaning.She had no idea how long she had been here—caught inside the hell Mason had made of her life.She had known he could be cruel, but this? This was an entirely different matter.The flickering fingers of the torch threw monstrous shadows against the damp stone walls. The air was thick and suffocating with the smell of iron and damp earth.Then came the footsteps. Slow. Measured. Unforgiving.Scarlett kept her head down. She didn’t need to.She knew it was him.Mason entered the chamber like he owned it, his tone suffocating. He didn’t speak right away. Instead

The night was a long one, rife with anticipation. The camp was quiet but Mason could hear the weight of every breath, every shifting shadow.He sat close to the dying fire, honing his blade with slow, measured motions. His hands were steady, but his brain was racing. The echo of Kieran's words still rang in his ears, the unspoken doubts that haunted the warriors.Boldness doesn’t win wars. Strategy does.Mason knew that.But what they didn’t realize — what they would never realize — was that this was not simply a war.It was a reckoning.He heard footsteps crunching against the dirt behind him. He didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.Scarlett.“You’re brooding,” she said lightly, with an edge to her voice.Mason kept sharpening his blade, though. “Thinking.”“Dangerous habit.”He smirked but didn’t reply.She circled him, crouching by the fire. Reverberating orange light painted stark shadows across her features, accentuating the iciness that now filled her gaze. “Kieran’s n

Scarlett walked down the wide corridor track, the sound of her feet echoing back at her, heavier with each step. Her breathing was uneven, her pulse sporadic. The air seemed denser, weighing down on her like invisible hands deterring her from departing.No—not trying.Succeeding.She was still trapped.Not in chains. Not in a locked room.But in him.Mason was in her head, in her bones, and no amount of distance she put between them ever felt like it was enough, so far from home and yet never enough and always the feeling he was still watching.Waiting.She rounded a corner, her hands balled into fists, urging herself to stay strong. But then—"Going somewhere?"It sent a cold shiver down her spine.Scarlett stopped.She had to.She had no choice.Mason was leaning John way down the hall, against the marble pillar with his arms crossed over his chest. He looked cool, even amused, but Scarlett knew better.That wasn’t calm.That was control.A silk-covered yoke, disguised as patience.