Cassian had always known the scent of blood better than roses.
His hands had crushed empires. His words had started wars. And his heart—well, that had always been a cold, locked vault. Until her.
Lilith.
The girl with venom in her eyes and fire in her voice. He hated her. She was a threat. A mirror. A rival. The enemy. But the more he tried to destroy her, the more he saw the cracks in his rage. She didn’t break under his cruelty. She bloomed.
And that terrified him.
Their marriage was a battlefield with velvet curtains. Nights of silence, days of sharpened glances. Yet beneath the venom, he learned her. The way she flinched when thunder echoed. How she traced the spine of books with the tip of her finger when thinking. How she never cried—except once, when she thought he wasn’t looking.
Then came the knife. Meant for her. Meant to finish what war had started.
He didn’t think. Just moved.
The blade tore through his ribs, but it was her scream that carved deepest.
In the days after, she stayed. Quiet. Watching. Waiting. And for the first time, he saw something in her eyes that wasn’t fury.
Fear. For him.
Now, standing behind her in the fading light, he realized he hadn’t just fallen for Lilith. He had surrendered. His hatred, his pride, his mission—it was all ash.
“I still have your dagger,” she whispered, voice like silk over old wounds.
He wanted to laugh, but it came out softer. Sadder. “Keep it. I have no use for weapons anymore.”
Because love, he realized, wasn’t forged in peace. Not theirs. It was sharpened in silence, tempered in pain, sealed with grudges turned to touches.
When she turned to face him, something cracked in him clean.
They weren’t enemies anymore.
They were survivors—of each other, of war, of the darkness they once worshipped. And maybe that was its own kind of love.
The kind you bleed for.
