Malrik POV

“Take care of her, Malrikarion.”

Cassian’s voice was quiet, yet the weight of the words pressed between us like a stone neither of us could move.

“She’s endured a miserable life,” he confessed, his eyes drifting far away. “First with those who adopted her. Then with me.”

His tone carried the heavy residue of regret, the kind that shackled a man to his own mistakes and dragged him into a darkness he might never climb out of. And that kind of despair? We couldn’t ...