Chapter 114 One Last Time

Chapter 114 One Last Time
Cassandra's POV

The wind tore past my face as Dracarys cut through the dark.

Below us, the battle had already become something enormous, sound and fire and movement spreading across the grounds like a living thing, too large to take in all at once. I pressed my hand against his scales and leaned forward.

"Faster," I said. "Please. Faster."

He growled low in his chest and his wings beat harder, the ground rushing toward us as we descended.

I could see it clearly now. Harlan's forces were pushing forward with a discipline that spoke of months of preparation– coordinated, relentless, their weaponry cutting through Liam's lines in places that hadn't yet stabilized. The casualties on both sides were real and visible and I forced myself not to look at faces.

Then I saw Hirlon.

He was moving through the chaos with four soldiers flanking him, pressing directly toward Liam's position with the focused purpose of someone who had been given one specific target.

Something ignited in my chest.

"Dracarys." My voice came out flat and certain. "Burn them."

He didn't hesitate.

The fire came in a long, sweeping arc, white-gold and enormous, the screaming that followed was terrible and I didn't look away. The four soldiers scattered. Hirlon went down.

The battlefield went silent and everyone froze.

Harlan's men stumbled backward. Liam's soldiers stared upward with wide eyes. And Liam, in the middle of it all, looked up at me.

And smiled.

Something in my chest broke open and rebuilt itself in the same moment.

"Forward," I said.

Dracarys swept across the battlefield in a wide arc, fire cutting through Harlan's lines with a precision I hadn't expected from myself, but my dragon knew the difference between enemy and ally in a way that went beyond instruction, and I trusted him. Liam's army surged with renewed energy, the shift immediate and visible, and the battle changed shape entirely.

But Harlan's men turned their attention upward.

Arrows came first. Then something larger, a weapon I didn't recognize, something Roman had warned about, designed specifically for this. Dracarys evaded, banking sharply, blocking what he could with his wings. It wasn't easy. The blows kept coming.

I kept moving, kept drawing attention away from the ground, running the strategy Liam had mapped out, pulled the focus, created space, let him reach Harlan.

Then Liam and Harlan faced each other directly.

Harlan fought with the desperate strength of a man who had nothing left to lose. Liam moved faster and harder than I had ever seen him move. But there was a soldier coming from behind, quiet, deliberate, unnoticed.

I pushed Dracarys into a dive.

Something hit us from the side, hard, sudden, the impact spinning me from the saddle before I could grip properly. I had one moment of open air and then the ground arrived.

I hit hard.

My head spun, and for several seconds I lay on the earth with my face against the dirt and simply tried to remember how to breathe.

When I looked up, Harlan had broken through. Liam was surrounded, three of them pressing in, Harlan raising his blade…

I couldn't reach him in time. My body wouldn't move fast enough. The distance was too great.

I shifted.

It came faster than it ever had before. Bones folding and reshaping in seconds, the wolf taking over before I'd finished deciding to let her, white fur and four legs and a size I still wasn't entirely prepared for.

I charged.

I hit the first soldier before he saw me coming, took the second with my teeth and threw myself at the third. Then I pinned Harlan to the ground with my full weight, my jaws an inch from his throat, a snarl tearing out of me that I felt in every bone.

He looked up at me.

And laughed.

"You disgrace," he said. His voice was broken and still utterly contemptuous. "You worthless, blind, wolfless disgrace–"

He drove the knife into my side.

The pain was extraordinary. White and immediate and spreading outward from the point of entry like something living. I shifted back without meaning to, my body making the decision before my mind caught up, and I landed on my hands and knees in the dirt with the knife still in me, blood running freely through my fingers.

Harlan shoved me aside and raised the blade again–

Liam reached him before it fell.

What happened next was brief and complete and I looked away from the worst of it. When it was over, Harlan was on the ground and Liam was standing over him, chest heaving, his face a storm.

"You did this," Harlan said, his voice fading. "Both of you. You ruined everything. Everything I–"

He stopped.

And didn't start again.

Liam turned and dropped to his knees beside me so fast I barely saw him move.

"Kiara." His hands were on my face, my shoulders, pressing against the wound. "Stay awake. Look at me. We won– it's over, it's done, we won, just stay awake–"

"Liam." My voice came out quieter than I meant it to.

"The physician–" He was already looking up, already calling out across the battlefield. "Someone get the physician–"

"Liam." I put my hand on his face.

He looked at me.

I could feel it. The spreading cold that was different from any cold I'd felt before, moving outward from the wound in waves, the poison in the blade doing what poison does. The blood moon hung enormous and red above us and I finally understood– not a curse, not a mystical death, just this. A knife. A battlefield. A choice Harlan had made.

"I need to tell you something," I said.

"No. Not yet. You're going to tell me when you're healed–"

"Liam." My fingers pressed against his jaw. "My name is Cassandra."

He went still.

"Cassandra Sterling. I'm twenty years old and I'm from the twenty-first century. I fell into a book in a library at eleven forty-seven at night. I landed in Kiara's body and I have been here ever since." The words came out steadier than I expected. "I'm not her. I was never her. But I tried to be someone worthy of being her."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"I know," he said quietly.

I stared at him.

"I've known for a long time," he said. "The things you said. The way you moved. The words you used that belonged to nowhere in this world." His voice was breaking at the edges now. "I didn't know exactly what you were, but I knew you were something I'd never encountered before and I–" He stopped. Started again. "It didn't matter. It never mattered."

"Liam–"

"I love you," he said. He pressed his forehead against mine. "Please. Don't you dare use this as a reason to leave."

I kissed him.

He kissed me back immediately, both hands on my face, and I felt his tears before I felt my own, both of us clinging to each other in the mud of a battlefield with the blood moon watching and the sounds of the aftermath moving around us.

I wanted to stay.

That was the thing I hadn't expected to feel so clearly and so completely,not a vague wish but a specific, desperate, full-bodied wanting to stay in this world, in this body, in his arms, for every ordinary morning and argument and chapter that came after this one.

But I could feel myself fading.

Even Dracarys, somewhere at the edge of my awareness, was growing quieter.

"Liam." His name in my mouth felt like something I wanted to keep saying forever.

"Don't," he said. "Don't say goodbye. Don't–"

"I love you," I said.

The blood moon was very bright.

His arms tightened around me.

The world went very quiet, and softer still. Then my body dissolved into the air like something returning to where it had always belonged.