The imperial ball faded into distant echoes as Cassian stepped into the glass greenhouse, hidden within the vast imperial gardens. The air inside was thick with the perfume of night-blooming flowers—jasmine, moonflower, and the delicate scent of orchids, their petals glowing softly under the pale silver light of the full moon. The glass panels above reflected the heavens, endless and star-strewn, as if the entire cosmos had been captured within this secret sanctuary.

And then, he saw her.

She stood amidst the sea of flowers, a vision carved from moonlight and quiet poetry. Her gown shimmered like liquid silver, flowing around her like mist curling over a midnight lake. The wind whispered through the open windows, stirring the strands of her hair, making them dance like threads spun from the very stars above.

Cassian stilled, the air trapped in his lungs.

What is she? A dream? A phantom conjured by the gods?

For all the blood he had spilled, for all the battles he had waged, nothing had prepared him for the quiet devastation of her beauty. She did not belong to the grandeur of courtly opulence—no, she was something wilder, something unbound. The kind of beauty that did not seek attention yet ensnared it utterly. And him? He was caught. Helpless against the pull, as though the very threads of fate had been rewoven in this single moment.

She turned then, her gaze finding his. And Cassian, who had once walked through battlefields without flinching, felt something dangerously close to hesitation. Her eyes, deep as the night sky, held a quiet kind of knowing—an understanding of things left unsaid.

Gods help me.

A breath. A heartbeat. A moment suspended between dream and reality.

He should have left. Should have stepped back into the shadows where he belonged.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he bowed his head slightly, the deadly knight offering silent reverence to the woman who had unknowingly ensnared him.

What a deadly thing it is, to want.