SMOKE STILL curled from the last burning vehicles, glass crunched under every footstep, and the distant sirens of the wounded reminded Lily that nothing was fully over.
But the war—the immediate, desperate war—was finished.
Cassian sat in the interrogation room, wrists cuffed, suit tattered, face pale but still striking in a way that had once made Lily doubt herself.
Now he looked smaller, diminished, stripped of the control he had once wielded like a weapon. He leaned back in the chair, arms restrained, mask gone, and his eyes held nothing but defiance.
“You finally look human,” Lily said, her tone steady, cold, measured.
She didn’t step closer yet. Every instinct told her this was the moment she had been waiting for. The confrontation she had rehearsed in her mind for years.
Cas
