CasSandra

Chapter Three: Fractures in the Dawn

*Cassie's POV*

Time moved differently in Sandra's apartment.

I woke in her bed to the sound of clocks ticking without hands. Each beat directionless, lost. Rain pressed against the tall window, but the droplets weren't falling; they floated upward, unmaking their descent, as though the sky itself had changed its mind. The air tasted of iron and smoke, faint as memory, sharp as longing.

Beside the glass, Sandra stood, wrapped in her crimson robe. The morning light caught strands of her silver hair, a cascade that gleamed like the first curl of dawn. She wasn't really watching the street or the sky. She was watching something behind them. Somewhere farther, unreachable.

"You feel it, don't you?" Her voice was low, like smoke curling under a door. "The fractures are widening."

I pulled the sheet closer, my body still sore, humming with the memory of her hands, her lips. Even the warmth between us had its weight, the kind that pressed instead of carried.

Sandra turned, and in her eyes, those impossible amethyst eyes, something hard glittered. "The world doesn't remember what it should. Time has lost its balance, Cassie. Because of her."

She didn't have to say the name. I saw it in the shape of her mouth, in the shadow slicing across her face.

I rose from the bed, moving toward her, carefully, as if any wrong step might send her shattering. "Sandra..."

"You break the wheel for her. Again, and again." Her tone sharpened like a blade unsheathed. "You bleed eternity to stitch her fragile threads back together, and for what? For a mortal who will only always die."

Her bitterness stung more than I wanted to admit.

"She's not just—" I began, but Sandra cut me off.

"She ruins you."

The words landed like a strike. For a moment, I wanted to argue, but Sandra's gaze pinned me in place. She looked at me as though she could peel every layer of my being until she found the weakness she already knew was there.

And then, she softened. Or at least, she pretended to. Her hand found my jaw, tracing down my collarbone. Her touch was gentle yet burning. She leaned in, her lips grazing mine. Warmth and gravity all at once. My breath tangled in hers.

"Forget them. Forget her," she whispered against my mouth. "You and I could be endless. Do you remember what you were before you tied yourself to their fate?"

I kissed her back, helpless against the current she pulled me into. The taste of her was memory itself: sweet, bitter, eternal. For a heartbeat, I wanted to drown there, to let her strip the burden of time from me. But even in her kiss, I heard the venom:

Forget them. Forget her.

My hands trembled as I pulled away, breaking the seal of our mouths. "I can't," I said, my voice hoarse. "Sandra, I can't abandon her. I owe her too much."

Her eyes narrowed, and the air shifted. Behind her, faint but unmistakable, her wings unfurled. Light spilling into the room, not gentle dawn but blinding. White streaked with gold and pink, radiant and merciless.

On the table, the coin glimmered. The mirrored-lotus caught the warped morning light, glowing faintly like a warning.

Sandra followed my gaze, and her expression darkened. "Don't show it to her again," she said. Not pleading. Commanding. "The coin is no key. It's a tether. It binds you to the door you can't close. And once it opens..." she stepped closer, her voice a low hiss. "Nothing will love you the same way again."

Her words clawed at me.

But I thought of Lesly's face, the fear in her eyes when the world shifted under her feet. The way she clung to questions she didn't have language for. She deserved the truth. She deserved a guide.

"I won't stop protecting her," I said quietly.

Something cracked in Sandra's expression then. Love and rage collide. Her wings flared wider, colliding with the dusky shimmer of mine. The air was sparkling between us like flint against steel.

"Then you'll lose me too," she said.

The room went still. Only the upward rain in the window, the soundless ticking of the broken clocks. Her words carved through me deeper than I wanted to admit. But I didn't step back. Not yet.

I stood there, caught between her light and my shadow. Between her arms and Lesly's need. The weight of wings pulled me apart.

***

Sandra's lips trailed against my shoulder like a vow whispered in a language older than time. Her hair, silver as moonlight, slipped across my chest. And for a moment. Just a moment, I let myself forget the way her voice had burned when she said Lesly's name.

"Don't go to her again," Sandra murmured, soft but dangerous, like a blade wrapped in silk. "Every time you reach for her, you carve another wound in me."

Her words were heavy, pressing down on my ribs. I wanted to tell her the truth. That I wasn't reaching for Lesly, not in the way she thought. That my duty, my tether to her soul, wasn't something I chose. It was something written in the stars before either of us had fallen. But Sandra didn't want the truth. She wanted devotion.

And so, I stayed.

I curled closer, my hand resting at her back, feeling the rise and fall of her breath. To leave now would have shattered her, and a part of me...too large, too human...couldn't bear to wound her more deeply. Yet even as I held her, I knew my silence was its own betrayal.

Her wings, pale dawn with threads of gold and pink, folded over us like a canopy. Mine twitched against the sheets. Dusk and shadow tangled with silver. We looked, to the mortal eye, like harmony. But beneath the veil, our wings quivered with unspoken war.

Sandra tilted her face toward mine. Eyes molten with devotion and fury. "Promise me you'll stop," she whispered. "Promise me you'll let her go."

I kissed her instead of answering. Slow. Lingering. A kiss that could be mistaken for surrender, though inside it tore me apart.

Her smile softened, triumphant. She nestled against me, closing her eyes, certain she'd won. But in the dark hollow of my chest, the truth echoed:

I could not let Lesly go.

And that secret, sharp as a blade, waited in silence. Knowing it would one day cut us both open.

To be continued...