She was already there.
Cassandra stood at the rooftop's edge, silhouetted against the dying light. Raikiri pressed close against her legs, his lightning subdued to faint crackles that matched the tension in her shoulders. She'd been waiting for hours, probably. Days, in a sense. Waiting to know if her friend was alive or dead.
When she heard my footsteps, she spun.
"Vale!"
The relief in her voice nearly broke me. She ran toward me, her face open and worried and so painfully hopeful that I had to force myself not to look away.
I stepped back.
She stopped. The hope on her face flickered. Raikiri's lightning sputtered once, confused.
"Vale? What..." Her eyes dropped to my bruises, the stiffness in my movements. "Gods, you look awful. What happened? The guards took you and no one would tell me anything. I tried to get to the palace but they kept throwing me out and I thought..." Her voice cracked. "I thought you might be dead."
"I'm not dead."
The flatness in my voice made her flinch. I watched her register it; the wrongness, the distance. The way I was standing apart from her instead of closing the gap.
"Vale." She said my name like a question. "What's going on?"
This was it. The moment I'd rehearsed a hundred times in my head. The words I'd crafted with the care of a surgeon preparing to amputate.
"I have to tell you something."
"Okay." She crossed her arms. Defensive. She could feel something bad coming; she just didn't know what. "So tell me."
I took a breath. Let it out slowly. Met her eyes.
"This." I gestured between us. "The friendship. The rooftop. It's over."
"Because you're a prince?" She laughed again, harsh and disbelieving. "I don't care about that. You think I care that your father wears a crown? You're still you. You're still the boy who couldn't climb a wall without falling twice. Who read me stories when I was sick. Who..."
"Cassandra." Her full name felt wrong in my mouth. Too formal. Too distant. "Listen to me."
"No." She shook her head. "No, I don't accept this. Something happened; something bad. I can tell. But we can figure it out. We've always figured things out. Just tell me what's really going on and we'll..."
"There's nothing to figure out."
I felt Azurene flinch against my leg. Through our bond, her distress pulsed like a wound. She pressed closer to me, her body language screaming what her voice wouldn't; that I was lying, that this was wrong, that she didn't want any part of it.
Cassandra's eyes dropped to Azurene. To the way my dragon was trembling slightly. To the way her silver eyes wouldn't meet Raikiri's.
"Your Anima." Cassandra's voice was quiet. "She's upset."
"She's fine."
"She's not fine. Look at her. Something's wrong, Vale. Just tell me what it is. We can fix it together."
I can't fix this, I thought. The only fix is you hating me enough to stay away.
I drew myself up. Straightened my spine. Let my face go cold.
"The friendship was a mistake."
Cassandra went still.
"I was bored," I continued. My voice didn't sound like mine anymore. It sounded like my father's; calm, cold, devoid of warmth. "The palace is stifling. I wanted to see what commoner life was like. You were convenient. A native guide to the streets." I paused. Let the words cut. "I never expected it to last this long."
"Stop it."
"You're a street rat, Cassandra. You have nothing. No title, no surname, no future. And I'm the son of a king." I forced the next words out through a throat that wanted to close. "It was never going to work. We were never going to be equals. I see that now."
"Stop it."
Raikiri's lightning had gone quiet. The creature stood motionless beside his human, watching me with eyes that reflected the dying light like embers in ash. The silence was worse than the crackling had been.
"The kidnapping made things clear," I said. "I was taken because I was in the wrong part of the city. Because I was playing at being common when I should have been where I belonged. My father helped me understand that."
"Your father." Something in her voice shifted. Hardened. "He told you to say these things."
"He told me the truth."
"You're lying."
"I'm not."
"You're lying." She stepped forward. Her hands were clenched at her sides. "I know you, Vale. I've known you for two years. I've seen you happy and scared and excited and nervous. I've seen you lie to shopkeepers and sneak past guards and pretend you knew how to haggle when you didn't. I know what your face looks like when you're pretending." Her voice cracked. "And you're pretending right now."
She sees it, Azurene whispered through the bond. She knows you're lying.
I know.
You have to be more convincing.
I know.
I looked at Cassandra. At her blonde hair catching the last of the light. At her blue eyes that had always seen too much. At the girl who'd saved me in an alley two years ago and changed everything.
Then I said the thing I knew would destroy her.
"You were the only real thing in my life."
She blinked. The memory of that night on the rooftop; the one honest thing I'd ever said to her; flickered across her face.
"That's what I told you. Do you remember? On the rooftop, before everything went wrong." I let my voice go cold. Colder than I'd thought I was capable of. "I was performing. Even then. It's what princes do. We say things that make people feel special. That's how we keep them loyal."
Her face crumpled.
It was worse than I'd imagined. Worse than anything I'd ever seen. The light in her eyes; that fierce, burning light that had drawn me to her from the first moment; dimmed and went out. Not with tears. Cassandra didn't cry. She just... closed. Like a door slamming shut.
"You're lying," she said again. But there was no conviction in it now. Just hope, dying.
"I'm not." I held her gaze. Didn't let myself look away. "You were convenient, Cassandra. Nothing more. And now you're not."
Silence.
Raikiri stood frozen at her side. The lightning beast hadn't moved, hadn't sparked, hadn't made a sound since I'd started talking. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't read; something that might have been hatred, might have been grief, might have been the animal incomprehension of a soul watching its partner's heart break.
Cassandra looked at me for a long moment. Her face was blank now. Empty. I watched her memorize me; not the boy she'd known, but the prince who stood before her. The stranger wearing her friend's face.
"Okay," she said.
Just that. Just okay.
She turned.
She walked away.
She didn't look back.
Raikiri followed her. At the edge of the rooftop, the lightning beast paused. Looked back at me with those ember eyes. Then he was gone, following his human down the ladder and into the darkening streets.
I stood alone on the rooftop.
The sun finished dying behind the city walls. The last light faded. And something inside me, something I didn't have a name for yet, faded as well.
Valerian.
Azurene's voice. Worried. Distant.
Valerian. Are you...
I fell.
My knees hit the rooftop. Then my hands. Then my forehead, pressing into the rough stone that still held traces of warmth from the day's sun. My body curled in on itself but no sound came out of me.
Azurene caught me. Her small body wrapped around mine, her neck curling over my shoulder, her warmth the only thing keeping me from dissolving completely into the grief.
"I had to," I heard myself say. "I had to. She'll hate me now. She'll stay away. She'll be safe. I had to."
I know.
"She looked at me like... like I was..."
I know.
"I loved her. She was my friend. She was the only person who ever..."
I know. I know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
The mask had fallen. There was no one to perform for now. Just a boy and his dragon on a rooftop that would never feel like home again.
I don't remember climbing down from the rooftop.
I don't remember walking back to the palace.
I don't remember the servants' faces when I passed them in the corridors, or the guards' concern when I stumbled through the halls, or the healer who tried to stop me and ask about my injuries.
I remember reaching my chambers. I remember collapsing onto my bed. I remember Azurene curling around me like a living blanket, her body pressed tight against mine.
And I remember the strange sensation that started somewhere deep in my skull; a pressure, a presence, something foreign pressing against the edges of my mind.
Azurene.
I feel it. Her voice was sharp. Alarmed. Something's wrong. Something's...
The pressure built. The world went white. Then black.
Then nothing at all.