Brute 258

Chapter 258 

ATASHA’S POV 

“A witch.” I breathed, and the word left my mouth before my mind fully caught up with what my eyes were seeing 

The shadow had no face, no true shape, yet the air around it felt wrong in a way I har learned to reengine. It was the cere kind of wrong that cling to cursed poison, the same kind of wrong that made a room feel smaller without anyone touching the walls. The smell of sulfur immediately filled the room. 

Cassian moved before I even finished the thought. 

Metal hissed from its sheath, and the sound snapped through the room like a warning. He crossed the space in a blink. 

The shadow jerked back, spreading across the wall as if it could flatten itself into safety. For a second it tried to remain wher it was, a stain of darkness that refused a body, but Cassian’s blade cut through the space it occupied anyway, slicing the air s close that the candles shuddered and the scattered papers snapped upward like they were being yanked by an unseen hand. 

The shadow reacted. 

It pulled inward fast, condensing, thickening, and then it stepped into shape. 

Then suddenly, the shadow turned into a hood or what looked like a cloak. Hands that looked human at first glance and wrong the moment the light hit them, fingers too pale, veins too dark beneath the skin. The moment the figure solidified my body stiffened. 

Because I knew that hood. 

I had seen it before. 

A memory hit hard enough to steal my breath. It was the image of Matron Yara with a witch. The coward who caused chaos in the north before running away! 

It was him! 

The hooded man’s head tilted slightly, and I could not see his full face under the shadow of the cloth, but I heard the sound 

he made. 

A low snort, like we were beneath his attention. 

“A mere wolf,” he said, and the words held that same sharp contempt I remembered, like he was amused that Cassian dared step close. 

He lifted one hand, palm facing outward. 

Almost immediately, the air tightened. 

I felt it first as pressure, as if the room suddenly had less space in it, as if the storm outside had squeezed itself through the window and wrapped around our throats. The curtains snapped outward again, not from wind this time, but from force, from something that wanted to crush and bind. 

The witch’s voice shifted into something harsher, older, the syllables grinding against each other like stones. 

Then the witch’s magic hit. 

It slammed into Cassian like an invisible wall. 

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Chapter 258 

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And then it did nothing. 

Cassian did not even slow. 

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For the first time, the witch’s posture changed. The snort died. His shoulders tightened under the cloak as he watched Cassian push through the pressure like it was thick fog and not a curse. 

“What- the man began, but Cassian was already in range. 

Cassian’s sword came up. The witch barely managed to jerk back. He stumbled two steps, boots scraping against the floor as he tried to gain distance, as if distance would give him time to make his magic matter again. 

He lifted both hands this time. 

The air tensed again, sharper, more violent. The candles bent sideways. My hair lifted off my shoulders as if something invisible was tugging it. The papers on the floor skittered and spun, dragged in circles like the room had become a trap with teeth. 

The witch’s mouth moved, and the sound that followed was not a language I recognized, but I felt it in my bones. The same kind of curse that had clung to poison, the same kind of rot that wanted to slip into flesh and make it obey. 

Cassian stepped through it anyway. 

The witch’s eyes widened under his hood. I saw fear flash there for the first time, quick and ugly, because he finally understood what he was facing. 

Cassian was not just resisting. 

He was immune to whatever it was that he tried to do. 

Cassian was not built like other wolves. 

He was a beastman. 

The witch tried to retreat again, hands shaking as he forced another spell into the air, but Cassian closed the distance and 

swung. 

Steel cut through cloth. 

A sharp, wet sound followed. 

The witch screamed. 

His right hand fell to the floor, severed at the wrist, fingers still curled as if they were trying to finish the spell even after they were no longer attached to him. Blood sprayed across the table, across the map I had been studying, staining the parchment with bright, living red. 

The witch staggered back, clutching the stump with his remaining hand, his breathing turning ragged as shock battled pain. 

“You-” he choked out, voice breaking. “You can’t–you-” 

Cassian did not give him time to find words. 

He surged forward again, sword lifted. The witch moved in panic now. His shoulders twisted, his cloak flaring as he tried to step toward the window, toward the storm, toward escape. 

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Chapter 258 

His lips moved fast, and I saw his remaining hand lift, blood slicking his palm as he tried to shape another spell, one meant to vanish, meant to slip back into shadow and disappear before the blade could finish its work. 

But Cassian grabbed him. 

Cassian’s hand closed around the witch’s throat and slammed him into the wall hard enough that the frame of the window rattled again. The witch’s hood shifted, revealing more of his face, and I saw it clearly now, the sharp cheekbones, the eyes that looked too cold to belong to any ordinary man, the mouth twisted in pain and fury. 

He gagged, trying to inhale, trying to speak through Cassian’s grip. 

Cassian leaned in just enough that I heard his voice over the rain. 

“No, you do not,” Cassian hissed. 

The witch clawed at Cassian’s wrist with his remaining hand, nails scraping against skin, blood smearing, his body kicking as he tried to break free. The air trembled again, a last desperate attempt to use magic through panic, but it still did nothing to Cassian, not even a flicker. 

Cassian’s grip tightened. 

The witch’s eyes bulged, and his mouth opened in a silent snarl as he realized he was trapped. 

I stood frozen for a heartbeat longer. 

Then my body caught up. This witch was working with Collins just as he was working with Matron Yara! 

I stepped forward, eyes locked on the hooded man’s face. 

“Now,” I said. “You are going to tell us who you really are, and you are going to explain why you thought you could walk into Nightfall and take what you wanted.” 

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