Brute 290

Chapter 290 

Atasha’s POV 

The moment the wall gave way, the air changed. 

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It was not just colder. It was heavier, as if the space beyond the broken stone did not belong to the same world, as if the cave itself had been keeping its breath held and the breach finally let something exhale into us. 

The pressure hit like a hand closing around my chest and then tightening, not crushing bone outright, but forcing every inhale to fight through an invisible weight. 

My skin prickled, my healing flared without injury, and my body reacted the way it did when a predator stepped too close. 

My knees buckled. 

I caught myself on one knee, palm slamming against the stone to keep from collapsing completely. The ground vibrated under my hand, the vibration climbed up my arm until it reached my teeth and made my jaw clench hard enough to ache. 

King Xylas, who had only just been pulled back from death beneath my hands, stiffened beside me. 

His face went pale in a blink. 

His throat worked as if he was trying to swallow something that did not fit, and then he doubled over and vomited blood onto the floor, splattering across his armor and the stone. 

He tried to straighten, but the pressure shoved him down again. His body trembled, not from weakness alone, but from the way the air itself refused to let him stand. 

My own flesh shook as well. 

Not from pain, because there was no wound to seal, but from fear that did not come from my thoughts. 

It rose through my nerves like a warning from something older than reason. It felt like standing in front of a closed door and knowing without seeing that something on the other side was already watching, already aware, already deciding whether we were worth noticing. 

Behind us, Rio moved. 

I heard the scrape of his boots, heard him laugh once under his breath as if he enjoyed watching us suffer. 

Cassian did not fold. 

He was the only one who stayed upright, the only one whose breathing did not hitch, the only one whose stance did not weaken under the weight pressing down on all of us. 

He turned his head toward the opening, eyes narrowing, as if he could sense exactly what I was sensing, but it did not seize his body the way it seized mine. 

Then he moved. 

Cassian stepped forward and jumped onto the fractured ledge near the breach, placing himself between us and whatever waited beyond the broken wall. His posture shifted, not into something showy, but into a position that made him the first line of contact, the first body anything would hit before it reached the King or me. 

Almost immediately, the pressure eased. 

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Not gone, but reduced, like a storm pushed back by a barrier. I could breathe again without choking. I could lift my head without feeling like my skull was being forced down. The King managed a strained inhale, though blood still slicked his mouth and dripped down his chin. 

Rio clicked his tongue. 

“You are in my way again,” he said, irritation grinding through Rio’s voice. “Move. Filthy beast.” 

Cassian did not answer him. 

He did not even look back at us to reassure us with words. 

He stayed where he was, still blocking, still forcing the pressure to sit behind his back instead of on our throats. 

I crawled the last step forward and reached for Cassian’s leg. 

My fingers closed around the fabric and armor with a grip that felt more desperate than I wanted to admit. 

Heat surged out of me immediately, not because he was bleeding out, but because I could feel the strain in him, the tension in muscle and bone from how hard he had been fighting, and I pushed my healing through it anyway, forcing it into every bruise and tear he had collected in that chamber. 

Cassian’s leg steadied under my hand. 

The damage I could not see settled. 

Seeing this, Rio’s eyes snapped toward me. 

His expression twisted, as if the sight of me touching Cassian offended him more than the sword that had pierced his own body earlier. His mouth curled as he stepped forward, dagger shifting into a grip meant to strike fast. 

Cassian met him head on. 

Steel collided again, the sound was worse in this space because the pressure made every ring of metal feel like it traveled inside my ribs. 

Cassian pushed into Rio’s attack with brute force and precision combined, forcing him away from the opening, forcing him to fight in the chamber instead of near the breach. 

I used the moment. 

I got my arm under King Xylas’s shoulder and hauled him up. His weight was heavier than it should have been because he was still resisting the pressure with every breath, still recovering from the wound I had sealed, still trying not to collapse again. His boots dragged at first, then found traction as he forced his legs to obey. 

We moved toward the other side of the chamber, away from the broken wall and away from the center where Cassian and Rio were clashing. 

My senses stayed wrong. 

Even with Cassian holding the pressure back, I could still feel that presence behind the breach, like a gaze pressing into my spine. Every instinct in me kept turning toward it, kept trying to map it, kept warning me that this was not just a cave 

anymore. 

Then I saw her. 

A familiar figure lay on the far side, half obscured by rubble and shadow, her hair spread across stone, her body too still. 

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Chapter 290 

“Grace,” I said. 

The name tore out of me. 

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I tried to step toward her immediately, trying to break away from the King’s grip, but King Xylas caught my wrist and held tight. 

“Be careful,” he said, his voice rough from blood and strain. “Do not run blind in here.” 

I frowned. He just reminded me where we were and what was happening behind us and what that broken wall meant. I swallowed and nodded, forcing myself to move with control instead of panic. 

The King’s eyes lifted toward the breach again. 

“There is something about that place,” he said, and even he did not need to explain what he meant. 

“I know,” I replied. 

“We need to get to that area,” I said. 

The King’s gaze tightened. “You think-” 

“I think that is where the core is,” I finished, and I hated how much certainty sat behind the words, because certainty in places like this usually came right before disaster. 

A loud bang echoed behind us. 

The cave shook. 

I turned just in time to see Rio hit the wall with his back as Cassian threw him like a weapon, the impact cracking rock and knocking dust loose from above. Rio staggered, then straightened with a snarl, blood still staining his shirt, healing still dragging the wound closed. 

Cassian’s head turned toward us for the first time since the pressure hit. 

“Go,” he said, voice hard. “Get to the other side.” 

I did not hesitate. 

I hauled the King with me, half carrying, half dragging, and we moved toward Grace while Cassian stepped into Rio again to keep him away from us. Behind us, steel rang, boots scraped, and Rio’s growl rose into a sound that did not belong in a 

human throat. 

I reached Grace slowly. 

Her face was turned to the side, her lashes still, her breathing shallow enough that I had to watch her chest to confirm she was alive. There was blood on her temple and dirt across her cheek. 

I crouched, one hand hovering over her shoulder for a second, because the pressure made everything feel wrong. Somehow, it made me wonder if even touching her would trigger something. 

Then I placed my palm on her and pushed the healing gently. 

Heat flowed out of me, sliding into her bruises, sealing what it could, coaxing her body back toward stability. 

Somewhere behind us, the fight escalated. 

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A louder explosion ripped through the chamber, and the sound was so violent that the ground lurched under my knees. Dust burst out from the ceiling and rained down in a thick sheet. 

Grace’s body shifted slightly as debris struck near her, and I shielded her instinctively, raising my arm and pulling her closer. 

I looked back toward the fighting. 

For a heartbeat, I could not see Cassian clearly through the dust. 

I saw a flare of light instead. 

The fae stone. 

Cassian must have been planning to use it. 

The realization hit me hard enough that my hand went to my chest without thinking, fingers pressing against skin as if I could feel through flesh and bone to where our bond anchored. Fear surged fast and the bond answered immediately with one brutal truth. 

He was still alive. 

I felt it in the same way I felt my own heartbeat. Cassian is alive! 

The King grabbed my arm. 

“Move,” he said, voice strained. 

He yanked me back just as a massive slab of stone tore free from the ceiling and crashed down where I had been crouching moments earlier. 

The impact sent a shockwave through the ground that nearly knocked me over. Pieces of rock bounced and rolled, and dust swallowed the air so thickly that my next breath tasted like grit and blood. 

Rubble started falling again. 

The ceiling was coming apart in waves now, not one collapse but many, each one triggered by the last. 

The chamber groaned as if the cave itself was splitting under the pressure and the explosion and whatever else had been awakened beyond that breach. 

King Xylas grabbed Grace by the arm, dragging her body with us as I tried to keep her from slamming into stone. 

My hands stayed on her, healing where I could while we moved, forcing her bruised body to endure the rough pull without breaking something that would slow us down. 

We stumbled back toward the path we had come from, back toward the hole Cassian had created and the chamber’s narrow mouth, but the rocks were already shifting again. The opening was shrinking as debris slid into it, sealing it in layers. 

“Cassian!” I shouted, and my voice came out harsh and cracked. 

I tried to look past the dust, tried to find him through the falling rock. 

The King pulled me harder. 

“Do not stop,” he said. 

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Another boulder slammed down behind us, the sound was so close it made my cars ring. The air surged outward with the impact, pushing dust into my eyes and throat. I blinked hard, coughing, but I did not let go of Grace. 

“Cassian!” 

“No!” the King said as the stone slid into place with a grinding crash, rubble stacking and locking together until the breach was no longer an opening but a wall of broken rock that cut the chamber off completely. “Continue moving!”