Silas
She’s awake now.
Barely sitting upright, swaying a little like gravity’s still figuring out what to do with her. Elias and I are practically crawling over each other to get to her first. I win, obviously—because I cheat. I shove a hand against Elias’s chest and wedge myself in at her side like I’ve always belonged there. Which, I mean… I do.
“Welcome back to the land of the conscious, my ethereal goddess of doom and questionable decisions,”
I say, voice low and reverent as I drape her in my coat like it’s sacred armor.
“I would’ve kissed you awake like some tragic fairytale prince, but Elias insisted on being weird about it. Something about consent and dignity. Ugh. Ruining the romance.”
“,”
she croaks, barely audible, but the way she says my name?
I melt. Publicly. Shamelessly.
Elias groans beside me.
“He’s going to be insufferable for at least a week now. Possibly longer if she smiles at him.”
“She blinked at me once and I wrote her a sonnet,”
I shoot back, grinning at her like I’ve never known pain in my life.
“Don’t tempt me, Luna. I’ll do it again. And this time I’m adding a chorus.”
Luna leans into me slightly, and it’s not dramatic or grand. Just a tilt of her head that brushes my shoulder like she forgot she wasn’t allowed to rely on anyone. My grin softens, my hands stilling where I was tugging her blanket tighter.
She’s pale. Not her usual hauntingly sexy shade o.
“probably hexed a priest once,”
but something worse. Drained. Like the world took too much from her again and left her to deal with the overdraft.
Riven hasn’t moved. He’s five feet away with his arms crossed like he’s guarding a shrine, red eyes sharp, unreadable. But he’s here. Still. And for Riven, that’s saying something.
“You scared the hell out of us,”
I whisper, low enough that only she hears it.
“Not cool, Moonbeam.”
She blinks slowly, lashes trembling, like there’s still too much she can’t say. But she reaches out, fingers fumbling for mine. I give them to her without hesitation.
Elias shifts beside me, clearing his throat.
“So. I made a bet with while you were passed out.”
“No, you did not,”
I snap.
“Do not tell her about the bet.”
“He said if you died, he’d become a monk,”
Elias says flatly.
“Renounce all sin. Grow a beard. Pray daily.”
“It was a hypothetical scenario! Don’t listen to him, Luna. You know I’d haunt you. Sexy ghost style.”
She huffs a laugh. Barely a sound, but it’s real. I’d die a thousand times for it.
Behind us, Riven finally speaks.
“She needs to rest. She’s not safe yet.”
Elias nods.
“No one’s ever safe here.”
And he’s right. The clearing around us is too still. Too sharp. Like this version of Daemon Academy isn’t rebuilt—it’s remembering itself through nightmares. The stones beneath our feet remember what it meant to be soaked in blood. The walls that aren’t there anymore? They miss the screams.
But right now, I’m focused on Luna.
“Hey,”
I murmur, brushing a stray strand of hair from her cheek, careful not to look too serious.
“Just so you know, when you’re feeling better, I’m planning to do something incredibly dumb and self-sacrificial for you. Possibly involving glitter. Definitely involving nudity.”
Elias snorts.
“She’ll bind you just to shut you up.”
“Too late. Already bound. She loves me.”
Luna doesn’t correct me.
Which means I win.
Riven moves toward the fire like he owns it, and honestly? He might. Bastard looks carved from war and poetry, all shadows and smolder. The flames kiss across the sharp edges of his face like they’ve missed him. I’d hate him if he wasn’t so fucking useful in a fight. And also kinda hot. But that’s beside the point.
He crouches near Luna like he’s not dying to touch her, but his voice is low and careful.
“What happened?”
She swallows. Once. Twice. Her mouth opens, then closes again, like the words are ash in her throat. And I feel it. That instinct. The bond pulling taut. Lust isn’t always desire. Sometimes it’s protection. Sometimes it’s throwing yourself in front of the train even if it turns you into roadkill.
“She passed out,”
I say, shrugging like it didn’t nearly cave my chest in.
“Dramatically. Ten out of ten performance. I almost gave her mouth-to-mouth.”
“I almost let him,”
Elias mutters from behind me, sprawled with one leg thrown over a mossy log like we’re lounging at some twisted woodland spa.
Riven doesn’t blink.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I couldn’t breathe,”
Luna says finally. Her voice isn’t shaky. It’s stripped raw. Like it’s been scraped against stone and left in the cold.
“Something got into me. Not magic. Not—hollow either. It felt… old.”
Old. I hate that word. Everything old here is cursed.
“Old like Elias’s taste in women?”
I offer, just to see her mouth twitch at the corners.
“Old like your humor,”
Elias shoots back.
“Please. My jokes are timeless. Like your virginity.”
“Still funny you think I’m the one who hasn’t gotten laid recently.”
“Boys,”
Luna murmurs, the word gentle, exhausted—but there’s a sliver of laughter buried in it. I take it like an addict. Let it root in my bones.
Riven ignores us. He leans forward, eyes catching the fire just enough to flash silver-gray.
“You said it wasn’t Hollow. Was it Branwen?”
Luna flinches. Just slightly, but I see it. Feel it.
“No,”
she says, but it’s not a denial. It’s a dare to drop the subject.
I shift closer, my hand resting at her back. I don’t ask for permission. I don’t need to. She’s mine in the way the sun is the sky’s—burning and constant and too far away to keep. But I’ll die trying.
“Whatever it was,”
I say, keeping my voice light.
“it didn’t win. She’s here. She’s breathing. We’re good.”
“For now,”
Riven replies, and it’s not a warning. It’s a prophecy.
The flames crack louder. The ruins surrounding us—whatever version of Daemon this is—breathe with too much memory. Like the bones of the place are waiting for us to rot next.
Elias shifts.
“Well. If we’re done glaring dramatically into the fire, maybe someone could figure out what just tried to murder our favorite girl.”
I raise a brow.
“Favorite, huh?”
“I said what I said.”
Luna hums, and I glance down. She’s watching us. All of us. Like she’s memorizing the pieces in case they disappear again.
She probably should.
But for now, she’s still in my arms. Still mine.
This tiny wisp of a girl has ruined us.
I don’t mean that lightly. I don’t say it with humor—not really. Not even with that usual curl of sarcasm I like to drape over everything like a blanket no one asked for. I mean it with the kind of bone-deep clarity that only comes after you’ve watched someone nearly break in front of you and realized you’d trade anything—everything—to keep it from happening again.
She’s ruined us.
Me, Elias, Riven. Orin and Lucien, too, even if they pretend otherwise. Ambrose and Caspian, wherever they are, aren’t exempt either. She’s become the center of gravity, and none of us can seem to escape her pull. We’re unraveling—not because she demanded it, but because the moment we saw her, we remembered what it felt like to want something enough to be afraid of losing it.
And she’s so small. Still sitting where she was, arms folded tight like she’s holding herself together with the force of will alone. There's blood on her lower lip—dried, cracked—and she keeps chewing at it, eyes flicking toward the fire like it might whisper an answer.
I want to tell her she doesn’t have to be afraid.
But I won’t. Because I am. For both of us.
Why would the gods—if those petty bastards are even real—make her like this? A sin binder, sure, but trapped in something so vulnerable. Why not give her teeth to match the weight of what she’s meant to hold? Why not make her unbreakable?
Instead, they gave her to us.
A mortal vessel meant to tame immortals. A girl who shouldn't matter this much, and does anyway. And I can feel it in the way Riven watches her from the shadows. In how Elias paces like a caged animal when she looks even slightly off. In the way Lucien bites his words to keep them from spilling into confessions he’ll never allow himself to speak.
I glance at her. She catches me.
Her brows rise like she’s expecting something—maybe another joke, maybe another ridiculous line that will earn me an eye roll and nothing else. Maybe she knows what I’d do to keep that look on her face.
I smirk.
Because I’m Envy. That’s what they forget.
I want everything I can’t have. I crave the heat that isn’t mine, the touch she gives to others, the smile that lingers longer when it’s not for me. I want Elias’s ease, Riven’s certainty, Orin’s calm. But most of all, I want her—every part she guards, every sharp thing she hides beneath that soft skin.
She already bound me. I should be satisfied.
I’m not.
Because the more I have, the more I want. Her voice. Her hands. The way she says my name like it’s both a warning and a prayer.
“Stop brooding, you look constipated,”
Elias mutters beside me, elbowing my ribs like he’s trying to jolt me out of something.
“She’s not asleep,”
I say, gaze fixed on her.
“So? You gonna write her a sonnet now, Romeo?”
“I’m working on a whole tragic ballad. The part where I die heroically gets rewritten every time she looks at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I matter.”
Elias doesn’t say anything to that. Because he feels it too. The weight of what she is. What she’s becoming. What we’re becoming because of her.
And none of us were made for that.
She shifts again, pulling her knees up, those watchful eyes still sharp, still waiting.
I wonder if she knows—if she can feel it. That even now, we’re circling closer.
And if we ever lose her... it won’t just shatter us.
It’ll make monsters out of what’s left.
“What sonnet you like written about you,”
I say, stretching my legs out in front of the fire, arms folded dramatically behind my head like I’m about to launch into something Shakespearean.
“Something tragic and swoony? Or dirty and wildly inappropriate? Either way, I’m ready. I’m like the bard of sin over here.”
She doesn’t even blink, just rolls her eyes with the kind of exhausted amusement that makes me want to chase every flicker of it.
“It’s not a sonnet anymore, ,”
she says dryly.
“It’s a song. Keep up with the century.”
“Oh,”
I say, cocking my head.
“so you want me to serenade you now? Because I could—though I must warn you, my voice has been known to make angels cry.”
Elias groans from behind her.
“That’s not because of your voice. That’s because you sang WAP to the Headmaster’s pet gargoyle.”
“It was relevant!”
I protest.
“Topical. The gargoyle needed it.”
Luna’s lips twitch, just the barest hint of a smile, and gods, it wrecks me. That smile. That quiet permission to be exactly who I am when I’m around her. I’ve been a lot of things in my existence—envy, chaos, complication—but with her, I’m just . The Sin she didn’t run from. The one she reached for first. And every moment I spend near her, I want to be the reason she smiles again.
She leans forward, the firelight catching on the strands of her hair, casting molten gold over her skin.
“If you ever write me a song, ,”
she says, eyes cutting to me like a dare.
“you better make sure it doesn’t rhyme with vagina.”
Elias chokes.
“You underestimate his commitment.”
“I’ve rhymed it with everything, baby,”
I grin.
“China. Designer. Recliner. You’re dealing with a lyrical genius.”
“I’m dealing with something,”
she mutters under her breath, but I see it—the way her shoulders drop just slightly. Like the weight of what we are, of what she’s becoming, eases when we’re like this. When the world doesn’t feel like it’s clawing at her from every side.
I’d do anything to keep it that way.
She glances at the others. Riven still hasn’t moved from the fire, arms crossed like he’s trying to intimidate the night into behaving. Orin and Lucien keep their distance, shadows pulled tight around them. And here she is, surrounded by sins, and still so... human.
Too human.
Which is why I lean in, voice dropping just for her.
“You know, Luna,”
I murmur.
“I’d write you the dirtiest, most tragic love ballad this world’s ever known. And you wouldn’t even need to bind me to sing it. I’m already yours.”
She blinks, caught off guard by the sincerity buried in my grin. Then—just like that—she looks away.
But not before I see the flush creep across her throat.
That’s the thing about loving her. You don’t win her in one go. You chip away at the armor, one smile, one eye roll, one terrible rhyme at a time.
And if I have to make a fool of myself a thousand more times just to see her laugh like that again?
Bring it on.
Riven finally moves off like the brooding boulder he is, all seething restraint and jaw tension. I wait until he’s just out of earshot—barely—and then sigh with the kind of dramatic flair that makes Elias visibly flinch. I kiss my fingers, raise them solemnly to the stars above like I’m saluting a fallen soldier.
“Rest easy, you absolute mood killer,”
I murmur, voice thick with faux-grief.
“May your abs remain sharp and your glares ever effective.”
Elias groans.
“You’re such a fucking idiot.”
“Ah, but I’m your idiot,”
I remind him sweetly, flashing a grin that would have most people walking the other way. Not Luna, though. She stays.
She always stays.
I shift closer to her side, bumping her knee with mine just enough to earn her attention again. She glances sideways at me, face still pale from whatever the hell that was back there, but there’s a flicker of warmth tucked behind her eyes. The kind that makes my chest ache in ways I’ll pretend are indigestion and not something real.
“That man has all the charisma of a feral goat,”
I continue.
“He shows up, glowers, says three words like he’s handing out death threats, and then disappears into the shadows again. Classic Riven.”
Luna stifles a laugh. Barely.
“He’s trying.”
“Oh, sure,”
I nod solemnly.
“Trying to raise my blood pressure. Trying to ruin my shot at emotionally vulnerable firelight bonding time. Honestly, the war crimes that man commits against my romantic timing? Unforgivable.”
She shakes her head, but her smile’s blooming now. It’s slow, reluctant, and entirely addictive.
I lean in slightly, letting my voice dip low—not serious, but close enough to blur the line.
“I just think, if the world’s falling apart and sin incarnate is pacing around with unresolved rage issues... you might want to cling to the only one here willing to make a fool of himself for your smile.”
Her breath catches—soft, barely audible—but I hear it like a damn prayer.
Elias clears his throat, cutting in before I can say something even worse.
“Wow. Are you quoting yourself now? Was that from Veyd’s Book of Deeply Troubling Pick-Up Lines?”
“I was workshopping the title, thank you very much,”
I shoot back.
“I was going to call it Sin and Sensuality: The Envy Edition.”
“You’re going to get murdered in your sleep,”
Elias mutters.
“Not before she falls in love with me,”
I whisper loud enough for Luna to hear—and yeah, that blush that crawls up her neck? Worth every single stupid word.
Still, I don’t push further. Not tonight. Something’s shifting in her. I can feel it in the bond, this strange hum just beneath my skin, like her magic is restless again. Stirring. Or maybe it’s the world that’s restless around her. Either way, the fire’s not enough to chase off the cold brewing beyond the clearing, and I know this peace we’re pretending to have won’t last much longer.