Orin
Lucien’s pacing again, sharp and rhythmic, his boots cutting lines into the gravel like he’s trying to reshape the world with steps alone. He’s never been a patient man. He calls it strategy. I call it desperation masked with command. He won’t say it, but I can see it—he’s unraveling beneath all that beautiful, brutal composure.
And I can’t let him make this decision alone.
“You’ll fracture them,”
I say quietly, hands folded behind my back as I lean against the stone archway that marks the edge of the road. The ruins of the old Hollow chapel loom behind me, its bones caught in moonlight like a god half-forgotten.
“If we go without telling them, they won’t forgive it.”
“They’ll live,”
Lucien snaps, then adds after a pause.
“Assuming this works.”
“That’s not a guarantee you get to gamble with.”
He stops. Finally. Turns on me with that Dominion-heavy glare, like I should bow just for breathing near him. But I’ve seen kings fall. Lucien Virelius doesn’t scare me.
“She won’t come if she knows,”
he mutters.
“You think Luna will let us walk into Branwen’s grasp willingly? She’ll find a way to twist fate around her fingers and storm the gates.”
“Yes,”
I reply.
“Because that’s who she is.”
Lucien laughs, dry and bitter.
“That’s the problem, .”
There’s a moment of silence between us, stretched taut with truths neither of us say out loud. I don’t remind him that Luna is stronger than Branwen ever expected. I don’t tell him that her magic—the binding—has already begun to unmake the rules we thought governed this realm.
Instead, I say.
“She’ll come anyway.”
Lucien exhales through his nose, almost a scoff.
“Then we make sure she doesn’t know where we’ve gone. When we leave, we leave nothing behind. No trail to follow.”
I stare at him. Not because I’m surprised—but because it hurts that he’s right. That this—this betrayal disguised as protection—is our best chance to buy her more time.
“You’re asking me to lie to her.”
“I’m asking you to give her a future,”
he says.
“Even if it means she hates us for it.”
I look away, out toward the woods where shadows move like memories through twisted trunks. The Hollow has quieted. Too quiet. Which means it’s watching. Listening. Waiting for us to make the wrong move.
“She’ll see through it,”
I say, not a warning but a truth.
“Luna is many things, but she’s not a fool. And if you disappear without a word, she’ll follow. She’ll tear down the gates of Branwen’s keep with her bare hands if she has to.”
Lucien’s mouth tightens.
“Then let’s hope she doesn’t get the chance.”
He turns and walks toward the camp again, toward the firelight where the others are laughing—gods help us, laughing—and I stay behind. Just for a breath. Just long enough to let the silence ask the questions I don’t want answers to.
Because if we do this…
If we leave her behind…
It won’t be the enemy that breaks her.
It’ll be us.
She goes quiet the moment she sees us, the way prey does when it senses a predator too close. Except Luna has never been prey. She’s a storm in human skin, and storms don’t shrink—they gather.
Riven straightens first. He always does when Luna stiffens, like her discomfort wires itself directly into his spine.
“What’s wrong?”
he asks, voice low, suspicious. Always ready for war, especially when it’s with us.
Lucien doesn't miss a beat. “Nothing,”
he says smoothly, sitting across from her like a king at council, like a man who hasn’t just made the first move in a betrayal he’ll never be able to take back.
“Just scouting ahead. We’ve got a longer walk tomorrow. I wanted to make sure the path’s still viable.”
It’s a half-truth, which makes it worse than a lie.
I take my seat beside him, feeling Luna’s gaze slice into me like a blade I’ve known before. She doesn’t speak, but the silence around her sharpens, tightening like a noose. I say nothing. I do not contradict Lucien. That’s not my role. Not yet.
And because of that—because I do not speak—I feel something inside her shutter closed.
The others return, loud and thoughtless. Elias drops beside her, knocking his shoulder into hers like they haven’t nearly gotten us exiled twice in one day. Silas stumbles over his own feet, spins once for no reason, and lands with his head in Luna’s lap. She doesn’t push him off. She just stares at the fire like she’s trying to remember which world she belongs to.
She’s more sober now than she was an hour ago. Or maybe just more aware. The Hollow has a way of sharpening truths when you’re not ready to hold them.
Lucien begins talking again—plans, contingencies, threats and possible exits—but it washes over her. Over me. Because I know what she’s really hearing. The silence. The lack of questions. The quiet confirmation that whatever’s being hidden… it’s being done by the two men who are supposed to know better.
I can’t explain to her that sometimes protection and betrayal wear the same face. That Lucien isn’t the villain here—he’s just a man losing faith in the possibility of salvation. And me? I’m the fool who thinks maybe, if I stay quiet long enough, I’ll get the chance to save her myself.
I look down at my hands, fingers calloused and steady. The ancient script that coils up my wrists pulses once beneath the skin like it’s listening. Like it remembers the last Sin Binder who tried.
She burned.
Luna doesn’t know that part of the story.
And gods help me, I will make sure she never has to.
Lucien’s voice doesn’t waver, but his fingers curl into fists in his lap. A small betrayal of the calm he wears like armor. He’s cornered. Every move he makes from here on out is defensive, reactionary. And he knows it.
None of us like being backed into a wall. But Lucien? He was born in a fortress. It’s where he learned how to draw blood.
He doesn’t look at me, but he knows. He knows she’s whispering again.
Branwen’s voice curls in like smoke, slow and syrupy, threading through the old bond she left rotting between us. It won’t be like before, . You of all people should know I learn from my mistakes. And I made so many with you, didn’t I?
I close my eyes. Breathe in. Count back from ten in a tongue no one remembers anymore. It still doesn’t silence her. Nothing ever has.
Lucien shifts beside me.
“You’re quiet.”
I open my eyes but don’t turn to him.
“You’re loud enough for both of us.”
There’s a flicker of something behind his eyes—amusement, maybe. But it dies before it settles. He leans forward, elbows on knees, staring into the fire like it might rearrange its flames into a future we can survive.
“She’s pushing harder,”
I murmur, just for him.
Lucien’s jaw ticks. “I know.”
“She’s promising you freedom?”
“Among other things.”
I nod.
“And what are you promising her?”
Lucien doesn’t answer.
Across the fire, Elias is trying to balance a dagger on the bridge of his nose while Silas offers increasingly idiotic commentary like he’s narrating a sport no one wants to watch. Luna sits between them, arms folded, expression unreadable.
She hasn’t looked at either of us since we sat down. That’s punishment enough.
“She’s playing on the bond,”
I say softly.
“Testing where the cracks are.”
“She won’t find them in me.”
“She already has.”
He looks at me then, sharp and cold, and I let it hit me. Lucien needs enemies. It’s how he survives. I’ve played that role before. I’ll do it again if it keeps him steady.
“She’s not getting the girl,” he says.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it?
That’s the piece none of them see clearly yet. Not even him.
Branwen doesn’t need to get Luna. She only needs one of us to bring her close enough.
I glance back toward her, where she’s now leaning into Elias, eyes half-lidded, lips curved in the ghost of a smile meant to hurt someone—maybe herself.
Lucien follows my gaze.
“She’s drunk.”
“No. She’s pretending.”
He watches her a beat longer, then stands.
“I need air.”
“You need time,”
I say, voice low.
“But you won’t get it.”
Lucien’s gone before I finish.
And Luna looks at me.
No smile. No words. Just that stare—ancient and knowing and far too young all at once. She sees through all of it. Me. Lucien. The lies. The plans. The way this ends.
I nod once.
She tears tiny pieces from the bread in her hand and feeds them to the flames like she’s offering something to a god she no longer believes in.
She doesn’t know she has one sitting right here. And I’m no savior.
I don’t want to leave her.
The thought slips in quiet, but it lands like a stone. Dense. Absolute. Uncompromising.
I’ve followed Lucien for centuries. Through battles, through blood. Through betrayals I still taste when I close my eyes. But tonight, I want to tell him no. I want to shove the plan down his throat and stay right here, five paces from her, with this cursed warmth on my skin and the sound of her breathing making my bones ache.
She shifts. Crosses one ankle over the other.
It’s the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen.
Luna doesn’t know what she does to me. Or maybe she does. Maybe she sees all of it—the hunger I’ve spent years burying beneath logic and lectures. The desire that lives in my hands and my teeth and the way I say her name only when no one is listening.
I was not made for softness. But she has it in her. And I want to be near it until it scalds me.
She’s the moon, I think, watching the firelight dance over her cheeks. The stars, the galaxy—all strung together in the shape of a girl who has no idea she’s carrying the whole fucking universe inside her.
And I’m going to walk away.
Because if Branwen commands it—if she ever uses that frayed, rotted bond to pull me toward Luna with a blade in my hand—I know I would be the one to gut myself before I touched her. But that wouldn’t stop my body. Not if I’m commanded.
That’s the danger. That’s why I sit here in silence, letting Lucien spin his half-truths and justifications, knowing I’ll follow. Not because I agree. But because we—Lucien, Caspian, me—are the ones with hooks in our flesh.
And she cannot afford to be close to anything that can be turned against her.
So I say nothing. I don’t challenge Lucien. I don’t look at Luna when her eyes skim over me like she’s checking to see if I’m still here.
I am. But not for long.
I stare into the fire, and I memorize her—every freckle, every twitch of her fingers, every breath. I won’t let myself say goodbye. I won’t let myself feel the weight of this.
Because if I do—I’ll stay.
And staying might kill her.
Lucien’s voice cuts through the low hum of conversation, sharp and clipped like he’s barely keeping the leash on whatever command he’s choking back. “.”
My name. Just that. But it carries weight, the kind of weight that has nothing to do with tone and everything to do with urgency. The undercurrent of expectation, the tightening noose of the plan we haven’t spoken aloud near her.
I rise.
My knees creak. Dust clings to the fabric of my pants where I’d knelt too long in the dirt. And still, I hesitate.
She’s leaned back now, one hand braced in the grass behind her, the other cradling a half-eaten fig she’s forgotten to finish. Her eyes—gods, those eyes—track me like I’m a shadow she’s not sure how to name. Not suspicion. Not quite curiosity. Just something in the in-between, where knowing lives.
I meet her gaze. I shouldn’t. But I do.
And she quirks a brow at me—mischievous, knowing, almost mocking. It guts me. That she can still smile like that. That she trusts me with that.
So I give her one back. Casual. Easy. The kind of smile that would fool anyone who didn’t know what I was.
She does.
Her eyes narrow just slightly. Smile deepening. Like she sees the lie and doesn’t mind. Like she’s letting me pretend, just this once, that we’re two people sitting near a fire, not one girl made of stars and the ancient thing that wants to swallow her whole.
A thousand things pass between us in that look. None of them said.
I want to stay. You can’t. I know.
I turn before I unravel. Before I forget the plan. Before I let my selfishness anchor me to this place I know we must abandon. Lucien is pacing near the treeline, his jaw clenched, his whole body taut with that dangerous strain he only lets show when he thinks he’s the last man standing.
As I move toward him, I feel her eyes on my back. Burning. Branding. And I wonder if she knows that if she had asked me to stay—just once—I would’ve.
Lucien doesn’t glance back when he says it.
“Stop looking so fucking defeated.”
He’s half a step ahead of me, boots cutting through brush with the kind of precision only fury can shape. Controlled. Calculated. But underneath it, I hear the shudder. He’s breaking apart and doesn’t even realize it yet. Or maybe he does. Maybe that’s what makes him speak like that—hard, cold, careless. As if none of this is bleeding us dry.
I keep my voice even. Measured.
“You don’t understand what this costs me.”
That stops him.
Lucien turns, face a razor’s edge of skepticism, but I don’t wait for him to speak. I don’t give him a chance to twist this into strategy, to reduce it to risk and reward. I give him the truth—raw and impossible and mine.
“I love her.”
The words don’t echo. They just…settle. Like dust on an untouched altar.
Lucien’s jaw flexes. Something flickers in his gaze—disbelief, maybe. Or worse, recognition. Because he knows. Knows what it means when a creature like me lets that kind of attachment root itself. Knows what I’d be willing to do, and more dangerously, what I won’t.
“I’ve loved her,”
I say, softer now.
“since the first time I saw her wield mercy like a weapon and refused to kneel.”
He scoffs under his breath, but doesn’t interrupt.
“She smiled like she knew every ruin that lived inside me—and wasn’t afraid of them. And I—I wanted to keep her from ever knowing what I was.”
Lucien’s gaze narrows.
“So you hid it. You let her fall for the others.”
“No,”
I say, calmly.
“I let her choose.”
He hates that answer. I see it in the way he turns away, jaw tight again, hands curling at his sides. Because Lucien doesn’t believe in choice when it comes to power. He believes in command. In dominion. In the inevitability of force.
And that’s where we differ.
“She doesn’t need more men taking from her,”
I say.
“or marking her like property. She needs people who will burn the world before they let her become something less than herself. Even if she doesn’t pick me. Even if she never looks at me that way again. I will not be another thing that devours her.”
Lucien finally looks back at me, something unreadable sharpening behind his eyes.
“Then why did you agree to this?”
“Because if we stay, if Branwen pulls the strings tighter, you won’t be able to resist her. And neither will I.”
My voice drops, low and final.
“And I would rather walk away now than be the one who lays her at Branwen’s feet.”
His stare lingers. Something in him softens, just for a breath. Then it's gone.
“We go at first light,”
he says, and it’s not a suggestion.
I nod.
But when he turns away, I don’t follow immediately. I tilt my head toward the night sky, searching for the stars she once traced with her fingers, naming them after monsters she claimed were misunderstood.
She was wrong about the stars.
But not about the monsters.
Ambrose
I wake with a mouth full of copper and regret.
The copper’s not blood. Not mine, anyway. Just the residual bite of old magic, scorched too deep into the ground to wash out. My cheek is pressed against stone—no, tile. Cool, cracked. Familiar.
Daemon’s grounds.
But that doesn’t make sense.
I groan, dragging a hand over my face. Something heavy slides off my chest—Silas’s leg. Disgusting. Sticky with gods-know-what. Probably wine. Or his own sweat. I shove it aside with a grunt and sit up, wincing as vertigo hits like a drunk fist.
This isn’t the Hollow. And it sure as hell isn’t Branwen’s sanctum.
The air is too still. Too knowing.
I blink against the dim haze as my vision adjusts, and my stomach curls as recognition slithers in. The courtyard. What’s left of it, anyway. Shattered arches above. Burned ivy veins crawling up blackened pillars. The sky overhead looks stretched—wrong. Like time itself got caught mid-breath.
I’m home.
Except… I shouldn’t be.
We shouldn’t be.
Because when I twist my neck and spot them sprawled out like a painting of aftermath, my pulse goes cold.
Elias. Flat on his back, one arm flung dramatically over his eyes like a poorly trained actor mid-tragedy. Silas—still snoring beside me, sticky, twitching. Riven, crouched at the edge of the courtyard like a wolf scenting a trap. And Luna.
Fuck.
She’s half-curled beside Riven, one hand still glowing faintly with residual power. Her breathing shallow. Her face... peaceful. As if none of them had just been ripped through godsdamned time.
I stand—too fast. The world lurches. I steady myself on a crumbled column, flexing my fingers like I’m counting how many bones still belong to me.
A month.
That’s how long it’s been.
Thirty days of absence. Of being yanked into Branwen’s orbit and held there like a prize she hadn’t decided what to do with yet. And now—I’m back. Just like that. Like someone flipped a coin and the Hollow decided to spit us out.
But the grounds shouldn’t look like this.
Daemon doesn’t look like this.
It’s rebuilding itself. Not from memory—but from grief.
A groan from behind me. Silas.
“Ugh. Are we dead?”
he mutters, blinking up at the sky.
“Because if this is the afterlife, it sucks. Smells like regret and man feet.”
“Get up,”
I snap. My voice sounds like gravel soaked in acid.
He blinks. “Ambrose?”
I don’t answer. I’m already walking toward Luna.
Riven tenses when I approach—predictable. Protective rage coiled just under his skin. He hasn’t changed. If anything, he looks worse. Like the time without me has been carved from his bones.
Luna stirs as I crouch. Her lashes flutter. She senses me before her eyes open, and when they do—gods, those eyes.
They burn.
“Ambrose,”
she whispers, breathless. And not in the pretty way.
I nod once, briskly.
“Well. I see you’ve all been busy.”
She frowns, eyes scanning me like she doesn’t trust what she’s seeing.
“We thought—”
“You were right to think it,”
I cut in, standing again, brushing invisible dust off my coat.
“I wasn’t supposed to come back. Which begs the question—who the fuck brought us here?”
No one answers.
Elias finally sits up, rubbing his temples.
“If this is a group hangover, I just want to say I do not consent to shared pain anymore.”
Silas groans beside him.
“I think I left my soul in the Hollow. Or maybe in the tavern. Hard to tell. Both had awful wine.”
I glance back at Luna. She’s still watching me. Not with hope. Not with relief.
With calculation.
Good. She’s learning.
“I suggest,”
I say coolly.
“we find shelter before Daemon decides to rebuild the dungeons first.”
She swallows, then nods. But the way she stands—the sway in her hips, the residual magic still clinging to her skin like a second skin—tells me one thing for certain.
This isn’t the Luna I left behind.
And that changes everything.
The house is exactly as we left it—gutted. Shattered glass embedded in the wood like splinters of memory. The smell of scorched magic still clings to the walls, thick and bitter. Caspian’s blood is dried in the cracks of the floorboards, and even though it’s been weeks, it hasn’t faded. That’s the kind of mark pain leaves—the kind that clings, digs, settles.
I step through the wreckage like a ghost retracing his death.
Branwen made him fight me. No, made me fight him. She didn't need power to do it—she had leverage. She whispered Caspian’s name like a threat, dangled his life on the edge of my restraint, and when that wasn't enough, she made me watch as he unraveled. I still don’t know how much of what he said was her influence and how much was real. Maybe I don’t want to know.
Behind me, the door creaks and Riven enters like a weapon unsheathed. Tense. Coiled. He doesn't ask if I’m alright. He never would. He only ever asks the things that matter.
“What the fuck happened?”
His voice is sharp, his boots grinding ash into the floor as he surveys the wreckage.
I don’t turn around.
“How the fuck should I know?”
I mutter.
“Branwen kept me locked in a room with no windows and nothing but the sound of my own blood echoing in my ears. Then I was here. That’s all I’ve got.”
That’s not all. But I’m not ready to explain what it felt like to watch someone I once trusted look me in the eye and choose obedience over survival.
Luna’s voice cuts through the staleness, low and too even.
“Where are the others?”
Her question shouldn’t crack anything in me. It does.
“Lucien? ? Caspian?”
Her voice sharpens with each name.
And that’s when I know.
She thinks they’re still here. That she’s just misplaced them in the ruins like misfiled memories. She doesn’t realize what they’ve done. That they’re gone. Voluntarily.
Riven stiffens beside me.
I turn to face her. She’s standing between the crumbling walls like a goddess misplaced in a battlefield—fury, power, confusion. But her eyes—those goddamn eyes—still look for him. Still scan the doorway for Lucien’s broad shoulders, ’s stillness, Caspian’s easy smirk.
“They’re not coming,” I say.
Her breath catches. Just slightly. Just enough.
“What?”
she asks, voice low.
“They’re not here,”
I repeat.
“And they won’t be.”
She blinks, shaking her head as if she can undo it by denial alone.
“You’re wrong.”
I wish I were. For once, I wish I didn’t know how this ends before the game finishes playing.
“No,”
I say.
“Lucien made a choice. followed. And Caspian…”
I pause, because that name still burns.
“He stayed behind.”
Luna steps back like I struck her. The magic around her hums, waking, responding to her grief like it wants to make something bleed for her.
Riven says nothing. He’s watching me. Waiting for me to finish delivering the blow I’ve been dragging out.
“They left for her,”
I say.
“They went willingly. To Branwen.”
The silence after is not quiet. It howls in the rafters, in the cracks of the stone, in the ruins of everything we were.
Then, softly—so quietly it almost doesn’t reach me—Luna says, “No.”
It’s not a protest.
It’s a promise.
I watch as something folds inside her. Not breaks—never breaks. She doesn't shatter, she crystallizes. Sharper. More dangerous.
Good.
Because we’re going to need her cruel. We’re going to need her strong.
And if the others think walking into Branwen’s lair buys us peace—then they’ve forgotten what she’s capable of.
Silas barrels into me like a drunken puppy that never learned about personal space or mortal boundaries. His arms wrap tight around my ribs with an over-exaggerated groan of affection, and I let out the kind of sigh that should be reserved for battlefield resignations.
“Ambrosio,”
he croons in my ear, squeezing harder.
“Gods, you smell like crypt dust and brooding. I missed you, man.”
I stare down at the top of his head.
“Let go of me or I’ll stab you with something dull and infect it.”
“You missed me too,”
he says, completely unfazed, clinging tighter.
“I’m like fungus—you just learn to live with me. Like emotional athlete’s foot.”
Elias saunters into view, arms crossed, silver eyes narrowed.
“Don’t let him touch you too long,”
he says, deadpan.
“He starts purring.”
“Only if you stroke behind my ears,”
Silas winks, not at me—at Luna, who stands behind Elias, arms folded over her chest, her expression unreadable.
My jaw clenches. She shouldn’t be here. None of them should be. The way the Hollow dumped us back here, like chewed bones into familiar rot, isn’t a gift. It’s a warning. But Silas’s arms are still around me, and until I get my bearings, I let him pretend we’re all whole.
“I’m going to count to three,”
I say, voice low.
He releases me on two.
I roll my shoulders and glance at the others—Riven, brooding like wrath personified; Elias, sarcastic armor firmly in place; Luna, watching me like she’s still waiting for the pieces to fall in a different pattern.
She speaks first.
“You’re thinner.”
It’s not a question.
“Branwen’s hospitality didn’t include nourishment.”
Her eyes narrow.
“And Caspian?”
I don’t answer. Her expression crumples for half a second before she catches it and forces herself still. Controlled. Like me.
I step closer, because I want her to flinch. She doesn’t.
“Do you know what your little rebellion cost?”
I ask her, soft and venom-laced.
“You mean saving your ass?”
she fires back, voice a blade.
“Funny,”
I say, tilting my head.
“because from where I was sitting, it looked like you lost.”
“You think this is winning?”
she snaps.
“No,”
I murmur, eyes dragging over the ruin.
“But I think it’s beginning.”
Something cold pulses between us. The others fall quiet. Even Silas senses it now—the shift in pressure. The feeling that this is the moment we all start choosing sides, whether we admit it or not.
“I’m not yours,”
I remind her.
“No,”
she says, stepping close enough that her voice is breath-warm.
“But you wish you were.”
Silas kicks his legs up onto the torn sofa like he’s royalty in a house that still smells like charred memories and blood-soaked regret. His grin is too wide, too bright for this place, and it should’ve been enough to ignore him. But then he says it.
“She’s better than mold, Ambrose.”
The words hang there—dumb and saccharine, like everything that crawls out of his idiotic mouth—and still, it sets something off in me.
“The fuck is wrong with you?”
I snap, sharper than I intend. But he shrugs like it’s a badge of honor.
“I’m right, though. Mold grows on you. She grows in you.”
He’s too pleased with himself. Too amused. And I want to shove him through the nearest wall. Instead, I grip the countertop between me and Luna tighter, the granite cool against my palms. A barrier. Useless, but necessary. Because she’s standing on the other side of it, looking at me like she’s already seen through the cracks I keep so perfectly sealed.
The pull has changed.
Before, it was faint—nagging at the edge of something primal, but easy to dismiss. Now it coils in my ribs, threads through my lungs when she breathes too close. I feel it under my skin, a thrum that makes me sick with how much I want to be near her and how violently I reject the idea of it.
“You’re back,”
she says. Simple. Steady. But there’s something in her eyes—something ancient and amused. Like she already knows the answer to a question I haven’t asked.
“Regrettably,”
I murmur, watching the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. The motion is innocuous. Mundane. It shouldn’t make my thoughts spiral.
I glance at Elias. He’s lingering near the doorway, arms crossed, feigning disinterest while his eyes track every inch of her. The idiot probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. And Silas, well—he’s humming a lewd melody and mouthing exaggerated kissy faces every time I glance his way. It’s not helpful.
“You think we’re all just going to fall back into step now that you’re here?”
Luna asks, cutting the distance between us by a single step. She doesn’t touch the counter, but she might as well have shoved a knife into it with her tone.
“Fall back into step? No.”
I smirk.
“You’ve all gotten worse in my absence. And considerably more attached.”
Her lips twitch, a half-smile I can’t read.
“And you’re not?”
I let silence answer. Not because I don’t have a response—but because the only one that matters would sound too much like truth. And truth is the last thing I’m ready to offer her.
She’s looking at Riven, but her magic’s reaching toward me. Just a flicker. A thread. And I hate that I want to touch it.
“I’m going to kill Lucien,”
I mutter under my breath.
Silas perks up from the couch.
“What for?”
“Leaving me alone with all of you.”
“Sounds like jealousy,”
Elias says, too loud, too amused.
“Sounds like you want a broken nose,”
I fire back.
“Only if Luna’s the one sitting on me while it happens.”
“Elias,”
Luna sighs, warning-laced.
“Sorry. Mostly.”
“Tell us what happened.”
I look up at him slowly, dragging my gaze from Luna’s face—still half-curled in that self-satisfied way that makes it impossible to read her—to Riven’s. The fucker’s always been too direct, too volatile, too Riven. And yet, here he is again, demanding answers like I owe him anything more than my survival. I roll my neck once, the tension—no, the pressure—coiling in my spine, deliberate and slow.
“You want the story?”
I say, voice low, just loud enough to draw every eye in the ruined common room.
“Fine. I’ll give you the bones.”
Silas, who has now hung himself upside-down over the back of a battered loveseat like he’s preparing to audition for some demon circus, perks up with exaggerated interest. Elias doesn’t move, but I feel his stare like static against my skin.
“She kept me in a room,”
I begin, dragging the words out like smoke.
“No windows. No clock. No sound but hers. That voice? She doesn’t ask, Riven. She rewrites.”
“What’d she do to you?”
Elias interrupts, but his voice lacks the usual bite. It’s quieter. A little too careful.
My smile isn’t kind.
“She tried to convince me to turn. Said I was wasting potential. That all of you were pawns in her war and I was meant for more.”
Silas mimes gagging behind Luna. I don’t laugh.
“She made Caspian fight me.”
The room stills.
Riven’s brows snap down, fists clenching at his sides. Elias mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like fucking hell. Luna… Luna moves half a step forward before stopping herself.
“She used him like a toy soldier,”
I continue.
“Threw him at me, bloodied and glamoured, doped up on some cursed Hollow shit that made his eyes bleed shadow. And when I didn’t fight back—when I tried to reach him—she punished me for his hesitation. He screamed like his skin was on fire, and I couldn’t get to him.”
“And now he’s gone,”
Luna says softly.
I meet her eyes.
“Now I’m gone.”
Riven stares at me like he’s trying to decide if I’m lying. I’m not. That’s the worst part. There’s no tactic here, no manipulation. Just truth. Raw and acidic in my mouth.
“She’s stronger than you think,”
I say finally.
“Stronger than any of us were ready for. And she’s not after us anymore. She wants you, Luna. Not just your magic. Not just your blood. She wants what you’re becoming.”
Elias shifts uncomfortably.
“That’s supposed to sound ominous, right?”
“It’s not ominous, it’s prophecy,”
I say, gaze slicing through the room.
“We’re past the point of saving. The question is who gets burned first.”
Silas drops to the floor with a thud and groans.
“You’re such a buzzkill.”
“You’re welcome,”
I reply, voice dry.
But even as they fall into their rhythms again—Silas joking, Elias muttering, Riven glaring—I keep my eyes on her. Because beneath all of it—the returned banter, the tattered remains of camaraderie—I can feel it. The shift. The inevitability.