Luna
I don’t knock right away. I stand in front of the door, staring at the warped wood, the small, almost imperceptible cracks where the magic’s held it together all these years. This place breathes in memory. Every hallway stinks of something left unresolved.
And Ambrose Dalmar is nothing if not unresolved.
The six-pack dangles from my hand like a peace offering. Or maybe a bribe. Or maybe just something to do with my hands while I figure out what the hell I’m doing here.
I’m not jealous.
I’m not.
Seeing him kiss Keira didn’t hollow me out the way Elias smiling at that girl in town did, that sharp twist in my stomach that felt like a scream I couldn’t release. Ambrose doesn’t belong to me. He doesn’t even want to. I’m not sure he wants anyone, not really.
But I know what heartbreak looks like. And I know what it feels like to have the person who once reached for your throat now pretend they were always aiming for your hand.
Keira is poison. Pretty poison. The kind that tastes sweet when it sinks its teeth in. And Ambrose—he’s the sort of man who would drink every drop just to prove it didn’t burn him.
So I knock.
The sound is steady, almost polite. It’s what he deserves, I think. Space. A choice. The one thing no one ever gives him.
There’s a pause. Then.
“If you’re here to slap me for letting her kiss me, get in line. I think Elias and Riven are already sharpening their claws.”
I huff a breath—amused, tired, oddly relieved—and push the door open.
He’s seated at the edge of the bed, shirt sleeves rolled up, hands steepled between his knees like he’s meditating or plotting someone’s death. His eyes flick up to me, sharp as ever, then down to the six-pack.
“You brought bribes,”
he says.
“How thoughtful.”
“I brought beer,”
I correct, stepping inside.
“And maybe friendship. But mostly beer.”
He gestures lazily toward the nightstand, and I set the bottles down there, ignoring how his eyes track my every movement. Not like he wants me. But like he’s cataloging me. Assessing value, threat, motive.
“You don’t have to,”
he says after a beat.
“Whatever this is. You don’t have to do it.”
“I know.”
I sit beside him, not too close.
“I want to.”
He doesn’t respond. Just cracks open a bottle and drinks like it might tell him something the rest of us can’t.
I watch his throat move as he swallows, the way his fingers tighten slightly around the neck of the glass. Controlled. Measured. Like everything about him. But his eyes betray him—just a little. There’s a flicker of something rawer, more dangerous underneath.
“She shouldn’t have come,” I murmur.
He laughs. Just once. Bitter, quiet.
“She always comes back. That’s the thing with people like Keira. They like to make you their unfinished business.”
“She hurt you.”
“And I let her.”
He turns his head, looks at me full-on now.
“You think I’m the victim in this? Sweetheart, I handed her the knife.”
“You’re allowed to be hurt.”
He studies me like I’m a puzzle with missing pieces. Then he says, voice low, almost too soft.
“You’re not what I expected.”
“Good.”
Another sip of beer. Then, silence. But not an empty one. It’s weighted. A truce.
“Next time,”
he says slowly.
“bring tequila.”
“Next time, don’t let the ex wrap herself around your neck like a parasite.”
That earns me a smile. Barely there. But it softens the edge of him.
“Noted,”
he murmurs.
“But I can’t promise I won’t make things complicated.”
I lean back on my hands, stretch my legs out beside his.
“I specialize in complicated.”
Ambrose doesn’t look at me. He drinks instead. Slow, like he’s savoring the way the alcohol scorches down his throat. Like maybe that heat is preferable to whatever’s sitting beneath his skin.
I reach for a bottle and crack it open, the hiss of the cap breaking the quiet. I don’t know what makes me say it. Maybe the way his jaw’s tight, locked like he’s still holding something in. Maybe it’s the way the weight of silence feels suddenly too full.
Or maybe it’s just that I get it. That hollow feeling you carry long after someone’s buried the knife in your spine and left you to rot around it.
“I had someone once,”
I say, voice casual, but it costs me to keep it there.
“An ex. Real charming type. Warm hands. Warmer lies.”
Ambrose shifts. A flick of his gaze, nothing more. But I have his attention now.
“I walked in on him. Two years ago. Him. Her. The couch I bought. The blanket I kept on it.”
I don’t let the bitterness coat my voice. Not because I’m past it, but because I won’t give it power. Not now.
“I didn’t scream,”
I add.
“Didn’t cry. Just left. Quiet. Like maybe if I didn’t make a sound, the humiliation wouldn’t echo so loud.”
Ambrose is staring at me now. No smugness. No challenge. Just that unreadable coolness that always makes me wonder what’s spinning behind his eyes.
“He came back six weeks later,”
I say, sipping my beer.
“Said he’d made a mistake. Said I was everything. That she didn’t mean anything.”
Ambrose scoffs.
“Let me guess—he was drunk. Or lonely. Or had some kind of divine epiphany that only came with his dick in someone else.”
My lips twitch.
“Something like that.”
He’s quiet for a beat, then.
“What did you say?”
I glance over, meet his gaze head-on.
“I told him to choke on his epiphany.”
Ambrose’s smile isn’t big, but it’s real. Brief. But it lingers in his eyes.
“Sounds like he deserved it,” he says.
“They always do.”
The silence after isn’t awkward. It’s companionable. A shared trench between two people who know what it feels like to be collateral damage in someone else’s war.
He tilts his bottle toward me slightly, a mock toast.
“To bad decisions and worse exes.”
I clink mine against his.
“And to surviving them.”
We drink.
And for the first time since I’ve known him, Ambrose looks less like a man trying to win, and more like someone trying to stay afloat.
He doesn’t say thank you. He won’t. But the way he lets the quiet sit between us instead of filling it with some veiled insult or slippery deflection?
That’s close enough.
“Is this the part where you tell me we’re supposed to be together and shit?”
His voice is dry, but I hear the sharp edge underneath. Like he’s bracing for it. Another prophecy wrapped in soft words. Another tether knotted too tight.
I snort, lifting the bottle to my lips. “No,”
I say.
“Honestly, it doesn’t have to happen. You don’t owe me anything.”
Ambrose glances at me. Cautious. Calculating. Like he’s waiting for the punchline I’m not delivering.
I meet his gaze head-on.
“Fate’s overrated,”
I say.
“So are rules. And expectations. We’ve all been pulled around like puppets—by the Hollow, by Branwen, by the bonds. I don’t need to add to that.”
He doesn’t speak, but the flicker in his eyes is telling. A crack in the cool veneer.
“I don’t want someone because the world says I’m supposed to,”
I continue.
“I want the ones who look at me and choose me anyway. Even when it’s complicated. Even when it hurts. Especially then.”
There’s a long pause. The kind that stretches into something heavier if you let it. But I won’t.
“So no,”
I add, softer now.
“I’m not here to convince you of anything. I just thought… maybe you needed a beer and someone who doesn’t want anything from you.”
Ambrose exhales slowly, gaze drifting away. He rolls the bottle between his palms.
“You talk like someone who’s lost things.”
“I’ve lost everything,”
I say quietly.
“And still found more.”
He finally nods. Just once. A flick of movement, but something in him eases. The tightness in his shoulders, the strain behind his voice. It doesn’t disappear—but it settles.
We sit in silence a while longer, the kind that doesn’t feel empty, just still. There’s no spark of fate here. No looming bond. Just two people on the edge of something, choosing—for now—not to fall.
Then he says.
“You’re not what I expected.”
I smirk.
“I’d hate to be predictable.”
He huffs a laugh, and I tuck my legs up under me, leaning back against the cold stone wall. Outside, the wind shifts. Distant murmurs of movement stir beyond the ruined courtyard. Something’s coming. But not yet.
For now, I let my eyes close. Just for a moment. Just long enough to breathe.
He hasn’t said much in the last ten minutes. Just drinks his beer, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the broken archway, as if it holds all the answers he’s too tired to chase.
I don’t press. That’s not why I’m here.
But the silence makes room for something else—something I’ve been thinking about since the Trial. Since that moment he cornered me, eyes cold and voice so casual, as if he wasn’t offering to unmake me in exchange for distance.
“You remember the deal?”
I ask softly, not looking at him.
His posture shifts slightly. He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t need to.
“Back in the Trial,”
I continue, fingers tightening around the glass bottle.
“You said if I slept with you, you’d leave me alone. That was your offer. One night. One favor.”
Ambrose finally turns to me, slowly, like he's waiting for the punchline again.
“You declined.”
“I offered a different favor,”
I say.
“One you haven’t used.”
He studies me, unreadable. But I see the flicker. The weight behind the stare. The way he tries to stay detached but doesn’t quite manage it.
“I’m not here to collect,”
I say, shrugging.
“But maybe you are. And if you are—fine. You can have it.”
His brow lifts, faintly.
“Just like that?”
I meet his eyes.
“Just like that.”
He leans forward, elbows on knees, voice low and too smooth.
“So you’re offering yourself to me now?”
I don’t flinch.
“I’m offering you a choice. No strings. No expectations. I don’t want anything from you, Ambrose. But if you want something? I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand why.”
He exhales, eyes narrowing, like I’ve ruined his game by playing it better than he expected.
“I don’t need a rebound,”
he says finally.
I nod.
“That’s not what I said. I said I’d let you have it. If you need it.”
His gaze drops to the bottle in his hand. Then back to me.
“You confuse me,”
he murmurs.
“Good.”
Another beat of silence stretches between us.
Then he says.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”
“Maybe not. But nothing about us ever has.”
And I don’t mean us, like a couple. I mean us—the Sins, the bindings, the unraveling fate knotted in our blood. None of this was ever meant to make sense. But I’ve stopped waiting for clarity. All I want now is control over the parts I can give freely.
I don’t say anything more. I’ve given him space to think about it, the offer, the power I handed over without asking for anything in return.
But I can feel him watching me. Not with hunger. With calculation.
I crack open another beer, the hiss sharp in the quiet between us. “So,”
I say, tilting my head back against the wall.
“You going to tell me who the hell they are?”
Ambrose lifts his gaze lazily, as if I’ve interrupted a far more important thought. “Who?”
“The Council,”
I murmur.
“Keira. Lorian. The third one. Why are they here, really? Don’t give me the pretty version.”
A dry smile curves his mouth.
“You think I’ve ever offered anyone the pretty version of anything?”
I arch a brow, waiting.
He leans back, one boot tapping lightly against the stone floor.
“They aren’t like us,”
he says.
“But they’re not entirely different either. Immortal, yes. But not born of sin. They weren’t forged from the Hollow. They’re... appointed.”
“By who?”
His smile stretches wider. “By us.”
I blink.
“The Sins created the Council?”
“Appointed them,”
he corrects, his voice low, amused by my surprise.
“A long, long time ago. We needed someone to keep order. Pretend there were rules, structure, hierarchy. It was never about control. It was about optics.”
I frown. “Why?”
“Because even monsters need something to kneel to. People panic when there’s nothing above them. So we gave them the illusion of higher power. A council of immortals to manage the world while we stayed buried.”
I swirl the beer in my hand, letting that sink in.
“But now you’re back.”
Ambrose hums.
“And they’re scrambling. They want to be the ones who knew. Who managed our return. They want to look like they’re still in control. They want to be the welcoming committee of gods they never created.”
“They think if they align with you,”
I say.
“if they show unity—maybe they won’t be erased.”
“Exactly.”
The firelight in the corner flickers, catching the edge of his cheekbone. He looks too calm for someone who’s describing the political manipulation of entire bloodlines.
I glance toward the open window. The wind carries the distant sound of Silas laughing—chaotic, untethered. And I wonder, not for the first time, how many more pieces on this board are being moved without our knowing.
“They’re not here because of me,” I murmur.
“No,”
Ambrose says, almost gently.
“They’re here because we’re no longer bound. And they’re afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
He looks at me, and something ancient coils behind his eyes.
“Afraid we’ll remember what we were before we let them exist.”
I stare into the half-empty bottle, the fizz long gone flat. Ambrose hasn’t moved in minutes, still lounging with that infuriating stillness only immortals seem to possess—like the world is just something they tolerate.
“So,”
I murmur, not quite looking at him.
“This is a school for the supernatural. But I still don’t know who’s actually in charge. Is it the Council? Blackwell who’s never here? Or is it you?”
His lips twitch.
“Define ‘in charge.’”
“Who came first?”
I ask instead.
“You? Them? All of this?”
He hums under his breath, the sound like silk dragged across something sharp.
“The Council was appointed by us. You already know that. But if you’re asking who came first…”
His gaze lifts, distant now, like he's watching something buried under centuries.
“We did. The Sins. Not as we are now. But we were… forged with the world’s first shudder. The Hollow shaped us, bled its first instincts into form. Before names. Before rules. Before your kind drew breath.”
I blink slowly.
“That’s a lot to swallow.”
“Then chew slower,”
he replies, maddeningly unbothered.
My fingers tighten around the bottle.
“You’re telling me you’ve been alive since the beginning of the world.”
“No,”
he says, with a mockingly thoughtful tilt of his head.
“I’m telling you the world has existed in cycles. And in every version of it, we’ve been there. Not always awake. Not always whole. But always present. Like marrow beneath the skin of civilization. We are not just a product of this world, . We are its instincts made flesh.”
I stare at him.
“So you’re not just old. You’re pre-everything.”
He smiles slowly.
“Now you’re getting it.”
I laugh once, breathless.
“Not at all terrifying.”
“On the contrary.”
He tilts his head.
“You should be terrified.”
I meet his eyes, unwilling to flinch.
“And yet I’m not.”
He studies me in that calculating way of his, the way someone might study a storm cloud—waiting to see if it will break or pass.
“Then maybe you haven’t realized what that makes you,”
he says softly.
“What?”
He leans in, voice low, meant only for me.
“If we are the instincts of the world, then you… you’re the one thing it built to bind them.”
“Well,”
I say, rising from the edge of his bed, empty bottle swinging from my fingertips.
“I haven’t had nearly enough to drink to process the fact that you and your brothers are basically prehistorical demi-gods forged from the chaos of the universe.”
Ambrose arches a brow.
“A generous title.”
“Not generous enough,”
I mutter, brushing imaginary dust from my thigh as if that’ll help shake off the weight of everything he just unloaded.
“So. I’m gonna go find another beer. Or a shot. Maybe both. Call it a night. Let my brain slowly implode in peace.”
I expect him to say something. A snide comment, maybe. A clever dig. But he just watches me. Cold. Curious. Like he’s waiting to see which version of me walks out the door—Layla’s sister or the Sin Binder; the girl or the storm.
I offer him a two-fingered salute and make for the hallway. The air outside his room is cooler somehow. Cleaner. Like even the magic doesn’t want to linger around Ambrose too long.
I descend the stairs, one hand trailing the rail, thoughts still tangled in him, in what he said. That they were shaped from instinct. From the Hollow itself. That I’m the thing the world made to cage them.
But that’s not what I’ve done. I haven’t caged them. I’ve let them choose.
I step into the corridor where the stones hum faintly beneath my soles, the bones of Daemon rebuilding themselves in real time. It breathes here. Slowly. Like it’s remembering who we are.
I head toward the kitchen, where I know Elias stashed a bottle of something wicked behind the dried blood-and-ink spellbooks. If I’m lucky, I’ll find Silas trying to juggle knives or planning something ill-advised. If I’m luckier, I’ll run into neither and have five minutes to figure out what the hell comes next.
Because I don’t know if Ambrose is cracking or if he’s just finally starting to show the pieces he wants me to see. And I don’t know which is more dangerous.
Lucien
She dresses us like we’re meant to amuse her.
Black suits, pressed within an inch of suffocation, cut to accentuate our bodies like we’re ornaments—glimmering reminders of what she’s stolen. A collar without the leather. A leash without the chain. Branwen’s idea of aesthetic subjugation.
I kneel. Not by choice.
Branwen likes when power looks like surrender. When it parades in front of her as if it chose to kneel. Her throne isn't carved from stone, but from illusion—crafted from men like us who should’ve never bowed to anyone.
But Dominion doesn't work here. Not against her. I’ve tried. The moment I opened my mouth to command, it snapped shut—lips frozen mid-order, lungs locking down like her name was etched into my marrow.
I dig my fingernails into the wood floor beneath me. Hard. I want the pain. I want it to remind me I’m still in here somewhere. That this isn’t real. That I’m not hers.
But I am.
At least, for now.
Caspian feeds her grapes. One by one. And he jokes, flirts, smiles with teeth that should be tearing her apart—but I know Caspian.
I know the slow burn of loathing behind his dimples. The careful way he chooses the softest grapes, the ones that’ll burst between her teeth, as if he's imagining something else popping.
She leans back, legs crossed, red silk pooling like blood around her thighs. “Lucien,”
she purrs.
I don’t look at her. I don’t blink.
“Don’t be rude,”
she says lightly.
“Look at me.”
My chin jerks upward like it’s tethered to a string she pulls. My neck aches with how hard I fought it. But I meet her gaze.
“Much better.”
Her smile is sweet poison.
“Now say something nice.”
I glare.
Branwen’s eyes flash, the command curling tighter around my throat. “Lucien.”
My mouth opens.
Closes.
Opens again.
“You… look beautiful.”
It tastes like ash. Like swallowing glass. Like betrayal—to myself, to everything I swore I wouldn’t become.
She hums and shifts her gaze. “Orin,”
she coos.
“tell me everything you’ve learned about little .”
Orin stands. Slowly. Controlled. But I see the flicker in his jaw, the clench in his fists. He doesn’t want to. But he will.
Because Branwen made sure this binding didn’t just cut deep. It’s carved into the spaces we can’t reach—the places where magic and instinct blur.
“She’s growing faster than you expected,”
Orin says, voice a blade wrapped in velvet.
“The Hollow responds to her. Doors open. Paths clear. Her power’s becoming instinctual. She’s no longer pulling from us—she’s pulling from it.”
Branwen smiles.
“Good girl,”
she murmurs. And for a moment, I think she’s talking about .
But no. She’s talking about herself.
Because Branwen thinks this is a win. Thinks we’re hers. That can’t reach us. That she’s winning.
But she’s wrong.
doesn’t need to steal us back. She just needs to keep going. To grow. Because the deeper she sinks into her power, the more this binding cracks. I can feel it.
Just beneath the surface, I’m still Lucien Virelius.
And when the leash snaps—I will make her regret ever dressing me in black.
Branwen preens like this is her coronation. Her throne is the cracked marble of a desecrated chapel, the room redolent with old power and something fouler—her perfume, maybe, or the stench of control masquerading as victory.
Caspian lounges beside her, all glossy indifference and rakish charm, but I see the twitch in his jaw, the tension he hides behind that smile.
She demands devotion. He gives her mockery.
She opens her mouth for another grape, like some bored empress. And Caspian—Gods bless his petty heart—shoves it too far.
She chokes.
Not dramatically. Not gasping or clutching at her throat. Just a graceless little gag, eyes watering, fingers fluttering inelegantly as she swallows down her pride and the fruit that almost took her out.
A sound slips out of me—sharp, low, and uncontainable.
A snort.
I shouldn't. But I do. Because watching her unravel for even half a second feeds the monster in my chest that wants her on her knees.
Her head snaps toward me.
I feel it before she even says a word—the crushing command of her will bearing down like a boot to the spine.
"Silence," she says, voice smooth but venom-laced.
The word wraps around my throat like a noose. My mouth clamps shut. My body tenses with the restraint of it. I grind my teeth, jaw aching, every muscle screaming to move, to speak, to retaliate—but I can’t.
Not until she lets me.
Not until she’s had her laugh, reclaimed her dominance, and reminded us all that we’re puppets carved by her hands now.
Caspian doesn’t flinch. He smirks. “My bad,”
he murmurs innocently.
“Didn’t mean to trigger your gag reflex. Must be all the lies you’re used to swallowing.”
Her eyes narrow. But she doesn’t punish him.
Not yet.
She’s saving it. Tucking it away like a thorn in silk. Branwen likes her vengeance slow. Likes us waiting for it. Dreading it.
That’s her real game.
But Caspian just leans back, fingers trailing along the stem of the wine glass she handed him like he’s touching her throat.
And I sit there. Silenced. Seething. Fingernails carving crescents into wood.
Because one day, Branwen will choke on more than fruit.
Orin’s voice is a blade disguised as balm.
He leans back against the far wall like a man unbothered, a scholar with all the time in the world, and not one of us sees the subtle flex of his fingers, the white-knuckled grip on the spine of the book he pulls from thin air. Not conjured. Just there—as if his grief carved it into existence.
“Shall I read for you, Branwen?”
he asks, and his tone is gentler than I expect. But Orin’s gentleness is always a threat in velvet.
She purrs approval, her arms draped wide across the bone-carved arms of her throne, like she’s the goddess of some rotted temple and not a girl who’s deluded herself into thinking we’ll love her if she breaks us clean enough.
I feel her power roll across the room again. Not like ’s. ’s pulls. Branwen’s demands.
Caspian shifts, stretching his legs out, rolling his eyes upward in a way that reads dear gods, someone save me, and Orin flips the book open with the gravity of a man reading someone's sentence.
His voice—measured, rich, layered with something old—fills the room.
“She wept not for herself, but for the hunger in others,
For the hands that take and call it worship.
For the knife that called itself mercy—
And the mouth that called it love.”*
The silence that follows isn’t peace. It’s tension coiled in velvet.
Branwen blinks slowly. Doesn’t flinch. But I know her well enough now to see the shift. The slight curl of her lip. That’s not the praise she was hoping for. Orin didn’t read to soothe her.
He read to gut her.
And he did it with poetry.
Caspian smothers a grin behind his wine glass.
Orin closes the book with a snap that echoes.
I glance at him. His face is carved from calm. But his jaw ticks, his eyes—so often distant—are locked on Branwen like she’s an infection he can’t scrub from the bones of his past.
Because she took something from him too.
He loved once.
And it wasn’t her.
And now she knows it.
Branwen leans forward, chin resting on her hand, watching Orin with the expression of a cat deciding which bird to pluck next.
“I prefer something lighter next time, Orin,”
she says smoothly.
“Unless grief is all you’ve got left to offer me.”
His smile is a slash of something bitter.
“Grief,”
he says, voice steady.
“is all you’ve earned.”
She says nothing to that. Just tilts her head and stares at him like she’s memorizing where to cut next time.
And I sit there, quiet. Useless.
"Lucien, come."
The words slither from her mouth like they were born in the dark—command dressed as invitation, sweetness soaked in power. I rise because I have to, not because I want to. Every movement is betrayal stitched into my limbs, muscle locking against bone in futile resistance. I can’t even sneer. Not when she’s carved obedience into my blood.
Her posture says everything. She stretches languidly, arms over the back of her throne like a goddess grown drunk on her own power. She’s basking in it. Feeding off of mine.
She tilts her head. "Kiss me."
It’s not a suggestion. The compulsion crashes through me with the weight of stone—thick and immediate, scraping down my spine as if someone’s yanked a thread straight from my soul. My body stutters forward, once, twice. I don’t want this. I don’t want her mouth or her hands or the scent she’s doused herself in to convince us she’s soft. She’s not. She’s blade and blood beneath it all. And I’ve cut myself on her before.
Every part of me coils in silent revolt, and she watches it—every flicker of hesitation, every drop of loathing rising behind my eyes. She likes it. My resistance is part of the ritual for her. My disgust is just another affirmation that she has me under her thumb. I could kill her for it. If I were free.
But then Caspian moves.
He steps forward with the same grace he always wears, fluid and unassuming. No warning. No glance. Just bends at the waist, leans in, and presses his mouth to hers. He’s smooth as sin, fingers grazing her jaw, and he kisses her like it’s nothing. Like it costs him nothing.
But I see it. I feel it. It costs him everything.
The spell fractures. My limbs jolt like strings cut from a marionette, and suddenly the command in my marrow has nowhere to go. I reel with it—cloaked in invisible shame and savage relief. I didn’t have to do it. She didn’t get me. Not this time.
Caspian draws back, too composed, too quick to cover the depth of the sacrifice. His face is blank, a mask that only someone who’s bled beside him would recognize for what it is. Pain, worn quiet. Duty, stitched into the hollow behind his eyes. He turns to her with that same old smirk, that lilt in his voice that makes women drop their morals and men drop their guards.
“Why don’t we go back to your room, hmm?”
he murmurs, like it’s his idea. Like he’s dying to be alone with her.
Branwen beams, utterly predictable. She always was shallow enough to mistake seduction for submission. She slips her hand into his, lets herself be pulled to her feet with a satisfied little sigh, and preens like she’s won some prize.
She hasn’t won. Not even close.
I don’t follow their exit. I don’t track the way her red dress flares as they vanish down the corridor. I look at him. Only him.
Caspian doesn’t turn until the last second, but when he does, his gaze hits me square in the chest. No words. Just one look.
And it wrecks me.
Because I see it all—the ache, the apology, the weight of what he just did to protect me. To protect us. He’ll distract her. He’ll endure her. He’ll lie there with her mouth on his neck and her hands on his skin and he’ll do it for us.
For the team.
For the Sins.
For the rebellion we haven’t spoken aloud yet, but are all quietly planning.
And I’m not a man who believes in pity.
But I feel it. For him. For me. For what we’ve all been turned into by the binders who think they own us.
I will return the favor, one day.
And when I do, it won’t be mercy I give her.
It will be war.
Orin tosses the book like it’s made of glass and he’s daring it to shatter. The heavy thud it makes against the table is so jarring in this palace of manipulated calm that the silence afterward feels louder than the impact. He doesn’t look at us. Just drags his hands over his face and leans forward like the weight of his centuries is finally dragging him under.
“I wish I were dead,”
he mutters, voice low and jagged, not poetic or wise. Not Orin.
For a moment, I don't move.
“I’m tired,”
Orin continues, words muffled behind his palms.
“Tired of pretending there’s nobility in this kind of survival. That being caged with grace makes it any less of a prison.”
“You want to talk about cages?”
I say, the venom behind my voice quieter than it should be.
“Try being leashed to a woman who turns love into a collar and makes you say thank you for it.”
Orin lifts his head just enough to meet my eyes. His are raw. Not red. Not tear-glossed. Just stripped of every filter he usually hides behind.
“At least she doesn’t make you betray the only thing that ever made you feel… right.”
I look away.
Because I know who he’s talking about.
Because I remember the moment he was dragged from ’s side like a limb being torn off—silent, slow, brutal. No fight. Just obedience laced into his soul like poison. And he’s never forgiven himself for how easy it was.
“She’ll kill him,”
he says softly, gaze flicking toward the hallway where Caspian vanished.
“One way or another. Caspian can play the fool, but you know how that story ends.”
I clench my jaw so tightly it sings with pain.
“I know.”
We say nothing more for a beat, both watching the hallway as if we could anchor him through it. But we can’t.
Orin slumps back into his chair, dragging his hand through his hair like he could pull the command out of his scalp with enough friction. The wood beneath his palms is scarred from where he’s dug into it, over and over, every time she’s left us in this room dressed like her trophies.
“She dressed me in this,”
he says flatly.
“And I let her. I fucking thanked her.”
The disgust in his voice is foreign. Orin doesn’t speak that way. He doesn’t snap. He doesn’t crack.
But tonight, he’s unraveling in front of me.
And the part of me that still remembers loyalty—it twitches. Just once. Before I shove it down.
“Don’t make me feel something about this, Orin,”
I murmur.
“I can barely hold together what I’ve got.”
He lets out a rough sound—half laugh, half curse—and scrapes his chair back.
“Then we’re both fucked, Lucien.”
I stand, adjusting the stiff collar Branwen had buttoned to my throat herself. Her touch still lingers there. A brand. A warning. And maybe the beginning of a noose.
“Not yet,”
I say, voice low.
“But we will be.”
Because the longer we stay here, the longer we let her believe she’s in control, the more we rot beneath the illusion of obedience.