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“Think we try crossing?”

She exhales slowly, eyes narrowing at the nests overhead.

“If something drags me under, and you hesitate for even a second, I’m haunting you.”

I smirk. “Deal.”

Luna

The water smells like iron and dusk, like something steeped too long in secrets. I crouch at the edge and study the surface, which is so still it looks carved from obsidian. There’s no current. No sound. Just the slow shimmer of something that doesn’t move the way water should. Every instinct I have tells me not to trust it.

But this place doesn’t care what I trust.

Across the river, the trees twist higher, broader. Their bark gleams faintly under the red sky, the trunks veined with bioluminescent blue like the roots are fed by lightning. And beyond them, maybe a half mile past, I can see the broken silhouette of a structure, arched stone, thick vines crawling up what might be a tower or the skeletal spine of some long-dead creature. Either way, it’s shelter. Or a place to die. At this point, I’m good with either if it means not being stuck in open terrain with no cover and a growing sense that something above us is waiting for us to sleep.

Theo stands a few paces behind me, arms loose at his sides, scythe vanished again, like he doesn’t want to spook me by looking too sharp right now. He’s watching the nests in the trees, the ones built from metal and tendon, half-hidden in the high boughs. He hasn’t said anything since I told him I’d haunthim if he hesitated, which is probably the smartest decision he’s made since being dragged into this realm alongside me.

I don’t want him here. And I don’t want him to leave.

I step into the water, slow, one boot sinking into the silt, the temperature shocking. Not cold,coldI could work with, but warm. Bathwater-warm. Like stepping into blood left too long in a silver bowl. It clings to my skin in thick ribbons, coating my ankles in a sheen that doesn’t ripple. The weight of it creeps up my calves, slow and deliberate. Still no current.

Behind me, I hear Theo shift.

“Careful,” he says, low enough that it barely scrapes the air. “That’s not water. It’s something pretending to be water.”

I glance back. “Are you just now catching up?”

He grins like I handed him a dare, then steps in behind me.

The muck doesn’t resist him the way it did me. Of course not. Desire, after all, doesn’t sink. It’s always been the kind of sin that floats just high enough to pull you under.

I keep my eyes forward, one hand on the hilt that isn’t there anymore. The instinct to draw is a wound. My fingers keep twitching for a blade that was stolen with everything else.

I can still feel the place where Riven’s warmth used to curl against my ribs when I fought. The ache of Orin’s magic whispering through my spine when I needed clarity. The tether of Lucien’s steadiness when my thoughts frayed. Thirty years of their voices in my head, their bodies in my bed, their laughter braided into mine, and now I’m supposed to just keep walking like it wasn’t ripped from me without a choice. Like, I’m supposed to acceptthis.A nightmare world. A ghost of my magic. And Theo, with his teeth and his charm and his sin, I never asked to touch.

No. There’s no way they’re not coming. I don’t believe in gods who get to decide that kind of thing for us. The Seven would burn the Veil down before they let me vanish without a trace. Ifthe gods thought this realm would break me, they should have done a better job picking the walls.

“I still can’t believe this is what I got handed,” I mutter as I step deeper, thigh-deep now in this pretend water. “Thirty years of loyalty and power and blood, and they toss me in a swamp with a walking thirst trap and a promise that I should be grateful.”

I don’t look at him when I say it, but I feel the grin bloom across his face like it’s tugged there by the same strings that used to pull mine.

“I mean,thank you,” Theo says behind me, deadpan. “For acknowledging that I’m a consolation prize.”

“‘Prize’ is generous.”

His chuckle is dark velvet, slipping across the water between us. “So you’d prefer silence? Want me to just brood in the corner while you wade through swamp water and whisper the names of your exes into the fog?”

“They’re not my exes.”

“Then what are they?”

“Everything.”

I feel the heat of him at my back, his presence humming with something that’s less about magic and more about pressure. He’s not touching me, not quite, but the river feels tighter now, the weight of him wrapping around the space between us like silk that might strangle if I pulled the wrong way.

We reach the halfway point, the water waist-deep, the surface glass-smooth, and I don’t trust how calm it is. Nothing in this realm has been calm. It’s all teeth and bait and long waits for failure. I glance at the trees ahead, tracking the path that curls into the underbrush beyond the far bank. The vines look thicker over there. The bark seems to shudder when the wind passes.

I take another step. The water tugs at my leg.