Page 120

“I won’t take you like this,” I say, leaning back, hands loose in my lap like it doesn’t kill me to put them there. “Not when you’re bleeding from wounds you haven’t even found yet. I’llwait. And when you come to me, really come to me, I’ll make sure you never want to leave.”

She stares at me, silent, breath slow and shallow.

I watch her, and every part of me screams to undo what I just said.

But I hold the line. Because when I finally touch her, when sheletsme, I want it to be because shechoosesme. Not because I’m all that’s left.

And when that day comes, I’ll burn for her in ways none of them ever could.

“We should move,” I say, voice low, not wanting to disturb the stillness that’s settled in the aftermath of wanting and not having. “Find cover before something else decides we’re worth the effort.”

She pushes herself to her feet, wet clothes clinging to her skin, blood dried in cracks along her knuckles. She dusts herself off with a slow sweep of her palms, more ritual than necessity. Her gaze lingers on the place where the crocodile’s corpse sank, then lifts to meet mine, sharp as ever, but quieter now. Like something inside her has shifted just slightly, and she’s still trying to decide whether it’s a repair or a fracture.

The path ahead isn’t a path so much as a suggestion. A thinning in the woods, a stretch of roots that twist like veins through the soil, glinting with a faint iridescence that makes it easier to walk without stumbling. Overhead, the trees are gnarled and ancient, their trunks bloated with fungal growths that pulse gently like breathing things. Leaves flutter without wind. Some fall straight up. Nothing in this place adheres to the rules of gravity or time, or reason. The forest hums with something not quite alive, not quite dead.

The moon is wrong.

It’s low in the sky, swollen and cracked like bone beneath stretched skin, casting a dull greenish light that softens nothing.Shadows move in ways they shouldn’t. They stretch and flicker, bend away from us like they don’t want to be near whatever we are.

The deeper we go, the more the ground changes. The moss underfoot thickens, clinging to our boots like fingers. The air smells like petrichor and burnt sugar, sweet and damp and faintly rotting. There are mushrooms the size of my torso growing in dense clusters at the base of the trees, some glowing faintly, others twitching at our approach, shrinking back into themselves like they’re afraid.

It’s not fea,r though. Not here. Nothing here fears us.

“This place looks like the inside of a fever dream,” Luna mutters, stepping over a root the size of a full-grown man’s leg. “And not the good kind. The screaming kind.”

“There’s agoodkind of fever dream?”

She casts a glance back at me, and the corner of her mouth twitches. “Depends who’s in it.”

Ahead, a break in the trees reveals a hollowed clearing. Something used to live here. Or maybe still does. Stone structures rise in crumbling formations, not built so much as grown. Tall, thin slabs lean toward each other like fingers steepled in prayer, wrapped in long vines studded with thorns the color of bone. The air shifts here. Quieter. Heavier. The light bends wrong around the stones, distorting the shadows, making it look like the space is larger inside than it is from the outside.

I step ahead of her, careful, scanning the angles, the soil, the way the plants lean. Nothing feels overtly hostile. No scent of death. No tension in the trees. Just stillness. Wary. Watching.

“This’ll work,” I say. “For now.”

Luna walks past me, circles the center of the stone formation. She presses her hand against one of the slabs. It doesn’t react, doesn’t pulse or bleed or sing, which I take as a win. She kneelsnear a low cluster of vines, fingers brushing over a strange, silvery moss that seems dry despite the damp air.

“Don’t eat that,” I say, moving closer.

She glances up. “You think I’d shove a glowing moss in my mouth just to see what happens?”

I raise a brow. “Do you want me to answer that honestly or politely?”

She exhales hard, almost a laugh, and sits down on the smoothest slab, stretching out her legs with a wince.

I drop beside her, still watching the treeline. The world here doesn’t sleep. It just pauses, breathes deep, and waits for the next weakness to show.

Above us, that fractured moon hangs heavy, casting bruised light across the stone and moss, catching in the curve of her cheekbone as she tilts her head back and stares at it.

“I miss stars,” she says quietly.

Her voice is different now. No sharpness. Just that low, raw thread of homesickness she never lets anyone hear unless she’s already too tired to hide it.

I study her in the half-light. The curve of her jaw. The bruises forming on her knuckles. The way her eyes shine in the glow, like she’s still carrying some memory of power, even if it’s been stripped from her.

“You think they’re looking for you?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer right away. Just keeps staring at the sky like she’s waiting for something to move. Then, softer than before, she says, “They have to be.”