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“I didn’t come here to play the victim,” he says. “I came here because Blackwell unleashed me. Because your careful little kingdom isn’t as stable as you pretend.”

He flicks a glance at me, mouth twitching just slightly.

“And maybe because I wanted to see what kind of woman could keep seven sins on a leash without losing herself in the fire.”

His meaning hangs there, heavy and damning. But all I hear is the echo of a man who lost everything because he was too much. And now he’s back. Still too much.

And we are the ones who let him in.

Caspian

Lucien called it ameeting, like we’re a fucking book club. Like we’re not seven sins on the verge of cracking open the skull of the eighth.

The garage smells like oil and rage, burnt rubber from Elias's last tantrum with the Mustang, leather and dust from Ambrose’s neglected motorcycle in the corner, and something metallic that lingers like violence about to happen. It’s our graveyard of hobbies, half-rebuilt engines and half-said apologies, the one place we meet when the academy walls feel too clean to bleed in.

I lean against the hood of Riven’s rebuilt Charger, arms crossed, leg propped, watching Lucien pace like he’s controlling the spin of the world just by walking angry little lines into the concrete.

“He’s getting to her,” I say flatly, because someone needs to. Because we’re all thinking it.

Lucien’s jaw tightens, the scar under his eye twitching once. That’s his tell. One inch from unleashing Dominion like a nuclear fucking option.

“I know,” he says.

No apology. No elaboration. He justknows. And it drives me insane.

Theo’s not stupid. He’s playing it like a goddamn maestro,s ubtle, careful pressure on every old crack in our foundation, waiting to see who snaps first. And Luna... Luna’s the one soft spot none of us can armor against.

“You remember how she was with that stray cat last year?” Silas pipes in, draped upside-down on the weight bench like a damn bat. “The feral one with half an ear and trauma in his whiskers? She spoon-fed it chicken and gave it my silk pillow.”

“He pissed on the floor,” Elias mutters from where he’s perched on the toolbox, peeling the label off a bottle of cherry soda.

“Exactly,” Silas says brightly. “And shestillcalled him brave.”

“He bit me,” Elias adds. “Twice.”

“Hetrusted you,” Silas mocks, cradling imaginary paws to his chest. “He just didn’t trust the system.”

“Shut up,” Lucien snaps.

But he’s not wrong. None of us is. Luna doesn’t just fix broken things; she redefines them. Turns the shattered into sacred. It’s who she is. It’s why she chose us, loved us, and stayed even when everything in her should have run.

And that’s why Theo’s working. He knows her, too. The way she asks too many questions when she’s trying to build a reasonnotto care. He doesn’t need to touch her. All he has to do is bleed loud enough for her to hear it.

“He’s framing it like weabandonedhim,” I say, forcing myself upright, pacing now too. “Like we locked him away for nothing. Like he was just a little unstable, not a fucking black hole we had to chain shut.”

Orin doesn’t move. He stands near the door, still and watchful, his arms folded, face unreadable. That’s worse than anger. It means he’s thinking.

“Maybe we should’ve killed him,” Ambrose mutters, and I don’t even flinch at the way he says it, clinical, as if he’s calculating the price of a failed investment.

“Wecouldn’t,” Orin says, finally. Quiet, but weighted. “We didn’t make him mortal. We sealed him in what we believed was permanent stasis. That was our mistake.”

“No,” Riven growls. “Letting Blackwell decide anything for us was the mistake.”

His voice echoes off the walls, rough and cracked like it’s been scraped over years of fury. I don’t blame him. He saw what Desire did to Luna in five minutes. Imagine what he’ll do in fiveweeks.

Lucien turns, slow and cold and full of rage, wrapped in strategy. “We need to get ahead of this. Whatever his plan is, it’s not just about her.”

I laugh once. Sharp. Bitter. “Itstartswith her.”