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I don’t look at him, but I hear his steps, loose and easy behind me. Like this is a stroll and not the start of something that might rip the world open. I stop. He bumps into me, muttering something low under his breath that I don’t care enough to translate.

“You don’t have to come,” I snap.

He chuckles, and it’s not a nice sound. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

The air around him shifts. Heavy. Tense. Wrong in a way that makes my skin crawl. And then it happens. Power gathers in his palm, not slowly. Not with effort. It pours from him like it’s been waiting, coiled beneath his skin like smoke wrapped around a secret.

The weapon he draws is born of want. Not hungry. Not lust. Not something simple. This isdesirein its truest, most terrifying form.

It doesn’t shimmer. It doesn’t glint. It pulses. The blade curves wickedly, more scythe than sword, like it was designed to slice through bone and whisper apologies after. The metal is dark, so dark it swallows light, but within it are veins of molten copper, like it’s been forged in the heart of something that loved too hard and burned for it. Every movement catches flickers of color, shadows of red, gold, obsidian, and something that shifts too fast to name.

The hilt is smooth black leather, no guard, no grace, just function and heat and the absolutecertaintythat if this thing cuts you, it’ll take more than blood. It’ll take what youcrave.

And worse. It’ll make you beg for it.

Desire isn’t about want. It’s about desperation. About the ache you can’t admit out loud because it’ll make you feral.

That’s what his blade is. Whatheis.

“Subtle,” I say flatly, because it’s either that or let him know my pulse just tried to claw out of my throat.

Theo lifts the scythe over one shoulder like it weighs nothing, and grins.

“I don’t do subtle.”

Of course he fucking doesn’t.

The sound in the woods cracks again, closer now. Splintering branches. A low, rolling growl that doesn't belong in this realm.

I don’t ask him if he’s ready. I just move. He follows. And together, with our blades alive in our hands, we step deeper into the trees.

Theo

I never understood why the others liked this place. Earth. This pathetic, crawling little realm. When I was sealed away, it was still half-forgotten magic and open war between old gods and their bastard children. Cities were ashes waiting to happen. The humans were hungry things, carving altars into the bones of the land, praying to anything with teeth. It was raw, unfiltered, full of desperate want.

Now?

Now it’s plastic and phone screens. Their altars glow blue and fit in the palm of their hands. They pray with their thumbs. I spent three months under Blackwell’s thumb, not because I couldn’t have broken out, but because I needed to see how far this place had fallen. Or maybe how far it’s risen, I can’t tell the difference anymore.

Cars move faster than a wind-rage curse, but no one looks at each other when they drive. They scream in traffic and worship their GPS. And these houses… they don’t even creak. They hum. Buzzing with something synthetic and cold. The plumbing sings at night like it’s trying to remember the lullabies of rivers long buried. I touched an outlet once and it nearly ate me alive.

And don’t get me started on indoor lighting. I miss flame. Shadows used to stretch with meaning. Now they just flickerunder LED strips and mood bulbs like they’re embarrassed to exist.

Still.

There’s something about these woods. Maybe it’s that they haven’t been completely bled out by concrete and noise. Maybe it’s that the magic here hasn’t given up. Not yet. I can feel it in the roots, in the way the fog rolls thick over the ground like it’s hiding something ancient and delicious. I let it touch my skin, roll through my lungs. It’s the first thing that’s feltrealsince I got out.

She moves like a precise little paradox of ruin and rebirth. Her blade catches what little light manages to drip through the fog, humming with sin not even the angels could name. And the cuff… that damn cuff… I should hate it. I should rage against it. But it’s binding me to the one thing Iwantin this world.

And wanting… that’s what I do best.

The pull of her magic is chaos stitched together by willpower and some sick cosmic joke. I shouldn’t be this drawn to her, not with everything she is. Not with who she belongs to. But desire doesn’t give a damn about rules. It feeds on what itshouldn’thave.

And gods, I shouldn’t have her.

The weight of the scythe in my grip steadies me. It’s forged from my marrow-deep cravings. The curved edge hums with hunger, echoing what pulses under my skin every time she moves, every time she breathes, every time shedoesn’tlook at me.

The others think this place is peace. That locking me away meant they could have something untouched, uncomplicated.