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I exhale slowly, dragging my hand down my face. “Elias.”
He nods, solemn. “Yes, my beautiful, lovesick disaster?”
Luna laughs under her breath, and I swear to the gods above, I almost ascend out of my body.
Elias smirks. “Oh, sorry, am I interrupting your little staring contest of longing and unspoken need?”
Luna hums, still watching the fire. “You should let him have this one, Silas.”
I gape at her. “Et tu, Evernight?”
She shrugs, but I see the curve of a smile playing at the corner of her lips.
Elias sighs dramatically, sitting across from us, kicking a boot out like he’s settling in for the entertainment of a lifetime. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s endearing.”
I rub my temples. “I’m not embarrassed.”
Elias tilts his head. “You should be.”
I grab the stupid stick off the ground and chuck it at him.
He catches it, twirls it between his fingers, then smirks. “Good boy.”
Luna full-on laughs.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Luna doesn’t hand out softness like candy. She’s sharp edges and deadly intent, a walking storm wrapped in a body that shouldn’t be this devastating.
But when she leans into me, just enough for her shoulder to brush mine, just enough to make my brain short-circuit entirely, it’s not to bite back, not to roll her eyes, not to tell me I’m the worst thing to ever happen to her in this gods-forsaken void.
She leans in, tips her head just slightly, and smiles.
Not her usual smirk, not the sharp, taunting grin she throws my way when she knows she’s won.
"I did miss you, you know."
Like it’s nothing. Like it’s casual. Like she hasn’t just altered my entire molecular structure.
I don’t breathe. I don’t move. I am fully deceased.
Her smirk flickers back into place, slow and wicked, like she’s enjoying the way my entire existence just unraveled at her feet.
I force myself to blink, to function, to recover from whatever fucking black magic she just worked on me.
“You know,” I murmur, dragging my fingers along the back of the rock behind us, getting just a little closer, just enough to make it dangerous, “you say something like that, Luna, and a lesser man might think you like me.”
She hums, unbothered, still smiling like she knows exactly what she’s doing to me. “Good thing you’re not a lesser man, then.”
Oh, fuck.
I grin wider because I refuse to lose this round. “Careful, Evernight. Keep talking like that, and I might think you’re flirting with me.”
Her brows lift. “And?”
“And?” I lean in, voice dropping low. “That would be dangerous.”
She tilts her head, studying me, dark eyes gleaming with amusement. “For whom?”
Oh, I am so in love with this woman, it’s disgusting.