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And then I see it.
The ground is moving.
Not in the way it did before, when Riven’s power cracked the earth open in his rage, but deeper, more deliberate. A sick, slow ripple of motion, like something beneath the surface is stirring, waiting, waking.
“Severin is such a dick,” Silas mutters, flipping a dagger between his fingers. "Can’t let it go, can he?"
“Well,” Elias says, stretching like we’re not standing in the middle of something horrifying and eldritch, "we did take his Sin Binder from him. That kind of thing tends to bruise a man’s ego."
Layla.
Shit.
I forgot about her, about how she’s still standing there, staring at the corpse of whatever nightmare we just killed, at the blood that’s still dripping from my hands, at the way Riven is barely holding himself together.
And she’s standing too close to the shifting ground.
I swear, my heart stops for half a second.
"Silas," I snap, already moving, and he doesn’t hesitate. He meets my gaze and nods like he understands immediately.
Then, in a whisper of magic, he splits. Mimics of himself spill into the space around Layla, surrounding her in a flickering blur of motion. The real Silas stays by my side, but his copies fan out in a loose circle, shifting unpredictably, a disorienting tangle of identical grins and flickering steel.
Layla flinches. Her fingers twitch at her sides, something uncertain in her eyes as she looks around, her lips parting like she’s about to say something. But she doesn’t move, doesn’t run, just watches.
"You’re safe," I say, low and sure, trying to make my voice sound steadier than I feel.
Layla doesn’t respond. She just keeps looking at the thing we killed. At me.
And beneath us, the ground keeps moving.
It crashes into me like a tidal wave, warmth, devotion, something fierce and unguarded, too raw to be contained. It isn’t mine. It isn’t a feeling I called for or even expected. It’s his.
It floods the bond between us, unbidden and overwhelming, a sudden pulse of adoration so intense it makes my breath catch, makes my body go still. It’s not just attraction, not just want, it’s reverence, a feeling so deep it feels ancient, like it has always existed, waiting to be known.
For a moment, I am inside it, drowning in it, feeling exactly what it means to be wanted by Silas Veyd.
I flick my gaze to him, searching, and our eyes meet.
Just for a second.
But it’s long enough.
Long enough to see what he never meant for me to know.
Because it is all there, laid bare before me. No teasing, no masks, no clever words to hide behind. Just the weight of it, the depth of it, the truth of him, stripped of all his usual armor.
And then, it’s gone.
The bond slams shut so fast it nearly knocks the breath from my lungs. The warmth vanishes like it was never there, leaving only a phantom of what I just felt, a hollow space where something breathtaking had been.
Silas rips his gaze away from mine, his expression shuttering, his jaw tightening like he’s forcing himself to forget it even happened. His fingers flex at his sides, his whole body going rigid, as if he just holds himself still enough, he can pretend I didn’t just feel everything he’s never said.
But I did.
I know now.
And I don’t forget things easily.