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“And you’re exactly what I thought,” she replies, voice calm, clear. “Arrogant. Cornered. Pretending you still get to choose.”
His gaze darkens.
“You think I’m cornered?” he asks, stepping forward. “You have no idea what I am.”
“No,” she says. “But you don’t either. That’s the problem.”
He stops just short of her, breath too steady, smile too tight.
“You don’t belong here,” he says, almost gently.
“And yet you called,” she fires back.
He flinches. Just a breath. Just enough.
“I didn’t call anyone.”
“Then why can’t you stop looking at me?” she asks.
Severin’s hands clench behind his back. The others behind him, Dorian, Alistair, and Soren, shift, uncomfortably. Not for her. For him. They see it too.
The pull. He doesn’t want her. But he has to have her. And it’s eating him alive.
“You think this is fate,” he says, voice lower now. “You think you’ve come to save us. To bind us.”
“No,” she says. “I think you’ve already lost. And now you’re trying to convince yourself it was your idea.”
Lucien lets out a breath like a prayer. Dorian tenses again, but Severin doesn’t move.
He just looks at her like she’s the one sin he was never allowed to touch, and now she’s standing in front of him, daring him to break the rules he wrote.
“This isn’t a binding,” he says finally.
“No,” Layla agrees. “This is a reckoning.”
And I swear to every god in the Hollow, I think he’s scared.
Severin watches her like she’s a riddle he already solved but can’t stop rereading. The way a man rereads a curse and pretends it’s scripture. Dorian hasn’t moved. Alistair’s jaw flexes. Soren’s hands are behind his back, but I can see the way his knuckles go pale.
She just sighs. Deep and annoyed. Like he’s inconveniencing her.
Then she shifts her weight, cocks her head to the side, and says, flat as blade steel, “Are you seriously asking me that?”
Severin’s brows lift, expression all mock-politeness. “It’s a simple question. Do you come with us willingly?”
She stares at him, unimpressed. “I’m tired.”
That makes him blink.
“I’m hungry,” she continues, lifting a brow. “I haven’t slept in thirty hours. My boots are ruined. And I’ve had to listen to Riven’s temper tantrums the entire walk here, so, if you’re going to play the superior asshole card, do it fast, because I don’t have the patience to pretend this isn’t exactly what you wanted.”
Dorian’s lip twitches.
Lucien chokes on a laugh he doesn’t bother to hide.
Severin’s smile tightens like it’s fighting for relevance.
Layla steps forward, not timid, not posturing. Just… done. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to feed me. You’re going to give me something stronger than that backwash excuse for wine you all drink. You’re going to make sure no one in your precious rotten little court lays a finger on me.”