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It is.
Silas’s smile falters.
Elias frowns.
“Already?” Elias mutters. “I was hoping to finish breakfast before we went straight to ancient trauma.”
“She’s using the structure,” I reply. “The tether still holds, and she’s moving through it like she never stopped. She took Caspian and Ambrose through this, ” I gesture to the ancient stone, “and she did it without resistance.”
Elias stares at the glowing runes, jaw ticking. “Then she never left. Not really.”
“Exactly,” Orin says, nodding. “Which means Luna may not be the anomaly.”
“She might be the correction,” I finish for him.
That thought settles over all of us like a blade drawn slowly across flesh. Because if Branwen was the original sin binder…Then what the fuck does that make Luna?
Silas is uncharacteristically quiet as he steps closer to the pillar, pacing around it like he might unravel its secrets with sheer proximity. For once, he doesn’t smile. Doesn’t preen or provoke. There’s a flicker of wariness in his eyes as he watches the dormant runes pulse faintly under the stone’s surface, like old scars remembering pain.
“How does it work?” he asks, voice low, almost reverent.
Orin is the one who answers first, steady as ever. “Branwen designed it. Likely wove her blood into the foundation. It’s not just a conduit, it’s a claim. A root system of command buried deep beneath the land. It doesn’t move her through space, it moves space to her.”
“Like ripping holes in reality,” Elias adds, voice dry. “Sexy.”
Silas nods slowly, jaw ticking. “And we can’t use it.”
“We’re not meant to,” I say. “She didn’t build this for us. She built it to hold us. Every crest, every rune, every lock, it wasstructured to keep our power fixed in place. Like binding a god to a leash.”
“She’s been dead for centuries,” Silas mutters. “How the fuck is she still the only one who knows how to make it bleed?”
Elias hums thoughtfully, then smirks. “Speaking of bleeding...”
Oh, fuck.
I already know where he’s going.
Elias turns, eyes narrowing at Silas with mock-theatrical menace. “We should bleed Silas out over the pillar. Maybe it wants blood. Maybe that’ll wake it up.”
Silas flips him off without turning around. “If you’re going to sacrifice someone, at least pick someone pretty.”
“Oh, I would,” Elias deadpans. “But Riven’s not here. And Lucien’s too emotionally constipated to bleed without a monologue first.”
“Enough,” I snap, and they both go quiet.
But not because I told them to.
Because the pillar hums.
Just once. A single vibration, low and soft and sickeningly aware. The air shifts. The stone pulses. And the symbol beneath Orin’s crest glows again. But only for a moment.
And then it’s gone.
Silas takes a step back. Elias doesn’t blink. Orin closes his eyes like he expected it.
“She’s listening,” Orin says quietly.
No one questions who he means.