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She hasn’t looked at me once since we got in the car. And that should make it easier to ignore the way her magic feels like it’s crawling under my skin, the way the pulse of her presence wraps around my throat like silk and razors. But it doesn’t. Not tonight. Not when we’re driving toward something we’re all pretending isn’t inevitable.

I lean back, voice smooth, the kind of sharp that slices quietly. “What do you think it’ll look like?” I ask her, voice low enough so only she can hear. “The end.”

Her fingers twitch once on the wheel. She doesn’t look at me, but I see the ripple down her throat as she swallows.

“The end of what?” she asks, tone careful.

Me.

But I don’t say it.

The rain slams harder against the glass like the sky’s trying to drown us. I let the silence stretch thin and dangerous between us, before I murmur, “The end of all this.”

The way her lip curls, the way her eyes flick to me just once—it’s enough to tell me she knows exactly what I mean. I don’tbelieve in fate. But I do believe in consequences. And I can feel mine closing in.

The others keep fighting behind us, like noise in the background, like static. But it’s her focus I want. Always her.

Outside, the Hollow waits. And I wonder if this is the night it finally cracks open and swallows us whole.

The curve eats us alive.

One second, it’s road and rain—an endless, gray blur stretched out beneath Luna’s fingers, her knuckles white where she grips the wheel like it’s the only thing anchoring her to this world.

And the next—it’s teeth.

Something big, something fast, something not supposed to exist in the middle of this nowhere stretch of cracked asphalt, barrels across the road. A flash of shadow and limbs too long, too sharp.

Luna jerks the wheel without thinking.

I don’t even have time to curse before the world splits.

The tires scream against wet pavement, the metal chassis groaning as momentum wrenches us toward the guardrail. And the worst part—the thing that burns through my bones worse than the screaming steel, worse than the feeling of the car losing ground beneath it—is that I know how this will end.

Maybe not for me. But her?

She’s mortal.

And that is an equation I can't rewrite.

Elias beside me shouts something—I catch the stretch of his power bending around us like molasses, slowing everything by the slimmest thread. But it’s not enough. Not when gravity’s already tipped us sideways and fate’s grinning with teeth.

The guardrail snaps beneath us like paper. There’s no pavement left. No road.

Only empty sky.

And I don’t hesitate.

My body moves before thought can catch up—before reason, before anger, before anything except the sharp, consuming command to protect. I reach across the console, one arm winding around her shoulders, dragging her flush against me. My body folds over hers like a shield, like I can rewrite the physics of this world if I just hold her tightly enough.

She makes a sound—soft, startled—but doesn’t fight me.

The car pitches, weightless for a heartbeat.

I’ve died before. I’ve died worse.

But this is the first time I care about what’s on the other side.

Her.