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Instead, I let my head fall back against the cold cathedral floor, the remnants of battle settling like dust around us.

We won. But I don’t feel victorious.

I stare up at the crumbling ceiling, the cathedral roof like a hollowed-out ribcage above me. Light cuts through it in crooked beams, filtering through ancient, shattered glass. It’s too bright. Too quiet.

I’m too old for this.

Every cell in my body hums wrong, slow and poisoned and full of rot. I can feel it crawling through me—what I swallowed down to keep her weak, what I poured into my veins to feed into hers. Weeks of playing predator and prey. Offering my body as a siphon so hers would starve.

It worked.

But gods, I think it’s killing me too.

I try to pull it out of me—breathe it into the floor, push it through the cracks in my skin, through the fever-wet seams of my bones. I’ve leeched toxins from others for centuries. But not like this. This time it’s mine. It belongs to me. And I don’t know how to let it go.

Footsteps.

Soft. Rushing. Irregular like panic.

Then she’s on me.

Luna. She crashes into me without care or hesitation, all hair and breath and heat, and I grunt from the impact, ribsshrieking, nerves misfiring. But I don’t move. I don’t push her off.

She wraps around me like she thinks I’ll disappear. Like I didn’t spend decades convincing myself I didn’t want this.

Her hands press into my chest, her cheek against my collarbone, and her breath—gods, her breath—shakes as it hits my skin. She says nothing. Not a word. But it doesn’t matter. I can feel her. Her pulse, her magic, her bond to the others humming just beneath the surface of her skin like a current. And for a second, I let it reach me. Let it soak into the places I’m still cracked open.

She doesn’t know what I did.

Not really. Not the cost of it. Not the hours I spent letting Branwen carve out pieces of me so I could bleed them into her.

She doesn't know that her safety was built on my slow undoing. Her fingers tremble. Her lips graze my throat—not a kiss, not even close. Just a moment. A grounding. Like she needs to know I’m still here.

“You’re okay,” she whispers, and her voice sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.

I don’t answer.

I can’t.

The poison hasn’t left me yet. But her warmth presses into it, softens the burn. Not enough to fix it. Just enough to make me wish I could stay.

Stay here. In this.

In her.

And maybe that’s the most dangerous part of all. Because I’ve been alive too long to believe in softness. But she makes me want to.

I want to hold her longer. Breathe her in until I forget the centuries behind me and the weight still pressing on my chest.But there’s no time left for that. No space carved out in this ruin for softness. Not for me.

Her pulse thrums beneath her skin like a snare drum—alive, vibrant, dangerous. She's light, but she doesn't even know it. And I can’t keep clutching at it, at her, like I’ve earned the right.

So I ease her off me gently, even as my body screams to keep her close. My fingers curl against her back for one more heartbeat, memorizing the curve of her spine, before I let go.

“Orin—” Her voice cracks like she’s not ready to let go either.

I push a small, rueful smile past the ache in my ribs. “I'm fine.”

It's a lie. She knows it. I know it. But she doesn't call me on it.