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But he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have to.

Because he knows me well enough to understand I’ll bleed for them when the time comes—but I won’t let them fall apart before the fight even starts.

Riven shifts beside me. “You’re right,” he says quietly, and the words feel like a concession. “There’s nothing we can do about it tonight.”

Elias groans dramatically. “Great. Love that for us. Not haunted at all.”

Silas stretches, slinging his arm over Elias’s shoulders. “We can drink until we forget, yeah? Start a bar fight. Loosen up.”

I roll my eyes, but there’s a flicker of something like relief in my chest when Elias grins, teeth flashing like he’s already planning it.

“Let’s focus on getting out of here first,” I say, voice razor-sharp, slicing through the ease at the table. “We’ll deal with what’s coming when it comes.”

And when it does—I’ll be the one standing in the rubble. But it’s her I feel the most—like gravity. Like a pull I want to carve out of myself but can’t.

I stand without a word, scraping my chair back, and let my gaze catch hers. One glance. Sharp, deliberate. And her eyes flick to mine, like she’s been waiting for me to look.

She nods once and follows.

Outside, the night presses cool and heavy, the weight of this damned place clinging to everything. We’re not free of it yet, not really, even with Branwen dust and gone. The wind tastes of ash and old things that don’t stay buried.

I stop just beyond the tavern doors, my back to her, letting the quiet stretch long enough to make her wonder why I asked her out here at all.

I don’t know why. I just needed space. And her in it.

Finally, I glance at her over my shoulder, voice low. “You did good back there.”

Her brow pulls together like she doesn’t quite believe me, like she’s braced for something colder. She’s not wrong to expect that. I haven’t given her much else.

“I didn’t think I’d see you say that,” she says, soft, almost teasing.

I look away, jaw flexing. “Don’t get used to it.”

Her footsteps crunch over the dirt behind me, stopping just out of reach. “Are you okay?” she asks, voice quieter now. Like she knows this isn’t about strategy. It’s about something heavier. Something neither of us wants to name.

The words hit lower than they should. I don’t answer her. Instead, I glance at her again, meeting her gaze fully this time, and it’s like she can see too much.

And then she says, like it costs her something, “Can I hug you?”

I freeze. It’s not a question anyone’s ever asked me. Not like that. Not soft. Not careful. Not like they mean it.

The worst part is—I want to say yes.

I could make it sound clinical, transactional, a line on the list of things she’s stripped from me since the moment she walked into our world. But when I look at her now, there’s nothing strategic about it. It’s messy and stupid and real.

I clear my throat, pretending the weight in my chest isn’t sharp and raw.

“Just this once,” I murmur. “Before I come to my senses.”

She wraps her arms around me like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

As if I’m not the thing that keeps people flinching in doorways. As if she doesn’t know what I’ve done—or worse, does know and still thinks I’m worthy of this kind of softness. Her body presses into mine without hesitation, warm and unafraid, and for a single, fractured moment, the air between us forgets how to breathe. She fits against me like she's always belonged there. Like this moment was carved into the bones of something older than fate.

I don’t move. My arms stay at my sides, frozen, because I don’t trust myself. Not with this. Not with her. I want to shove her away. I want to remind her who I am—what I’ve done to girls like her, what I’ve turned into just to keep breathing through centuries of blood and ruin. But the weight of her against my chest is steady, grounding, and gods, I feel like I’m shattering at the seams just standing here.

There’s heat beneath my ribs. A slow, low ache that doesn’t belong to any injury I can name. It’s her. It’s always her. And I don’t even know what that means, except that I hate it, and I crave it, and I’m going to let it destroy me anyway.

Eventually, I move. Just enough. My hand settles at the small of her back—light, deliberate, but not detached. The other presses to the curve of her shoulder blade like it’s a checkpoint I’m not ready to leave. I tell myself it’s habit. That I’m steadying her. That I’m not folding into this like some idiot boy starved for affection.