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“Then we wait. And when youareready, we go steal something shiny and inappropriate and set something important on fire.”

“Like Ambrose’s favorite pen?”

Silas gasps, scandalized. “That pen isenchanted, Cas. That would bewar.”

“Good,” I murmur. “I’m in the mood for war.”

He laughs again, full-throated and loud, and the sound rips through the fog in my chest like a sunbeam through stormclouds.

Silas clears his throat like we’re in a goddamn boardroom and not a bedroom littered with old sweatshirts, rumpled sheets, and the ghosts of things I don’t want to name. He’s still perched like a goblin at the foot of the bed, legs crossed, one sock on, one foot bare, looking like mischief incarnate with zero sense of timing. His brows lift—mock-serious.

“So,” he says, drawing the word out like he’s chewing it, “just a small request for when you, you know”—he gestures vaguely—“do the horizontal salvation tango with Luna.”

I close my eyes. “Don’t.”

He ignores me.

“Try not to cryduringit.Before,after, I’ll even allow dramatic weepingneara window if it’s raining. But if you sob on her while inside her—”

I throw a pillow at his face. Hard.

He catches it with reflexes that piss me off, clutching it to his chest like it’s a wounded animal. “Rude. I’m offering genuine emotional support.”

“That wasn’t support. That was you being a dick with bonus emotional terrorism.”

He smirks, eyes sharp. “Caspian, you’re literally Lust. If you cry while doing the deed, I think the universe collapses. A kink apocalypse. Or worse—Elias tries to comfort you, and thenhestarts talking aboutfeelings.”

I groan and drop back against the headboard, arm over my eyes. “You are the worst person to talk to about this.”

“I’m theonlyperson willing to talk to you about this,” he counters. “You think Elias is gonna offer you a shoulder to cry on? No, he’ll light a cigarette and say something so sarcastic it physically bruises. Riven will just try to kill you again. Ambrose will smile like he knows all your secrets and wants to use them in bedandin a business negotiation. And Luna…”

His voice dips. Just enough to make me lower my arm.

“Luna will forgive you,” he says, softer now. “Even if you don’t deserve it. Even if you hurt her again. That’s the part I think you’re really scared of. Not the sex. Not the bond. But the fact that she’s still going to look at you like you’re hers when all you feel isruined.”

I sit in the wreckage of my mind every night, trying to pick up pieces with hands that only know how to break, and she—gods, she justwaits. Waits for me to get it together. To become someone worth her choice.

And I’m terrified I’ll never be.

Silas swings his legs off the bed, standing with a sigh that doesn’t match his usual energy. “You don’t have to be ready today, Cas. But you do need to remember she’s not expecting perfection. She just wantsyou. Whatever version of you is still breathing.”

“Oh. And when you do go through with it…” He glances over his shoulder with a wicked grin. “Don’t do that breathy thing you used to do with Branwen. It’s creepy. You sound like a haunted wind chime.”

I throw the second pillow.

He dodges.

Barely.

And I hate how much lighter my chest feels after.

There’s a knock.

A fucking knock.

No one in this house knocks. They storm, they demand, they walk in like they own the floor beneath their feet—and maybe they do. But knocking? That’s reserved for one person. One person who still carries something like decency in her hands, even if the rest of us are dripping with everything but.

Luna.