Page 43

She turns, her expression unreadable. “Do you forget often?”

“Only around you.”

That makes her pause. She blinks once, slowly, and something shifts in her shoulders—like a drawbridge lowering just an inch. Her eyes are dark, not guarded, but curious. Wanting. Not for sex. Not just for that.

“You planning to fuck me under that tree, Ambrose?”

I take a step forward. Then another. “Do you want me to?”

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t smirk. Just stands there in the shade of the willow, her hair wild and her mouth parted and her pulse fluttering where her throat meets her collarbone. I can see it. I can feel it. She wants this—me—but she’s not going to beg for it.

Good. I don’t want begging. I want her to claim it.

And when she finally says, “Yes,” it’s not soft. It’s not demure. It’s a challenge. One I fully intend to meet.

I drop my coat to the grass. Then my shirt, slow, deliberate, letting her watch every inch of skin I reveal like it’s a confession. Her brow arches, but she doesn’t comment—she knows better than to ask why. I’m not taking my clothes off because I’m eager. I’m doing it because I want her to see the cost. The bandages crisscrossing my ribs from the last fight. The bruises blooming like secrets too long hidden. The jagged mark near my collarbone that still thrums faintly with borrowed power.

And still, she looks. Like I’m a puzzle she could solve if she just had more time. I hate how close she is to being right.

I step into her space and scoop her up without warning. Her legs wrap around my waist like it’s instinct, and maybe it is—maybe everything about her is designed to ruin me. She’s light, but not fragile. Fire disguised in softness. And I know if I drop her, she’ll catch herself before the ground ever gets a taste.

I lift her because it saves my back. But she grins like she thinks it’s about her. Like I can’t help myself.

Maybe I can’t.

Her arms hook around my neck, fingers threading into the back of my hair as she leans in, slow and maddening, like she wants me to ask for it. Her breath ghosts across my mouth, and then—fuck—her tongue slides along my lips. Not a kiss. A taunt. A warning. A goddamn summons.

I groan, low and sharp, pressing her harder against me, until her smirk disappears and something hungrier takes its place. My hand cradles the back of her neck, the other anchoring her against my bare chest, and I kiss her like she belongs there. Because right now, she does.

Her mouth parts beneath mine, and it’s not soft. It’s not slow. It’s her teeth against my bottom lip and her nails biting into my shoulder, like she needs to leave a mark before I disappear again. She tastes like challenge. Like the consequences I’ve spent years trying to outrun. I deepen it, take more than I should, drag a sound from her throat that makes my spine snap straight.

She’s not innocent. She never was. But she makes me want to be the monster she deserves.

“Don’t make me beg,” I murmur against her lips, but it’s not a warning. It’s a confession. A curse.

She pulls back just enough to whisper, “You wouldn’t know how.”

And she’s right. Because I’ve never had to. Until her.

Riven

It feels wrong, sitting at the head of the table. My knuckles are white around the edge of the chair, not from fear—neverfear—but from restraint. Lucien is supposed to be here. He’s the spine of our chaos, the one who takes our sharpest instincts and channels them into something surgical. And Orin… hell, Orin is the balance. The mind behind the madness. With both of them gone—taken—the foundation feels cracked beneath us.

But here we are. Me at the head. Ambrose lounging like this isn’t spiraling. Elias upside down in a chair, legs hanging over the back. Silas poking at a candle flame with the tip of his finger like that’s going to offer him some divine answer. Caspian’s avoiding everyone’s eyes, his knuckles scratched up from punching a wall—or himself—and Luna—

Luna’s too calm.

She sits on the arm of a chair instead of in it, her fingers laced over one knee, watching each of us like she’s reading a battlefield and not a room of men unraveling. Her shoulder is bare where her shirt slips. The bond with Caspian pulses like a second heartbeat in the room, wrong and raw and fresh. It makes something sharp crawl under my skin.

“We’re not going to be able to portal in,” I say finally, dragging their attention from the silence. “Not while Branwen has them. You know that.”

“She can’t lock us out forever,” Elias says, but it’s half-hearted. He flops a leg to the floor and starts spinning the chair lazily. “She’s not a god.”

“Shethinksshe is,” Ambrose says, voice low. “And worse, she’s got just enough power to play at it.”

“She’s got Lucien,” Luna cuts in. Quiet, but steady. “Which means she has strategy and patience. If she was going to kill them, she would’ve already.”

“Or she wants us to think that,” I snap. “She knows how we work. Keep two of us captive, the rest spiral. Make one of them Lucien, and wewait. We don’t act, we stall. And that’s exactly what she wants.”