Page 57

Sometimes, I forget how to breathe inside this house.

Not because it’s haunted—though it is, with our sins, with memories, with the echo of Lucien’s silence—but because the walls remember me. And worse, they remind me.

It’s the nights that hit hardest. The stillness. The absence of Luna beside me. I used to pretend I preferred solitude. Now it feels like punishment.

I wake gasping, sheets twisted around my legs like bindings I can't shake. My chest tight, slick with sweat that smells wrong, like the Hollow, like that damn column of Branwen’s rot. My hands tremble before I even realize I’ve moved them, searching blindly for her. For warmth. For comfort. For proof I’m not back there.

But I always wake up alone.

And it makes it harder. Because I am the king of dreams. The monarch of desire. I slip into people's minds with ease, reshape their fantasies like clay, leave them wrecked and whispering my name. I’ve turned gods to fools with a look. I’ve made warlords sob for a taste of my skin.

And I can’t fucking sleep through a night without Branwen’s voice slithering through my skull like a blade in velvet.

She crawls over me in the dream. Every time. Her lips curl with that mock-sweet cruelty she’s perfected. Her hands trail down my ribs like she owns every inch of them—because for a while, she did. She leans down, whispers things I don’t want to remember. She calls mepretty thingandpet,and I want to vomit but I can’t move. Can’t scream. Can’t even wake myself.

The worst ones are when she uses my power against me. When she forces it through me. Forces me to feel the very craving I’m known for, weaponizes it until I’m begging for a release I didn’t ask for. Until I’mlaughingandsobbingat the same time, like a beautiful tragedy staged for no one.

She made me lust for her pain. That’s the part I hate most. That Ifelt goodin hell.

And now?

Now I avoid sleep. Now I drink things Riven tells me not to touch and take silences from Ambrose like medicine. Now I pace the halls like a ghost while Luna sleeps three doors down and I don’t knock because I’m scared if I do, I’ll pull her into the pit with me. Because if she touches me, I don’t know if it’ll heal me… or burn me worse.

Because this bond isn’t quiet anymore. Itpulls.Not gently. Not sweetly. It claws down my spine when she’s near, dragging my gaze to her throat, her hands, her mouth. Itachesin me when she passes, when she laughs, when she looks tired and doesn’t ask me why I’m not sleeping.

She always looks at me like shesees it—the cracks, the filth, the bruises I can’t cover. And she doesn’t run. That’s the problem. Sheneverruns.

But gods, I want her to.

Because one day I won’t be able to stop myself. One day the craving will win. And if I touch her, if Iusethe gift that Branwen turned into a curse, I’ll twist something inside her I can’t undo. The bond reacts to desire. And Luna is desire.

If I slip into her dream, even by accident—what then?

What if Iwantto?

What if she asks me to?

What if I never come out?

The fountain doesn’t sound like water should. It whispers instead—thin, slithering notes that slip between the cracks of my skull and settle there like mold. It’s too quiet. Too soft. The kind of silence that amplifies what’s inside you instead of muting it. I hate it. Hate how still everything is. How the ripples spread out across the surface like they mean something. Like they’re trying to saylook how easy it is to be moved.

I press my fingers into the water anyway. Watch the distortion. It warps my reflection—blurs the sharpness of my jaw, smears the exhaustion beneath my eyes. It almost makes me look human. Almost.

It’s late. Everyone else is asleep or pretending to be. I should be pretending too. But I can’t breathe in that room. I can’t breatheinsideme. Every second I spend still, I spiral deeper. So I walk. I think about finding Elias, about begging him to put me under, even if it’s risky, even if Orin would call it reckless. I just need one night—justone—where Branwen doesn’t wrap her hands around my throat in my sleep and make me call hermistress.

The thought of going to Elias feels shameful. I don’t want to owe him that. But I’m close. Too close. My control’s fraying.

I stare into the water, into the warped shape of my own eyes, and whisper, “You’re supposed to be the god of dreams. So why the fuck can’t you have one that doesn’t end in screaming?”

A soft touch lands between my shoulder blades, and for one second—just one—I think I’m back in the Hollow. That Branwen’s found me again. That she’s crawled out of my mind and into the waking world.

But then—

“Caspian,” Luna says, quiet and warm and far too real for a dream.

I freeze.

Her hand stays where it is. Light. Steady. She doesn’t press. Doesn’t flinch. She’s just… there. Like she’s always been there. Like it makessensefor her to find me this broken and still want to touch me.