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“Fine.” I take a measured step back and gesture grandly. “Lead the way, oh wrathful one.”

He doesn’t answer, but I catch the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth before he turns back to the door.

Ambrose, who’d been silently observing from the shadows like a damn gargoyle, finally speaks. “There’s a seam in the protection along the side window. If we can get the wards to flutter, even briefly, I can break the enchantment without triggering the defense.”

“Flutter,” Silas says, whispering it like a dirty word. “Sounds so gentle. Like foreplay.”

“Do you ever not?” I ask him, exasperated.

“Not what?” he grins. “Flirt? Think about your mouth? Imagine Riven naked and angry?”

“I will burn you alive,” Riven mutters.

Elias makes a strangled sound and mutters, “Honestly, same.”

“Everyone shut up,” Ambrose snaps, already moving toward the side of the chapel. “If we’re going to do this, we do it now. Before the wards realize we’re more than shadows on the lawn.”

I follow, pulse steady, despite everything in my bones screaming this place isn’t just stone and memory anymore. The academy is watching us. And I’m not sure it’s glad to see us back.

Silas, for all his talk about stealth, cannot shut up. I swear the man is biologically incapable of silence. Even with Riven fully locked in, knuckles braced white against the stone as he reads the enchantments like braille in another language, Silas is behind me whispering nonsense at a frequency only other demons—or Elias—would bother responding to.

“I hope there’s zombies,” Silas murmurs low, voice syrupy with anticipation. “Sexy ones. Half-dead but hot. Like, rotting just enough to be morally ambiguous.”

“Why would that ever be your fantasy?” Elias hisses back, his expression twisted in equal parts horror and intrigue. “Do you need help? Like… professional help?”

“Don’t kink shame me in front of our queen,” Silas replies, gesturing to me with a dramatic flourish that nearly elbows Elias in the ribs.

“Jesus,” Elias mutters. “He’s worse when you let him do your makeup.”

“You weren’t complaining when I made you contour your abs last week,” Silas shoots back, smug.

“That was for amission,” Elias snaps, eyes darting toward Riven’s back like he’s waiting to get smited. “And it worked, thank you very much.”

“Oh, it worked. Especially when you flexed and the powder puffed off like fairy dust.”

Riven growls—not a warning, just that sharp, guttural sound he makes when he’s almost finished casting something and knows we’re seconds from ruining it. I step forward instinctively, pressing a hand to Silas’ chest to shut him up. It works—for half a heartbeat.

“Babe,” he whispers down to me, “you can’t just touch me like that and expect me to behave. That’s not how this works.”

I look up at him flatly. “I touched you tosilenceyou.”

“Still counts.”

“Silas,” Riven says, his voice suddenly sharp enough to splinter bone, “if you speak again, I will personally hex your balls off.”

There’s a collective inhale. Elias mimes zipping his lips. Silas presses both hands over his mouth, eyes wide and thrilled, like he’s just been gifted the greatest challenge of his life.

The silence that follows is heavy, not with dread—but with anticipation. My skin hums, my bond with Riven tugging taut as if responding to the magic curling beneath the chapel’s surface. The wards are pulsing now, slow and rhythmic, like they’re breathing.

Then Riven steps back.

“It’s open,” he says. “But you better move fast.”

No one argues. Not when his voice sounds like that—like something wild has come unhinged inside him, and he’s only barely holding it back.

Ambrose is the first through the cracked chapel door, his coat flaring behind him like a shadow that obeys only him. Silas follows, unnaturally quiet for once, and Elias bumps his shoulder into mine as we slip in together.

Silas leans in, lips brushing the shell of my ear. “You lookcriminallygood tonight, baby.”