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I could let it happen. I could pretend I don’t care. But I do.

So I grab Ambrose by the back of his neck like a goddamn mutt, fingers tight and unforgiving. He stiffens, low growl curling in his throat, but I’m already walking, dragging him with me down the middle hall.

“You need a leash,” I mutter, not bothering to glance back.

He doesn’t fight it, but he doesn’t follow easily either. That would be too simple. Ambrose doesn’t know how to exist without posturing.

“You gonna manhandle all of us, or am I special?” he says under his breath, every word polished in that blade-edged calm he wears like armor.

“Special’s not the word I’d use.” I release him once we’re far enough in, once the corridor has swallowed the echo of the others’ voices. “But if it helps your bruised ego, sure.”

His jaw flexes. “Let me guess—this is about Luna?”

“No,” I snap, too fast. Too sharp. “This is about you being a moody bastard with a martyr complex who thinks he's the only one not getting what he wants.”

He stops walking. “She’s throwing affection around like breadcrumbs. Caspian gets a soft smile, you get that look she saves for gods and war crimes, and I get nothing. Not even contempt.”

I stalk toward him, close enough he could taste my next words if I let them drip from my tongue. “You get nothing because you give nothing. You think you’re untouchable, above it. You’re not. You’re just late.”

He stares at me, gaze flicking past me for a second, like he’s calculating—how fast he could end this conversation, how far he could push me. Then he laughs. It’s low and humorless, like the sound of something splitting apart beneath too much weight.

“You jealous, Riven?”

“I’m bonded to her,” I snarl. “What the fuck do I have to be jealous of?”

He smirks. “Bonded. But she doesn’t love you the way she loves them.”

I don’t let him see how close that cuts. I just close the space between us until the heat of my fury pulses against him like a second heartbeat.

“Say that again,” I growl, voice razor-thin, “and I’ll show you how much of me she carries in her veins.”

We stand there, toe to toe, the hall heavy around us with things unsaid. But then something shifts. The stone beneath our feet hums—faint, barely there, but unmistakable.

Ambrose’s eyes flick up. “Did you feel that?”

I nod once. Whatever this hallway leads to, it’s not just empty corridors and old Council secrets. There’s something waking up beneath the surface.

“Come on,” I say, walking forward without waiting for him. “Let’s see what they buried in the dark.”

The further we move down the corridor, the colder it gets—not a chill from stone or old air, but something sharp, residual. The kind of cold that remembers screams. I don’t mention it. Ambrose won’t either. He’s too busy cataloguing what I already see: the way the walls curve inward, like the hallway’s closing its ribs around us, pressing tighter with each step.

The glowstones overhead flicker. Faint. Untrustworthy.

And then we reach it.

The hallway ends abruptly at a door that doesn’t belong here—sleek, black as onyx, no visible handle. The stone around it ripples with subtle, shifting glyphs, the kind that move only when you aren’t looking directly at them. The arch above the door bears no plaque, no name, just a carved sigil that burns faintly gold then sinks back into silence. I know it. I've seen it before. But not here. Not in this world.

Ambrose exhales beside me, a sound that’s too even, too neutral to mean nothing. “Well. That’s not ominous at all.”

I glance at him, jaw tight. “Don’t touch it.”

He arches a brow. “You say that like I was about to.”

“Youwereabout to,” I snap. “You think because you can make things yours, it means nothing ownsyouback.”

His eyes flash, but he doesn’t argue. That’s the trick with Ambrose. He doesn’t rise to provocation—not until he’s ready to burn the whole room down with it.

The door doesn’t need a key. It reacts to presence—just not ours. I can feel it, locked on some lingering echo, a signature in blood or memory. I step closer, and the glyphs twitch.