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Her fury claws through my ribcage, dragging at every inch of me that isn’t broken enough for her liking. She wants topuppetme. To put on a show. Make me rise from the ash and devour Luna like it’s seduction, not execution. She wants me to be the warning. The cautionary tale. The living proof that no matter what we are, we belong to her in the end.

My fingers dig into the ground. Not for balance—forsanity. The soil is hot beneath my skin, laced with old blood, with the fragments of battle and betrayal. The Hollow has always felt sentient, but now it feelswitnessed. As if it’s watching, weighing whether I’ll bend orshatter.

Behind the pounding in my head, I hear footsteps.

Silas.

Not charging. Not attacking. Juststanding. Placing himself between me and her again, blades sheathed, arms loose at hissides, but shoulders squared like he’d take the blow if I launched one.

He doesn’t mock me this time. Doesn’t tease. Doesn’t grin.

He looks at me like he knows exactly what’s happening. And worse—hehatesit.

“I’m not letting you near her,” he says.

I try to speak. To warn him. To tell him I’mnot choosing this—but the words catch. Branwen won’t let them free. She wants me toperform. Wants me to look like I’m hunting. Wants Luna tobelieveI want her undone.

My whip rises on its own.

The magic pulses down its length like a live nerve, desperate to be wielded, to carve desire into something cruel. My grip shakes. I don’t know how much longer I can resist. I feel the leash tightening around my throat, the last threads of my willunraveling.

Silas doesn’t move.

He stares me down with something closer to sorrow than challenge.

“I know you’re in there, Caspian,” he says quietly. “And I know you don’t want this.”

And gods help me—

He’s right.

But Branwen isscreaming.

Ambrose

Caspian’s whips crack like thunder through the battlefield, arcs of silver slicing through ash and shadow, and the only thing louder than the sound is the silence that follows—when one of Silas’s clones vanishes with a hiss of displaced air and scorched magic.

Then another.

Then another.

He’s not holding back.

Blank eyes. Perfect form. No hesitation. No conscience left to interfere with the elegance of destruction. It’s mechanical—graceful, even—but there’s nothing beautiful about it. Not when he’s moving like he’s already decided who’s disposable.

And today, that’s Luna.

Silas scrambles to remake the clones faster than Caspian can tear them apart, but he’s faltering. Too much mimicry. Too much chaos fed into his blood. I can see the edges of his magic fraying, flickering where it used to snap. His stance is still cocky, but it’s cracked now—panicked beneath the smirk. He’s defending her like a mad dog and pretending it’s still a joke.

It isn’t.

Because Caspian isn’t here to play.

The last time I saw him like this, I woke up on the wrong side of a pillar gate with blood on my shirt and two broken ribs. Hedidn’t hesitate. He didn’task. He didn’t evenwarnme. Just wrapped me in those damn whips and dragged me out of the house like a trophy on a leash. I didn’t fight him that hard—not then. Because it was just me. I could take it. And I wasn’t interested in bleeding for pride.

But today?

Today he’s going afterher.