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So I don’t have to wait.

So I don’t have to pretend I don’t wake up aching for her, don’t feel the ghost of her fingernails down my spine, don’t remember the exact way she said my name last night when I made her come apart for the third time.

I want her in this house, in my reach, in my bed.

And if she doesn’t come willingly, I don’t know what I’ll do.

But I will not beg.

I will not ask.

So I stand, finish my tea, and say nothing else.

Because I don’t need to tell them what they already know.

Ambrose

Silas is making sounds no grown man should make.

It starts as a sharp, undignified gasp—then devolves rapidly into a string of breathless swearing and what I think is genuine hyperventilation. He’s halfway off the path before any of us even register what he’s pointing at, limbs flailing like he’s seen the gods themselves descending from the clouds.

“You’re joking,” I mutter under my breath, already knowing I’ll regret looking.

I glance up anyway.

Across the ridge, at the edge of the hollowed-out forest Branwen built to mimic the northern ranges, sunlight glints off something unnaturally white. Not just pale—blinding. Their coats shimmer like they've been dipped in starlight, manes rippling silver through the trees, hooves so light they barely disturb the dead leaves littering the forest floor.

And horns.

Fucking horns.

Long, spiraling, sharp.

Unicorns.

I let the word settle in my head like I’m tasting something sour.

Silas has already stumbled down the slope, pointing wildly like a child who’s seen something magical. “Look at them! They’re real! Majestic! I’m ascending! Someone slap me, I think I’m dreaming—”

“I’ll slap you,” Elias mutters beside me, not even glancing up, eyes fixed on the chaotic mess Silas is making of himself. “Might knock some sense back into you.”

Riven exhales heavily from further up the trail, the sound sharp and unimpressed. “They’re not real.”

“They’re right there!” Silas waves both arms dramatically, nearly tripping over himself. “Look at them! That one’s smiling at me.”

“It’s not smiling,” I say dryly. “It’s sizing you up.”

Because these aren’t the sweet, storybook creatures the children in the empire whispered about before bed. There’s something wrong about them—something too perfect, too deliberate. Their eyes don’t gleam with innocence; they gleam like polished obsidian, cold and depthless. No real creature looks at you like that. No real creature looks like prey calculating whether it wants to bother hunting you.

Elias leans over, voice low and conspiratorial. “You think they bite?”

I glance at him flatly. “If we’re lucky.”

Silas keeps rambling, breathless and awe-struck, already halfway down the incline toward the herd like he doesn’t recognize the way this place works. Everything in the Hollow looks the way Branwen wanted it to—pretty, polished, inviting—but nothing here is safe.

Nothing here is real.

Orin stands beside me, his gaze fixed sharply on the clearing beyond, the faintest crease between his brows.