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Riven mounts next, efficient and silent, as if this is just another task to complete. He moves like he’s done this before, like he’s already calculated every risk and decided it doesn’t matter.

Orin waits until the last, moving slow and deliberate, his gaze heavy on the herd before choosing the largest of them—a creature with scars etched pale across its flank, like something’s already tried to kill it once and failed.

When he swings up onto its back, the unicorn doesn’t even flinch.

Typical.

The clearing shifts around us, the light catching in sharp, blinding shards off polished horns and perfect coats. The creatures move beneath us like liquid muscle, too smooth, too poised. The air crackles with the weight of something unnatural.

This was never meant to be safe.

And we’re riding them anyway.

Silas whoops from the front, twisting half around in his saddleless seat like he’s king of the godsdamn Hollow. “Look at us! We’re unstoppable! A deadly, beautiful nightmare brigade!”

I glance down at Luna, her breath sharp against my chest as the unicorn beneath us stirs, ready to move.

“You realize this is suicide,” I murmur against her ear.

Her lips twitch, that same quiet, sharp smile she only gives when she knows she’s already won.

“I thought you liked bad decisions,” she murmurs back.

The unicorn beneath us shifts again, its muscles coiling tight like it’s ready to fly.

And then Silas yells at the top of his lungs, grinning wildly, voice carrying sharp and bright across the clearing.

“Race you all to death, assholes!”

He kicks his unicorn forward without warning, the creature launching into motion like a streak of light and violence. The others follow instantly—Elias whooping something obscene, Riven silent and sure, Orin steady at the rear.

And us. The world rushes past in a blur of light and sound and sharp, dangerous beauty.

And for the first time in weeks, I feel it.

Laughter, low and dark, curling in my throat. Because if we’re riding straight to our doom, we might as well look good doing it.

The unicorn beneath us moves like silk over stone—effortless, dangerous, too smooth to be natural. Each stride devours the ground, the landscape shifting in the corners of my vision like a living thing. Branches blur past, brittle and skeletal, trees too tall, too narrow, as if Branwen carved them from memory and left the warmth out of them.

But it’s not the ride I’m paying attention to.

It’s her.

Luna sits rigid against me at first, every line of her spine stiff, as if she’s trying to pretend she doesn’t feel the way I’ve molded myself around her—one arm looped lazily at her waist, my chest against her back, my breath ghosting over the curve of her neck every time she exhales.

I let it hang there, the weight of it, the quiet inevitability of us pressed this close.

I could tell her to lean back, to let me carry her weight like I’ve carried worse things. But I don’t. Instead, I lean in, my mouth a fraction from her ear, my voice pitched deliberately soft.

“You know,” I murmur, smooth as sin, “this isn’t how I imagined my morning starting. I thought we’d be trudging through another miserable stretch of this godsdamned world, arguing over who has to carry the supplies, maybe watching Silas try to drown himself in a river. Not riding mythical death beasts with you tucked so sweetly in front of me.”

I let the next words drag, slow and sharp, curling deliberately around her.

“I have to say—it’s a better view than I expected.”

Her head tilts slightly, not enough to look at me, but enough that I know she’s listening.

“You’re relentless,” she says finally, her voice light, but there’s something underneath it—sharp and dangerous, the edge of something she won’t name. “Do you ever turn it off?”