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But long enough.

And then the air changes. Not visibly. Not with sound. But I feel it, the way you feel a storm break behind your spine before the clouds ever shift. The women sense it too—their postures lengthen, soften, straighten. Their lips still mid-sentence. One woman steps back beneath the eave of a house, brushing damp hair off her brow as though something holy—or terrible—is about to cross the threshold.

And then she does.

Luna steps into the square like she’s always belonged in the center of every reckoning. There’s mud at the hem of her coat, damp curls clinging to the slope of her jaw, and her gaze moves like a blade across the space. She sees them. Every one. She sees the way their mouths curl. The way they don’t look at her, but at us. Like we’re the secret, and she’s the consequence.

She doesn’t stop walking. Every man standing near her carries something suddenly exposed, raw in a way we didn’t want her to see.

And then, of course—Silas.

He stumbles into the square half-soaked, his coat askew, and his grin twisted in something too bright to be sincere. The moment his eyes land on the women, he freezes mid-step like he’s walked into a room he forgot he burned down.

His voice cuts through the heavy quiet, too loud, too casual, fraying at the edges like a man already preparing his apology.

“Oh no. Nope. Absolutely not. I know this vibe. This is ex-village energy. I’m allergic. Someone check my pulse—I think I just flatlined from recognition trauma.”

One of the women laughs softly from beneath a porch awning, her fingers curled around a chipped ceramic mug. “Silas.”

He takes a step backward, then forward, then sideways like he might dodge fate by waltzing. “Hi,” he says with a pitiful sort of charm, offering a lopsided smile. “You look great. You all look great. Is it, uh, hot here? Just me? No? Cool, cool.”

Another woman leans out of a second-story window, her voice far too amused. “You cried when I left.”

“I had a sinus infection,” he fires back, the words too fast, too desperate. “I was very congested. There was weeping involved. From myface holes.”

Lucien mutters something under his breath, likely unprintable. Riven snorts. Luna doesn't smile. But she doesn’t look away either.

Silas, unable to stop himself, beelines toward her like she’s the only port in a storm made of his worst decisions.

“Okay,” he says in a low, urgent voice, reaching for her hand and tugging her toward the well. “New plan. We don’t sleep here. We don’tblinkhere. We find a nice abandoned cathedral full of snakes and curse sigils and death traps—anythingbut thishellmouth of horny regrets. Come on, sugar, we can still make a clean escape.”

Luna stares straight ahead, her fingers slipping from his like she’s already made her decision.

“You know them?” she asks, voice quiet but not soft.

“Know is a strong word,” Silas hedges, already backpedaling. “More like… acquainted. Briefly. Romantically. Biblically. Emotionally. We exchanged fluids and mistakes. But listen, that was a long time ago, and I have grown so much since then. Like emotionally. Spiritually. Sexually.”

She doesn’t blink.

“You’re not helping your case.”

Another voice from behind her cuts in, syrup-smooth and dangerous. “Still wearing the necklace I gave you?”

Silas turns as if struck. “I thought that thing was cursed! I threw it into a river!”

The woman smiles. “I know. I pulled it out.”

Silas groans like a man being dragged to his execution. “Oh, come on. That’s not fair. Youalwaysknew how to make a dramatic entrance. Why are you like this?”

Luna watches all of it. She doesn’t ask for details. She doesn’t demand explanation. She’s already understood the only thing that matters. The men she loves were made from other women’s wreckage. And now she’s standing in the village they built out of it.

The square distorts around her before anyone speaks her name. Not with sound. Not with magic. Just the kind of quiet that exists when something once buried rises and everyone remembers too late that they never dug deep enough.

Maeve doesn’t walk—she arrives. Fluid and effortless, like the village unfurls to make space for her. The women drift back as she moves through them, not out of fear, but reverence. Not one of them looks surprised to see her. As if she’s always belongedhere and simply decided, today, to step out of whatever quiet corner of afterlife she made hers.

Her coat is pale—cream and gold thread, the kind you don’t wear unless you never expect it to stain. Her boots are clean. Her eyes are softer than I remember. That’s what makes this worse.

Lucien sees her and stops breathing. Riven doesn’t blink. Caspian looks like a man watching a ghost he might hug if no one was watching.