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That’s what makes her dangerous.

The others orbit her like they’ve been waiting their whole lives to be claimed. Riven would burn worlds if she asked him to. Silas can’t go five minutes without throwing himself at her with all the grace of a dog on fire. Elias plays it cool, but he looks at her like he wants to crawl out of his own skin just to be near her. Even Orin—stoic, ancient, so fucking unreadable—has started moving toward her like the gravity in his bones has changed direction.

They love her. Even Ambrose, cracked open and stitched back wrong, holds her like something sacred.

But I don’t.

I can’t.

And yet—when she lifts her gaze, when it lands on me across the square, there’s a stillness that hits harder than any war. Her power isn’t in volume—it’s in presence. It coils around the throat, warm and cold at once, and makes you forget how to breathe the way you used to.

I don’t move. I don't nod. I give her nothing.

But Iseeher.

She’s not beautiful the way Maeve was. Maeve was serenity, a calm river you wanted to drown in. Luna is a fucking hurricane—wild, erratic, inevitable. There’s something in her that ruins men like me. She doesn’t bend. She doesn’t yield. I don’t know what she wants from me, and that’s why I can't stop watching her. Because whatever this is between us—it’s not love. It’s something worse. She turns before I can read her. A subtle shift. A withdrawal that shouldn’t sting but does.

The others close in, eager to fill the space. Silas with some out-of-pocket comment. Elias, trying too hard not to hover. Orin, always too composed, brushing a hand at the base of her spine like it means something and nothing at once.

And I stand back, watching them all play at devotion, like boys in love with a storm they don’t know how to survive.

She’s not for me.

She never was.

But gods, I want to command her anyway. I want to say her name and watch her stop breathing for it. I want to see her drop every defense she’s ever built and kneel—not because she has to.

Because she wants to.

But that’s not how she looks at me. She looks at me like I’m the mistake she hasn’t decided whether to burn or bury. I hate her for making me wonder if the only reason I’m not in love with her—

—is because she never gave me the chance to be.

I’ve seen women mold themselves for power. For proximity. For survival. They become softer for the ones who crave gentleness. Sharper for the ones who only trust blades. They ask for nothing, give everything, until their skin splits around the shape of the man they want to keep.

But Luna—

She doesn't bend like that.

Sheshifts. Effortlessly. Not in submission—but in precision. A thousand edges and curves, stitched into the kind of woman who shouldn’t exist. And I watch her, not because I want to, but because she keeps revealing another version of herself I didn’t prepare for.

She rolls her eyes at Silas, letting him be ridiculous, letting him perform his chaos and feel like he’s earned it. She doesn't coddle him, doesn’t tame him—just lets him spin wild, knowing he always comes back to her.

For Elias, she flashes a wicked little smirk when he stumbles over himself trying too hard to be charming. She teases him, but never cuts deep. She gives him the win, then takes it back just to see what he’ll do with it. Sheletshim be foolish, because she knows he needs to feel like he can still make someone laugh.

Caspian—gods. She touches him like the world hasn’t already tried to carve him hollow. A soft hand at his wrist, fingers curlingthrough his when no one else sees. She doesn’t ask him to be better. She just stays close until he remembers he already is.

Ambrose—the man no other Sin Binder could reach without tearing themselves apart—shechallenges. She doesn’t flinch from his obsessions, his contradictions, the way he sharpens every question into an accusation. She leans into his violence, and asks it to be honest.

And Riven—He follows no one. Loves no one unless it’s carved from ruin. And still, he’d slit the world open if she whisperedyes.

She gives each of them what they need, not to seduce, not to manipulate—but as if she was built to bear the weight of their wants. And it infuriates me. Because I’ve watched every woman here—hundreds of them, bonded and bleeding, trying to hold us together. They failed. All of them. Not because they were weak. Not because they weren’t enough. But becauseweweren’t. Because we were gods wrapped in human failure, too stubborn to be shaped by anyone but death.

Butshe—

Luna doesn’t just survive us. She thrives. And still, she doesn’t touch me. Not anymore. Not after what I said. What I did. What I meant. Even now, as we prepare to leave this village built on grave-thin memory, she walks past me like I’m nothing more than another closed door.

The women of the Hollow don’t speak. They don’t try to follow. They just watch as we pass, as I lead the others through the uneven stone paths and back into the trees that separate this place from the rest of the ruin. I feel their gazes pressing against my spine. The weight of every past life. Every mistake. Every bond we left broken because we didn’t know how to be loved without making it violent.