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Then I clamp down on his wrist. Hard.

He freezes instantly.

And I don’t look at him. Not yet. I keep my gaze ahead, on the backs of Orin and Riven in the distance, like I haven’t just caught a thief red-handed.

“I know what you’re doing,” I say, my voice low enough to be mistaken for boredom.

His breath hitches. Just enough for me to feel it.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he murmurs into my hair, voice low and innocent and absolutely full of shit.

I finally turn my head just slightly, enough to let him see the edge of my smile.

“You think I’m going to let you feel me up while Orin’s twenty feet ahead and Riven’s probably cataloguing every move you make like he’s preparing your eulogy?”

Elias presses his mouth to my temple, exhaling like he’s suffering. “You used to be fun.”

“I used to bealonewhen you tried this.”

His hand tries to wiggle, just a little, but I tighten my grip. Not painfully. Just enough to remind him that no part of me moves unless Iwantit to.

He groans quietly. “This is actual torture.”

“Then stop touching me.”

“Yousaythat,” he mutters, “but you let me get all the way to—”

“Another inch,” I warn, “and I’m telling Silas you said you’ve never actually made a girl come.”

He gasps, scandalized. “That’s slander.”

“That’s incentive.”

His laugh stutters against my skin, a helpless sort of sound that tells me he loves this—being put in his place by someone whosees him. All of him.

And still doesn’t flinch.

I release his wrist slowly, deliberately, letting his hand fall back down to my waist like it belongs there. I don’t shove him away. I don’t end the moment.

He thinks he’s won something, even after I caught his wandering hand and nearly threatened his entire sex life into extinction. But that’s the thing about Elias—he’ll always go too far, and he’ll always enjoy the fallout.

“Run along,” I murmur, tilting my face toward him, not quite meeting his mouth, “before I let Silas catch you trying to grope me like we’re fifteen behind a tavern.”

He leans in instantly, and for a second I think he’s going to whisper something crude again. Instead, he kisses me—fast, hot, and just long enough for his tongue to flick teasingly against mine before he pulls away with a grin that belongs in a cell.

“Tell Orin I say hi,” he says, breath warm on my cheek. “And maybe don’t let him lecture you too hard, yeah? I’d hate to come rescue you from a philosophical orgasm.”

I slap his chest, more amused than annoyed, and he jogs off like I haven’t just tempted fate by letting him live another day. I watch him go—his easy, loping stride, the careless roll of his shoulders, that mouth still tilted into the kind of smile that dares the world to take him seriously. It never does. ButIdo. Because under all that noise is something worth fighting for. Something real.

I turn and find Orin, standing a few paces off the trail beneath a twisted yew tree, arms folded, gaze fixed on me like he’s been waiting for this shift all along. He’s patient in the way old things are. Not ancient like time. Older than that—older like stone, like silence, like devotion so precise it stops being worship and starts becoming truth.

I walk to him, letting each step slow me down, not because I’m afraid, but because he deserves more than whatever leftover energy Elias just clawed into my skin.

Orin watches me like he’s cataloguing every movement. Not in hunger. In reverence. As if the act ofcoming to himmeans something. And I think maybe it does.

“You let him get away with too much,” Orin says softly. There’s no judgment in it. Just observation. “He’s all impulse.”

I shrug, leaning one shoulder into the tree beside him, letting my eyes roam his face. “And you’re all deliberation. Somehow, I still end up craving both.”