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The wondering if, in the end, I’m not someone she loves—I’m someone shetolerates.Someone she puts up with because the bond demands it. Because fate chose me for her, but she wouldn’t have.

I hate the way it coils in my stomach when she touches Riven’s hand without thinking. I hate the way it burns when she kisses Elias without flinching. I hate the way she flinches—just slightly—whenIreach for her, even now.

Because maybe I’m not redeemed. Maybe I never will be. And if she looks at me one day with that distant softness—the kind that means she’s already moving on, even while standing still—I don’t know what I’ll do.

Because I want her.

Not as a possession. Not as a prize.

I want tobelongto her. And I don’t know if she’ll ever let me.

The laughter is too loud. It’s not their fault. Not really. Silas is still going, spinning some story about a cursed ballroom and a failed seduction that probably ends with him in someone else’s pants—possibly his own—and Luna is laughing again. That laugh. The soft, rich one that melts people.

I hear it, and it’s not for me. It never has been.

So I stand. I move. The stone gives way beneath my boots as I step out of the shelter Riven built—his magic still humming faintly beneath the surface, like the ground remembers him. The rain catches me immediately, not a downpour, just mist. A whisper of cold that slides down my collar, sinks into the seams of my shirt, clings to my skin like guilt.

It’s easier out here. Away from them. Away fromher.

Because itkills me to stay.

It fucking kills me to sit there and pretend I’m not counting the seconds between when she looks at me and when she looks away. Pretending I don’t notice how she softens for Riven, curls into Elias, lets Silas nudge and needle her into smiling like she wasbornto be loved.

And me?

I’m the one she watches like I’m a mistake she can’t erase.

I walk farther than I need to. Let the trees close around me, thick with wet leaves and dripping moss. The Hollow is quieter here, older. It presses in like memory, and I let it.

Because pain I can manage. It’s thewantingthat wrecks me. I want her. Gods, Iwanther. Not in the way I’ve wanted others—fleeting, transactional, calculated. I want her in ways that terrify me. I want her trust. Her laugh. Herforgiveness.

And I don’t know if I’ll ever get it. I don’t know if Ideserveit.

So I keep walking. Into the rain. Into the dark. Into the silence that doesn’t ask me to speak, or explain, or be anything other than the ruin I’ve always been.

But even here, even now—I can still feel her.

The bond. The heat of it. Faint, steady, stubborn.

She’s behind me. And I don’t know if I want her to follow. Or if I’m afraid shewon’t.

I stuff my hands into my coat pockets and stare up at the sky like it might offer me something. A sign. A warning. A reprieve. But it just hangs there—slate gray and soaked through, mist threading through my hair and sinking into the collar of my shirt. It’s cold. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to feel.

Good.

I need to feel something that isn’ther.

I fell in love with the wrong girl last year. That was a first. I don’t even say the word—love.Not out loud. Not where people could hear it and hold it against me. But with Keira… I almost did.

She wasn’t a Sin Binder. That was the appeal. She wasn’t part of fate, wasn’t bound to me through blood or prophecy. She laughed at my cynicism, told me I was full of shit, called me out when I played games. And she left—cheated, actually. Said I was too much and not enough in the same breath.

And gods help me, I didn’t blame her.

But then Luna showed up.

And Ihatedher.

Not for Keira. That had already burned out by the time Luna walked in, dragging prophecy and magic and unwanted bonds behind her like a storm no one asked for. I hated her because she wasmine. Because fate hadpickedher. Some girl with nothing to her name but fire in her eyes and too much softness in her laugh.