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“I only came to offer a trade,” she says, brushing ash from her collarbone. “You’ve made your choice.”

She looks to Luna.

“You’ll regret it.”

Orin

It’s not shock I feel when I watch Maeve rise from the ash, her mouth still wet with Luna’s name like it’s a curse she can’t stop repeating. It’s not hatred, either. I’ve felt that—once. And when I did, it shattered mountains.

No. What unfurls in me now is something colder. Older.Disappointment.

She was someone we once loved. All of us. In different ways. Lucien’s precision. Riven’s quiet fury. Elias, somehow, loved her the longest and never said it. Even I... admired the way she fought to stand beside us, even when it was clear she was never meant to lead.

But this? This isn't strength. This isdesperationdressed in nostalgia. A ghost parading in skin that no longer belongs to her.

She’s not supposed to be here.

And not because she’s dead. That means nothing to a Sin. We’ve always lived at the edge of mortality, where gods spit and fate folds itself into knots to keep us leashed. But Maeveknows—sheknowsbetter than anyone—that death is the severing of fate. The unbinding. She was cut from us with violence and fire, and the only thing crueler than that was this moment. This return.

Because if fate had meant her to stay...She wouldn’t have died. She wouldn’t be standing now with ash beneath her feet andLuna in her sights like some prize she thinks she has a right to take.

I step toward her, slow, steady. The others are braced—Riven’s blade slick, Ambrose unreadable, Lucien all ice and dominance with blood soaking through his sleeve. But none of them move again.

Because I’m speaking now.

And when I speak, they listen.

"You disappoint me, Maeve."

The words aren’t loud. But they land like thunder.

Her head turns sharply, eyes catching mine like she forgot I was still here. Still watching. “You were always the quiet one,” she says, voice low. “Always watching from the edge. Has that changed? Or are you going to kill me with your philosophy?”

I walk until I’m within reach. Not of her. Of Luna.

Because I’ve felt the way Luna’s pulse shifted the moment Maeve stepped into her light. I’ve felt the ache in her chest where certainty used to live. And I want to tear Maeve’s voice from the air just to silence the doubt she put there.

Instead, I offer her the kindest thing I can.Truth.

“You were fated once. And fate ended you. You don’t get to rewrite what the world has already stripped from your hands.”

Maeve’s mouth tightens. Her eyes flick to Luna, then to the Sins gathered behind me. “You all think she’s something new,” she whispers. “But she’s just another girl fate threw at you. She’ll die too. And when she does, we’ll rise again. One of us will take her place. And the bond will snap back into place like it always has.”

My jaw ticks. Not at her words. At thecalmshe delivers them with. Like it’s not war. Like it’s inevitability. But this time, fate didn’t choose her. It choseLuna.

And fate does not make the same choice twice.

“She’s not your replacement,” I say, still watching Maeve, but reaching out—letting my fingers find Luna’s without looking. “She’s our evolution.”

Luna’s fingers tighten in mine.

And behind me, the world holds its breath as the Hollow shifts—just slightly, almost reverently. Like it, too, is listening.

Maeve’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. It never really did, not even back then. It was always practiced, softened just enough to appear inviting, but never enough to reveal anything real. But now? Now there’s no pretense. What’s left of her is stripped down to ambition and vengeance, and she wears them like armor.

She lifts her chin and says it like prophecy. “There are a hundred of us waiting in the woods. One hundred women who remember exactly who you are, what you did, what was taken from us. And they all want the same thing, Orin. Her.”

Her. Not Luna.Her.