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They fuckingriseagain.

Some of them have no faces now. Just flesh stitched over where eyes and mouths used to be, still dragging their bodies forward with twisted elegance. One of them has half her scalp gone and I recognize her—Isolde. She kissed Riven once. She bled on Silas’s sheets. Now her jaw is half detached, and she whispers Luna’s name like it’s the last spell she remembers.

Lucien shoves past me then, all commanding presence and disgust. His voice rolls through the battlefield, Dominance coiled in every syllable: “Fall.”

The air shifts. Half the deadcollapse. Not dead—unconscious in a way that doesn’t make sense. Not with their magic. But Lucien’s power wraps around them like a noose. His body is still angled toward her.Alwaystoward her. Every man in this clearing orbits her like she’s the eye of the storm—because she is. And even if she doesn’t say it aloud, we can allfeelit. Every blow we land, every strike we take—it’s for her.

She lifts her hand once—and the magic that pulses through her palm is stronger than anything the rest of us could conjure in that moment. Not because it’s violent.

Because it’schosen.

And that… that’s what the women can’t stand.

They weren’t chosen.

She was.

And now we bleed for her.

I ready for the next wave, jaw set, power singing through me like a promise. If they want to die a second time for nothing, I will grant them the grace of a more permanent ending.

This isn’t over.

But it will be whenwesay it is.

We move fast—but not in panic. Not like prey. Lucien is ahead, carving a path with the brutal efficiency of a god grown bored with mercy. The woods blur around us in streaks of ash-soaked bark and dying light, branches clawing at my shoulders like the hands of the dead women behind us. They’re not slowing. They don'ttire. They want her.

But they don’thaveher.

They never will.

I shift to the edge of the formation, closest to the trees where the threat is thickest. The sound of pursuit comes like breath on the back of the neck—whispers and sobs, limbs snapping underfoot, the moan of magic tearing through the Hollow’s roots. It’s not just an army. It’s history come for revenge.

And Luna is at the center of it.

Her breath comes hard. Not from fear, but fury. That fire in her—it doesn’t flicker. It consumes. And every time I glance her way, she looks more like a queen than the girl who fell through this realm a month ago. There’s blood on her lip and a curse in her eyes. And gods, I’ve never wanted to fall to my knees for something more than I doher.

“Left,” I snap, spotting the shimmer of a spell drawn tight across a thicket up ahead. It’s meant to entrap, to redirect us back toward the open glade. Where the dead wait.

Lucien cuts toward the left, and the rest of us follow like a shadow broken into six bodies. Silas flips off something snarling from the trees. Elias mutters a complaint about cardio. And I break off—only a step—but enough to meet the first woman who lunges from the brush.

She used to be one of ours. I remember the red in her hair, the song in her voice. Now there’s rot at her collarbone and vengeance carved into the hollow of her throat.

She doesn’t even get her spell off.

My hand curls around her face. I don't crush. I consume. Her power shudders against mine like it remembers what I am—and in one pulse of gluttonous draw, I rip the breath from her lungs and the magic from her marrow. It tastes rancid. Desperate. Unworthy.

I don’t let it linger.

The earth shudders. Riven’s fury breaks trees in half as they fall in our path. Caspian moves through shadows like water, pulling them forward and twisting them into vines that wrap the throats of the undead. But still they come. Shrieking. Laughing. Screaming our names like old lovers.

They call for Lucien first—like he was always the one they thought they'd win. He doesn’t flinch when one of them leaps from a tree and claws his shoulder open. He just tears her arm from its socket and keeps moving. Ahead, a stream cuts through the path. Deep, cold, enchanted. The Hollow’s veins run with more than water, and the women hesitate.

I do not.

I lift Luna in one smooth motion, feel the way she gasps—angry, startled, turned on, all of it—and I wade across with her in my arms as the current threatens to pull at everything unmoored. But not me. And not her.

Her arms tighten around my neck and I feel it—her trust—raw and scorching.