Page 158

“Don’t look back,” I murmur. “What’s behind us isn’t worth your attention.”

She does anyway.

Lucien follows last, dragging Ambrose through the current by the back of his collar. Silas cackles, fully shirtless now, bleedingand soaked and enjoying the hell out of this. Elias slips on a rock and takes Caspian down with him. The two of them hiss like wet cats as they haul themselves out of the riverbank.

Maeve stands just beyond the tree line, her expression unreadable as more women gather behind her like a wave waiting to fall. They won’t cross—not yet. The water’s magic is older than the Hollow’s vengeance. It doesn’t want them.

But Ido.

“Let them come,” I whisper, not to Luna, but to the dark. To the magic that coils in my chest. To the thing I’ve become since she touched me. “Let them try.”

Because the further we run, the deeper I fall. And there’s no world—not now, not ever—where I let them take her from me.

Lucien

The ache is sharp. Bone-deep. The arrowhead grinds every time I move, but pain is something I’ve long since divorced from panic. I know where it is lodged. I know how long I have before the wound compromises the muscle. I catalog it like I catalog everything—dispassionately, ruthlessly, with no indulgence for distraction.

Because she’s running just ahead of me. I don’t need to see her face to know what it looks like right now. That flicker of stubborn focus, jaw clenched like she’s holding back the urge to snap at the chaos around us. Her shirt is torn along one side, blood—not hers—slick on her forearm. She hasn’t looked back once. And I hate that I notice.

I hate more that I respect her for it.

“Faster,” I bark, not at her—but at the others. They hear it. They obey it. Because my voice doesn’t ask, it commands. It carves the air, weight heavy enough to pull obedience out of bone. Even Silas stops mid-laugh and surges ahead, grabbing Caspian by the back of his collar when he stumbles through the uneven terrain.

And behind us?

The world is unraveling.

I hear Elias before I see him—his voice pitched too cheerfully for the violence he’s orchestrating. Time bends around him, fractures and loops like a dance he’s choreographed a thousand times. Women rush at him, faces from old lives, twisted with thehunger of what they believe they deserve. But he twists a finger, flicks his wrist, and three of them stumble mid-lunge—caught in a half-second repeat, looping a blink, a breath, a blink, a breath.

“I liked you better before you were dead,” Elias calls back, his grin a slash of feral amusement. “Now you're just sloppy and boring. And ladies—undead isn't a personality trait.”

A spell snaps around his ankle. He kicks free with a curse, voice sharp now. “Lucien! You wanna lend your charming voice to this party or are you too busy brooding?”

I glance over my shoulder once—and the sight of them turns my stomach. Sin binders in death are worse than the ones who lived. They swarm like vengeance in skirts, chanting Luna’s name like it belongs to them, like she’s amistakethey can still correct.

But she’s not. She’sours.

And whether I want it or not, I know what that means now. Fate didn’t choose wrong—it chose toend themand birth something new. Something terrifying.

Something holy.

The thought burns. I clench my teeth, feel the arrow grind again. I deserve that pain for thinking the wordholyin relation to her. But I see how she moves between us—how the others orbit her now, not protectively, but reverently. And I realize what I’ve been too arrogant to admit until now.

She will hold us all. Not through force. Not even through magic. Through something far worse.

Throughlove.

I grit the word between my teeth like it offends me. Maybe it does.

We’re close to the ravine now. Riven peels off left to shatter the tree line, clearing the way. Orin is behind us, somewhere in the dark, fighting in silence. No grunts. No taunts. Just efficient violence. When he reappears, he’s drenched in black magic andblood that doesn’t belong to him, dragging the air colder with each breath.

“You’re injured,” he says to me, voice like stone cracked in half. No judgment, just observation.

“So are you,” I shoot back.

He glances down at the gash running along his arm. “Not critically.”

Neither am I, but I don’t argue.