Page 161

They’re regrouping.

I step past her, voice rising as I call to the others. “We move. Now.”

No one questions me.

Not even Orin, who has a smear of ash across his jaw and the look of someone ready to rip through what’s left of the Hollow with his bare hands. Riven is already tightening the straps across his chest, his jaw locked as he scans the path ahead. Silas—bloodied and grinning like he enjoyed every second of the chaos—nudges Elias, who mutters something obscene about twisted ankles and needing a new spine, but still pulls himself up.

Caspian says nothing, just falls into place with that quiet, haunted obedience of his. He’s always been the one to move like shadow—fluid, unobtrusive, lethal when needed. And now, more than ever, I’m grateful for it.

“West,” I bark. “We find higher ground and we don’t stop until the Hollow doesn’t reek of resurrection.”

There’s no road. Just slick roots and uneven stone and thick, weeping trees that arch like bone over the trail. Luna doesn’t complain. She never does. She falls in step between Riven and me, close enough that the back of her hand brushes my hip every time she stumbles. My shoulder burns with every step, but I let the pain anchor me. Remind me of what’s real. Because what’s chasing us doesn’t belong in the realm of the living—and theywon’t stop until they’ve bled us dry and dragged her back into the dirt with them.

“They’ll find another way across,” Orin says quietly beside me, as if reading the thought from my skull.

“They’ll try.” My voice is gravel. “But they won’t get her.”

His silence is a kind of agreement. Not approval. Not camaraderie. Just shared certainty. The kind only men like us—monsters forged in prophecy and ash—can understand.

Behind us, the night hums. Something cracks in the distance. A whisper of branches breaking. Footsteps that shouldn’t echo the way they do in the Hollow’s ever-shifting soundscape.

Elias glances over his shoulder and smirks. “They’re not even subtle about it. You’d think for undead witches they’d at leasttrystealth.”

“Maybe they just want to see you run, pretty boy,” Silas calls ahead without turning. “Youdoflail impressively.”

“Bite me.”

“Ask nice.”

The banter is a poor shield, but it buys them something—a sliver of rhythm. Of normal. And even I’m not cruel enough to break it.

But I don’t relax. I keep my senses trained on the thrum behind us, on the way the Hollow stirs in unnatural pulses. On the sound of Luna’s breath. If they come again, I will kill them all. And if I have to burn this realm to keep her from being touched again—Then so be it.

This place is a grave wearing its own skin.

It breathes rot through the trees. The wind groans with voices that shouldn't have mouths. Every mile of the Hollow stretches longer than the last, time curdling in its own blood. I can’t stand the way it clings to my skin—like it's trying to crawl in, settle, nest.

This isn’t our home. It never was.

And gods, I miss it. The academy grounds with their shattered courtyards and cruel history, yes—but I miss the real world too. The mundane absurdity of it. Morning coffee that didn’t taste like ash. Phones. Electricity. Music that wasn’t filtered through the wails of the damned. A hot shower. A fucking car—though I’ve never learned how to drive one, and I’d kill anyone who tried to teach me.

I want to get us out of this hell.

Not just because it’s tearing at the edges of our sanity or dragging corpses from our pasts to use as puppets—but because I want that life back. I want a world where we can laugh again, where we’re not hunted or haunted, where the ache behind my ribs doesn’t gnaw every time I see her stumble, every time Luna’s shoulders square like she can carry all of us through this.

She shouldn’t have to.

And still… she does.

Even now, with mud caked up her calves, dried blood flaking off her neck, her jaw is lifted. She looks straight ahead like she can already see the way out. As if she knows it’s there, just a little further. Maybe she does. Maybe that's what she is—fate's cruel compass. Something that always points forward, even when everything else is falling apart.

There’s a heat that coils in my chest when I think of her now. Not rage. Not resentment. Something worse. Something heavier.Warmth.It’s not love. But it’s something that slows me down when I should be sprinting. Makes me hesitate. Makes me… hope. And that’s dangerous. That’s not what I was made for. I was created to command, to conquer, tosurvive.

Not to feel. Not like this.

Not for her.

And yet. She brushes her fingers along the moss-drenched bark as we move, grounding herself in every piece of this world she doesn’t belong to. And I watch her. Not because I want to.But because Ican’t not. Every flick of her gaze, every furrow in her brow, every quiet breath like she’s carrying the weight of all our sins and still hasn’t buckled.