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I let my eyes wander past the water’s edge to the tree line beyond, shadowed and quiet for now. We’re in borrowed time. Borrowed breath. The women will come again, and next time, it won’t be arrows. It’ll be blade and bone and poison dressed like beauty. I know that as surely as I know the names of the Sins.

And when they come, they’ll come for me. Not for the boys. Not even for Orin. Me. Because I am the one fate chose, and they are the ones it discarded.

I don’t bother putting my boots on yet. I sit on the edge of the rock and press my forehead to my knees for a long moment, just breathing, letting the forest seep back into me. The mud-caked soles of my feet are already drying, already cracking, like everything in this place forgets how to be soft too quickly.

We still have miles to go.

But I’ll walk them. Because if Branwen left a way out, I’ll find it. If she didn’t—well. I’ll burn the Keep down and build one of my own. One that doesn’t demand blood for passage.

One that doesn’tbelongto her. I lift my head. Time to move.

The grass is tall here—feral, untamed, towering past my head and brushing across my arms like it knows something I don’t. I push through the stalks slowly, letting my bond with Riven tug like a faint pulse beneath my skin. He’s due west, steady and calm, the others not far off, but I don’t call out. I need a moment longer in solitude before we all go back to pretending we aren’t bleeding beneath our armor.

But when the clearing opens in front of me, everything stills.

Sunlight breaks through the canopy in fractured gold, spilling down across the small glade like the gods remembered how to paint. And in the center of it—Orin.

Naked.

Not pacing. Not lecturing. Not performing some quiet, deliberate ritual with his blades. Justbeing.

He’s seated on a flat slab of stone, one knee up, one arm slung lazily across it. Head tilted toward the sky, throat bared like he’s offering it to something holy. The sun catches in the strands of his wet hair, curling black and silver as it dries, and glides over the long slope of muscle across his chest and abdomen. Even at rest, his body is coiled, taut with a kind of stillness that feels more dangerous than motion.

I should go.

I should turn around, clear my throat, make some noise,announce myselflike a halfway decent person instead of some lurking feral thing hiding in the brush.

But I don’t move. I don’t blink.

And I don’t eventryto pretend I’m not staring.

The Hollow stole so much from us—comfort, sleep, dignity, even time. But this… this feels stolen back. Or maybe it was never mine to begin with, and I’m only now realizing how badly I want it to be.

The hard line of his jaw is dusted in stubble, and his lips part slightly as he exhales. Calm. Content. Like he knows the chaosis still coming, but he’s letting himself have this one breath, this one sun-drenched silence. His scars catch the light too—old, pale things carved into his ribs and hips and thighs. Not hidden. Worn without shame, like they were never meant to be forgotten.

My stomach flips.

It’s not fair. How devastating he is without even trying. How he’s made peace with the hunger in him, while the rest of us are still fighting ours. I press a hand to my lower belly, trying to will myself back to reason. But reason has never once survived Orin Vale.

I tell myself it’s not wrong to look. He’s offered himself to me in every way that matters. Patiently. Unflinchingly. Without coercion or expectation. With a hunger so deep it borders reverence, and gods, itshouldn’tundo me the way it does—but itdoes. Every time.

I lean my forehead against the bark of a nearby tree, as if the cool bite of it will ground me.

It doesn’t.

It just lets me look longer.

He shifts slightly, just enough to stretch his spine, the slow, sinuous ripple of his body dragging a sound from my throat I don’t let escape. I bite down on it. Hard.

This is insane.

I survived an ambush, ran for miles in torn clothes, bathed in river water still slick with blood, andthisis what’s going to kill me? A sun-drenched philosopher built like a war god with thighs carved by fate itself?

I edge one step back, praying he hasn’t noticed me, and then pause again.

Maybe hewouldn’tmind. Hedidtell me he wanted me to see him—truly see him. And I wonder if that was more thanmetaphor, more than poetic phrasing designed to make me spiral the way he always does.

I close my eyes, trying to reset the flutter under my skin.