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“Truth and beauty,” Elias counters, grinning.

We both reach for Luna at the same time, draping ourselves on either side of her like lovesick gargoyles while she pretends she doesn’t secretly love being the center of our ridiculous gravity.

“I’m walking,” she mutters.

“We’resupportingyou,” I say.

“I’m not tired.”

“We are.”

“You just said you had a toe blister,” Elias adds, helpfully.

“I do. It’s throbbing.Tragically.”

Luna glances between us, then sighs again and keeps walking—shoulders tenser, lips twitching like she’s fighting a smile that shedoesn’twant to give us. We follow like we always do.

And yeah. Maybe we’re in the middle of some apocalyptic nightmare of undead soul-binding harpies and magical instability. Maybe the sky’s a permanent bruise overhead and the woods hum with ancient violence. Maybe we're hunted. But for a few minutes, with her laughter still lingering between us and Elias picking twigs out of my hair, everything feels a little less doomed.

Even my toe.

...Mostly.

Lucien took an arrow to the shoulder and barely grunted.

Barely grunted.

The rest of us saw it happen—this heroic, cinematic moment where he rolled, fluid as sin, and threw himself over Luna like some immortal assassin-god with a death wish and a jawline sculpted by violence. The arrow hit him square in the back, right where Luna's head had been a breath before. It didn’t even slow him down. He just ripped the damn arrow off at the skin and kept going like it was a mildly inconvenient splinter and not aspear-sized bolt of death aimed at the girl he definitelydoesn’tlove.

Right.Sure, Lucien. You don’t love her. You just body-shielded her like she was the last living artifact from a lost empire.

But see, I—I—have ablister.

Not an arrow, no. Not something dramatic. I didn’t get skewered defending Luna from bloodthirsty banshees in the woods. No, I got a hot, festering, potentially infected volcano erupting on the bottom of my foot becauseno onethought to conjure me orthopedic combat boots. Not even Elias.Especiallynot Elias. That traitor.

Lucien got an arrow. I got slow, creepingsuffering.

And no one cares.

No. One.

“Do you think,” I say to no one in particular—though let’s be honest, I’m always talking to Luna, “they’ll write songs about the tragic warrior who hobbled into battle, valiantly ignoring his own agony while everyone else got the cool injuries?”

Elias, ahead of me, doesn’t turn around. “No.”

“Maybe a poem,” I try. “A tragic one. Maybe a ballad.”

“You’re going to beina ballad,” Elias mutters, “if you don’t shut up about your damn toe. I’ll turn you into a fucking footnote.”

“Ohhh,” I groan, dragging one leg dramatically through the underbrush. “Foot. Note. That’s rich. I’m bleeding emotionally from that one.”

Luna shakes her head, but her lips twitch, and she’s not walking away, which is basically the same as holding my hand and declaring her eternal love. I take it as the massive win it is.

“Do you need me to carry you?” she asks, all mock-sweetness that’s actually real sweetness, which is even worse. “Like a baby?”

“Yes,” I answer immediately, without shame. “But cradle carry. I want theromance.”

Elias chokes on a laugh. “No one wants to romance your blister, Silas.”