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Too late.

“I wasn’t smiling,” he says, cold and clipped, like the sentence itself offends him.

“Youwere,” I drawl. “You looked like you were about to write her a poem. Maybe press a hand to your chest and sigh.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“I’m never absurd. Silas is absurd. I’mobservant.And you—” I tilt my head, let the smirk bleed across my face, slow and deliberate. “You were makingmoon eyes.Like some lovesick lordling from a cursed fairytale.”

Lucien doesn’t answer, but his throat flexes.

And gods, it’s sofunnywatching him try not to look again.

Of course, he fails.

His gaze drifts back to her—not directly. Not foolishly. Just a glance. Just a brush. Like his eyes have a magnetic memory, and her silhouette pulled the compass needle true. Luna is standing by a pillar at the far edge of the chamber, light crawling across her skin, runes catching fire against her collarbone, hair backlit like a fucking prophecy. She’s studying the sigils, calm but focused, and there’s something in the set of her shoulders that makes her look not just powerful, butsacred.

I get it. I do. But that doesn’t mean I won’t mock him for it.

“I think she caught you,” I say, just loud enough to make him tense again.

“She’s not looking,” Lucien says, voice dry, controlled.

“Sheneverhas to. She feels everything.”

He says nothing. But his fingers curl at his side.

“You’re allowed to love her, you know,” I say, quieter now. Just between us. “Even if you fucked it all up.”

Lucien turns to face me fully, and for a moment, I see the raw edge behind all that polished control—the regret, the restraint, the quiet rage he keeps leashed not because it’s gone but because he doesn’t trust what happens when it gets loose.

“She doesn’t want my love,” he says, not bitter—justtrue.

I shrug. “She didn’t want mine either. Until she did.”

That shuts him up. I let the silence settle, then lean in just enough to press the final nail.

“You keep looking at her like that,” I murmur, “and she’ll start looking back.”

And then I walk off. Because I don’t need to say anything else. Not when I can feel the pulse of our bond flare across the room—Luna’s attention dragging toward me, like a thread being pulled tight. Not possessive. Justknown.I don’t need to watch Lucien follow her with his eyes again. I already know he will.

Lucien

I shift my gaze. Not too fast. Not in a way that confirms anything. But the moment his smirk hit me, I felt the ground tilt—just slightly. Not because of him. But becausehe’s right.

And that makes me fucking furious.

I turn and move to another row of pillars, deeper into the shadows where the light doesn’t touch the floor so easily, where the walls lean a little too far in, like this part of the chamber remembers how to suffocate. I welcome the cold that finds me here. The solitude. It’s the only thing that dulls the low, brutal ache thrumming behind my ribs.

The ache that started the moment she lifted her shirt and revealed her skin.

Not the tattoos—though gods know those are a problem in and of themselves. Her magic etched into flesh. But no. It’sher. The ease with which she bore the weight of every gaze. The defiance in the set of her shoulders. The way she didn’t flinch when Silas grinned, or when Riven prowled, or when Caspian stared like she was the only altar worth bleeding on.

I close my eyes for half a breath and press my palm to the pillar nearest me. It thrums faintly against my skin, not hostile, not inviting. Just aware. But it’s not my crest carved here—this isn’t the right one. I’m not even looking for it. Not anymore.

Because all I can see is the curve of her waist when she turned. The shadow under her throat where sweat had begun togather. The sharp edge of her hips and how they moved when she stepped back, shirt falling into place like she hadn’t just detonated every goddamn thought I’ve been trying to repress since the moment she stopped hating me.

And shehasstopped hating me.