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Lucien doesn’t flinch. But his eyes flash—briefly—and then his voice drops another octave, smooth now. Back in his territory.

“I don’t combust,” he says. “I calculate.”

I raise a brow. “So that wasn’t combustion. That was math.”

His gaze dips again—to my chest. Just for a second. Then back up. The corner of his mouth lifts the barest fraction. “Advanced math.”

I smile. Slow. Dangerous. “Want another look? For your calculations.”

He swallows—swallows—and that’s when I know I’ve won.

Again.

And just as I start to turn away, I murmur under my breath, “You’re lucky I didn’t take the shirt all the way off.”

Behind me, I hear the scrape of his heel shifting against the stone floor. No response. But the energy that ripples through the room between us is thunderous.

He’s trying to hold on to his self-control.

And it’sfraying.

I move to the next pillar without another word, heart hammering a little too fast now, the heat of him still lingering on the back of my skin. Because as much as I love breaking Lucien Virelius—What scares me more is how much I want him to stop letting me.

The pillars stretch in every direction like the ribs of a long-dead beast, ancient and half-buried in the marrow of this cursed cathedral. Their carvings hum, faint and constant, a magic older than the Hollow and more deliberate than Branwen ever was. I’ve been walking them in a spiral, not random, not methodical either—just listening. Feeling. Waiting for the pull. Because one of these pillars doesn’t just carry our crests. Itremembersme.

And when I reach it, I know.

Not because it glows. Not because it burns or sings or hisses secrets in a forgotten tongue. It’s subtler than that. The moment I stop in front of it, my blood goes still in my veins, like something sacred has just recognized me. As if I’ve found the keyhole carved to fit the ruin I’ve become.

The stone is cool under my palm. The carvings on its face spiral outward—six crests etched in a perfect, ancient ring. I recognize every single one of them with the kind of visceral familiarity only a body can know. Elias’s slow spiral, deceptively simple until you feel the weight beneath it. Silas’s jagged, erratic madness, pulsing with magic even now. Caspian’s, sharp and sensual, all curves and cruel edges like his smile. Riven’s, violent and sacred, the sword wrapped in fire and wire. Ambrose’s, cold and coiled, his hunger etched into every perfect, gleaming line. I’ve lived these sigils. I’ve bled with them burned into my skin.

My voice is steady when I speak, but my mouth is dry. “Lucien.”

He’s already moving before I finish his name. His presence wraps around mine like a storm held in too small a bottle. It makes the air dense, like my body is too aware of him now to focus on anything else. He stops beside me, quiet, unreadable, but the way his jaw tightens betrays him.

I don’t look at him yet. I keep my eyes on the stone. “I need your crest.”

There’s a pause. Heavy. Not hostile, just loaded with something I don’t want to name.

“You haven’t memorized it?” he asks, his voice quieter than usual—not soft, but not sharp either.

I glance over my shoulder, meet his gaze. “You’re not tattooed on me.”

The words hang between us, and I don’t soften them. I don’t offer him a way out. He’s not marked. Not yet. He never asked to be. And I never offered. Something flickers in his eyes, not hurt, but calculation giving way to something older, something less guarded.

“Here,” he says, and then he unbuttons the cuff of his left sleeve, rolling the fabric up his forearm in one fluid motion. There, inked in black so deep it almost shines, is his crest. Dominion. Severe, precise, coiled power ready to command. The ring of flame is barbed and brutal, as clean as the violence in his voice, and I know the second I see it that this is the final piece.

I step back and tilt my head toward the stone. “Tell me if it matches.”

He studies it. Then, with that same deliberate calm he always uses when the stakes are highest, he nods once. “It’s perfect.”

One pillar.

This one.

Lucien’s voice finally breaks the silence. “Are you sure?”

I look at him—not at the crest, not at the magic—buthim. And I nod.