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He leans back, jaw tight, arms folding slowly across his chest. “You’ve watched her. Observed her. Never interfered. You stood at the edge like you always do, as if she were some unfolding theorem you could admire without consequence.”

“She was not ready,” I say again, and this time, my voice is firmer. “Had I made a move before now, she would’ve mistaken curiosity for consent. Fascination for want. I gave her the space to become herself without shaping her into something palatable.”

Lucien exhales, slow and harsh. “And now?”

I glance toward her. She’s laughing, one hand around a cracked mug, her cheeks still flushed from whatever Elias just whispered in her ear. Riven glares like he wants to kill something. Silas twirls a coin between his fingers, casting a spell under his breath that makes the shadows dance. And Luna—Luna smiles like she doesn’t know that gods bend around her.

“She knows who she is,” I say softly.

I feel the weight of his disapproval like gravity pressing into the edges of my ribs.

“You think I will ruin her,” I say.

He scoffs under his breath. “No. I think you’ll complicate her. She’s already holding too many threads—Silas, Elias, Riven, Ambrose, Caspian. And now you want to add your particular breed of madness to the storm?”

My hands still on the table.

“I do not love like they do,” I admit. “But I have loved her longer.”

Lucien’s jaw tightens. He looks away, out the broken window, at the crooked trees swaying beneath a sky that doesn’t know how to stop bleeding dusk.

“And if she says no?” he asks.

I do not flinch.

“Then she says no.”

Lucien turns back to me, blue eyes sharp and ancient. “But you don’t believe she will.”

“No,” I say quietly. “Because she’s already answering. Just not in words.”

He leans forward, knuckles tapping the table once. “Just don’t make her one of your studies, Orin. She’s not a theory to prove. She’s not a symbol. She’s—”

“She’s everything,” I interrupt, voice low and even. “And I have never treated her as anything less.”

Lucien studies me for a long moment. Then he nods—slow, reluctant, but it’s there.

I rise without another word. Because she’s turning toward me now, eyes scanning the tavern like she can feel me watching. And it’s time she learned how ancient love can be.

I have mastered the art of withholding. It is not difficult, not when you’ve lived as long as I have. Time becomes a blade you learn to hold by the edge—sharp, precise, something you can carry without bleeding if you’re careful enough.

For months, I’ve held it.

My want.

My need.

Tucked behind every conversation, every glance, every carefully measured moment when her gaze drifted toward me and slid off without catching. Because that’s what she needed from me.

Constancy.

A quiet harbor while the rest of them burned around her.

I let them burn. I let myself sit outside the blaze, the patient one, the one who never reached. She needed stability, and Icould give her that. I could offer her the part of myself that knew how to stay still when everything else fell apart.

But I have teeth, too.

And tonight, they ache.