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Don’t.

And then her hand brushes my arm—light, innocent, sweet. But the moment her skin meets mine, the hum becomes a roar. My pull lights like wildfire under my skin, screaming to complete itself. My breath comes sharp through my nose, and I close my eyes because I can’t fucking look at her right now. Not without doing something I’ll never come back from.

I murmur, voice too rough, too low, “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” she says quietly.

And gods, I want to sayYou’re mine. I want to saylet me have you. Let me take that knife, draw the line across your palm, lick the blood from your skin like I’m starving for it. I want tobeg. And I don’tbeg.

She’s speaking to me like we’ve known peace. Like I haven’t imagined what she tastes like bound to me. Like I don’t already dream of what it would feel like to hear her say my name with the bond between us lighting our skin from the inside out. Knife. Cut. Her blood on my hand. And I swear, if she offers herself—even by accident—I don’t know if I’ll stop myself.

She takes a step back. Just one. Just enough. And I nearly lose it. It’s not even dramatic—there’s no storm in her eyes, no offended gasp, no flinch. She simply shifts, like she’s making space. Giving me air I don’t want. My head screamsdon’t go. My chest contracts like I’ve been cut open with something dull. And gods, I hate how fast my body leans forward before I catch myself.

"Am I bothering you?" she asks, her voice soft but not fragile. Curious. Not accusing.

No, my whole being snarls. She could sit on my lap, cut her palm open, press it to my chest and I’d still beg her not to stop. She isn’t a bother. She’s the gravity I’ve pretended for too long I didn’t orbit.

But my voice, when I answer, is a wrecked thing. “No.” The word scrapes my throat like broken glass. I make it sound colder than I mean to, rougher than I should.

Her lips twitch, like she’s trying to read me—trying to parse whatever the hell is leaking through the cracks I’m usually so meticulous about sealing. And I know what she’ll find if she looks hard enough. Not disdain. Not guilt. Hunger. Raw, wild, ancient want.

She doesn’t step forward again.

Gods,please, come back.

I move instead. Not much—just shift closer to the counter so I’m not bracing myself like a statue. I pick up the mug of coffee I forgot was even there. I don’t drink it. Just need something in my hands so I don’t do something stupid likereach for her.

She says something else—some innocuous follow-up, another bit of chatter to keep the morning from slipping into silence—but I barely register it. I’m still watching her mouth, the way her lips move, how her tongue grazes the corner before she smiles.

She could ruin me and I’d let her.

And that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? It’swillingness. I want her tochooseme. Not because of power. Not because of magic or fate or bonds. I want her to look at me anddecideI’m worth burning the rest of her life for. And I don’t get to ask for that. Not after the way I treated her. Not after what I said in the Hollow. I already built the wall between us brick by brutal brick—and now that I’m standing on the other side, bleeding with regret, I have no one to blame but myself.

But I still want. Even as she turns to leave the kitchen. Even as her bare feet pad toward the hall, her hair brushing the curve of her back like it belongs in my hands. Even as the knife behind her glints on the table, whisperingone cut.

No, I whisper again. Not to her.

To myself.

My hand moves before my mind approves it. The knife is warm. I slide it into my back pocket with all the subtlety of sin. I don’t know what I’ll do with it. I just know I can’t leave it there. Can’t leave it where someone else might use it, might offer her the choice I don’t have the spine to ask for.

And then—because apparently I’ve lost all sense of strategy or self-preservation—I speak.

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

I don’t mean for my voice to sound like that—like gravel coated in honey, like desperation trying to pass for calm. I meant to sound casual. I meant to not sound like someone who’s been sleepless and wild, crawling inside himself for hours trying not to track her down andtake. But then she turns to me—andsmiles—and it undoes me in ways that scare the hell out of me.

Her face splits into something that doesn’t belong in this world—too soft, too radiant, like she’s still capable of joy and doesn’t know she’s offering it to someone who never earned it. Her eyes squint at the corners, crinkling the way they do when she means it, and it punches me square in the fucking chest. Like a laugh I forgot how to breathe through.

She says yes.

Just yes. No hesitation. No teasing. Like it’s a normal thing. Like I ask her to walk with me all the time. Like I haven’t spent every day avoiding her, every night telling myself I couldn’t have her, every second pretending she wasn’t the only thing that ever made this life feel like something I wanted to stay in.

The back door creaks open into the garden courtyard—roses still half-wild from our absence, weeds choking the statues like they’re reclaiming what was always theirs. She sighs, that littlegods it feels good to breathekind of sigh, and tilts her face toward the dawn light. And I—like a coward—watch her instead of the sky.

There’s a breeze, mild and scented with cracked stone and damp grass, and her hair lifts just enough to stir the ache I’ve kept buried too long. She starts walking, slowly, toward the path that winds around the greenhouse. Like she knows I’ll keep pace. Like it’s inevitable.

It is.