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“You never had dignity to begin with.”

“You wound me.” He clutches his chest. “But back to the main issue. He’s got a knife. He’s making heart eyes. Those two things do not go together. Unless—” he gasps, “—this is his love language.”

I stare at him.

He stares back.

I don’t blink. “Silas.”

“What?”

“Do not finish that sentence.”

“I was gonna saymurder is romanticin some cultures.”

“Luna is not a culture, she’s a person. And she—wait. Is sheleaning in?”

We both smash our faces against the window again, and I swear we look like a pair of feral raccoons spying on a forbidden lovers’ tryst. Lucien’s head tips slightly, and Luna says something that makeshimlaugh, which is already terrifying enough. And yeah—she’s leaning closer. No blood. No slicing. Just two people talking like they don’t have a long history of mutually assured emotional destruction.

Silas makes a distressed sound. “I feel like I’m watching the beginning of a porno and the end of my sanity.”

“Same.”

A beat.

Then, as if possessed by a demon of divine chaos, Silas mutters, “We should follow them.”

“No,” I say immediately.

“Stakeout.”

“No.”

“We could wear disguises.”

“That’s a yes from me.”

And just like that, I’m off the counter and halfway to the hall closet, rifling through whatever’s left from our last infiltration mission-slash-student-council-prank. I find two cloaks. One has feathers. I don’t ask why.

Because yeah, maybe Lucien has a knife in his pocket. Maybe he’s planning something. Maybehe’s just Lucienand doesn’t know how tonotlook like an impending threat. But I also know the way he looked at Luna, like she cracked open something in him that’s been locked shut since the gods were bored enough to give us names.

And that?

That’s worth watching.

Silas is perched on the kitchen counter like a goblin waiting to pounce, elbows on his knees, mustache crooked and glued on with what looks suspiciously like honey. His eyes are wide with the manic clarity of someone who's either had too much sugar or too many dangerous ideas—and with him, it’s always both.

I stop in the doorway, arms crossed. “Why do you look like the love child of a nineteenth-century villain and a ferret?”

He lifts a finger with dramatic flair, strokes the mustache like it's real, and whispers, “Espionage, Elias.”

My eye twitches. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only answer,” he says, like that makes any kind of logical sense, which itdoesn’t. “Also, if you must know, it was in the drawer beneath the steak knives. You know, the one no oneopens unless they’re trying to summon a demon or find a wine opener.”

“I don’t think you understand what fake facial hair is actually used for.”

“You’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.”