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He asks how Mr. Beans is sleeping at night. Like he hasn’t been under the same roof. Like he hasn’t walked past my door twice a night and paused—I know he pauses, Ifeelit in the way the air catches in my lungs when his footsteps stop.

I answer anyway. Tell him the kitten curls under my chin like he’s guarding my throat. Tell him that he bites Caspian but purrs when Elias holds him upside down. Tell him that Silas has tried to dress him insevendifferent outfits and only lost a little blood.

Lucien chuckles again. “He’s got taste, at least.”

“I’m assuming you mean because he doesn’t like Silas.”

“I mean because he chose you.”

The words settle too carefully in the quiet between us, soft enough to bruise. He looks straight ahead like he didn’t say them, like he didn’t mean them to hit as hard as they do. But I’m watching. And I see it. That fraction of a second where something shatters behind his eyes and he builds it back—stone by cold, calculated stone.

I want to ask him if something’s wrong. I want to saywhat are you doing, Lucien, what are you hiding beneath all this softness,but I don't. Because for once in what feels like alifetime, this version of him feelsearned. Because I remember what came before. The words he spit like acid. The truths too sharp to be forgiven. The night in the cathedral when everything that could shatter between usdid.

And yet here he is now.

Asking about my cat. Laughing at my awful jokes. Smiling at the ground like it’s holy just because I’m walking beside him. It’s not lost on me that I like this version. That Imissedthe version that never existed. That some dangerous, traitorous part of me wants him exactly like this—unguarded, devoted, still pretending he doesn’t know what he’s doing to me.

“I feel like I’m dreaming,” I say quietly. “Like I’m going to blink and you’ll go back to growling at me from across the hallway and plotting my exile again.”

Lucien’s eyes cut to mine. All warmth and war colliding there.

“Iwasplotting your exile,” he murmurs, voice low, amused, a little dark. “I just got distracted by the fact that I wanted to keep you instead.”

And gods, the way he says it—like he meansevery word, like that shift happened long before either of us were ready—undoes something deep in my chest.

I glance away before he can see it.

Before he can know I’m slipping. Again. For him.

I’ve never said it out loud. Not to the others. Not even to myself in a way that feltreal. But it’s true, and it’s been true since the first day I walked into this cursed, twisted academy and saw Lucien standing at the edge of the stairs like a god carved from winter and war.

I had the biggest crush on him first.

Not because he was kind. Not because he smiled or offered his seat or helped me with my books like some delusional academy fantasy. No. He wasawful. Cold. Dismissive. He stared straightthrough me like I wasn’t worth the breath it would take to speak my name.

And Iwantedhim anyway.

Because he didn’t lie to me. Not like the others—at first, at least. Caspian wore that quiet grief like armor and offered up politeness like a weapon. Riven was distant, unreadable, until the day he wasn’t. Ambrose... gods, Ambrose burned from the beginning, but I couldn’t tell if it was hatred or hunger. Silas and Elias? They faked charm with such confidence I didn’t even know it was a game until I was already in too deep. But Lucien—Lucien didn’t fake anything. He wanted me gone. And he didn’t pretend otherwise.

It was stupid. Iknowit was stupid. But there was something about being seen so clearly by someone who had no interest in comforting me that made me feel... real. Like I wasn’t just a binder with a price tag. Like I wasn’t a role they’d been waiting to fill.

Lucien didn’t want me.

And gods help me, that only made me wanthimmore.

“Something wrong?” he asks beside me, watching me too carefully now, like maybe he feels it—this spiral, this confession pressing behind my ribs, this ache that started years ago and never really stopped.

I shake my head and offer a smile that feels like glass cracking under pressure. “No. Just... remembering how much you hated me.”

Lucien doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t deny it. His silenceconfirmsit. But then—

“I didn’t hate you,” he says quietly. “I hatedwhatyou were. What you represented. A future I couldn’t control. A fate I didn’t choose.”

His words are measured, but his voice is hoarse, like they cost him something to speak aloud.

“I saw you,” he adds, slower this time. “And I knew—if I let myself want you, I’d never stop.”

My breath catches. Not because it’s sweet. Not even because it’s romantic. But because it’strue.