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“You didn’t need to,” I murmur. “You never did. It justwas.Like breathing. Like bleeding.”

Lucien leans in, his mouth brushing mine again—barely there. Like he’s afraid if he takes too much, I’ll vanish.

“Say it again,” he whispers, and I swear he’s trembling. “Say you loved me first.”

I smile. And it’s cruel. And it’s soft.

“I still do.”

He doesn’t flinch when he says it. Doesn’t look away. Doesn’t try to soften it with a smirk or lace it in venom to make it easier for him to carry.

Lucien Virelius says,“I love you too,”like it’s an oath.

A sacrament.

A blade he’s waited a lifetime to bury in his own chest.

It doesn’t come out of him as a question or a mistake or a panicked reaction to my confession. It’s a truth older than either of us will admit aloud. A truth that has waited—feral and patient—beneath every glare he ever gave me, under every cruel dismissal, every cold word sharpened not because he didn’t care, but because he did and couldn’t fucking stand himself for it.

“I love you too,” he says again, quieter this time. Like he’s tasting it. Like he’s giving himself permission to bleed with it now that the war is over.

My lungs seize. My magic spikes. Something inside me—that old thread between us, stretched so taut for so long I thought it had snapped—thrums like it’s just now waking up, like it’sheard him.

Lucien’s hand finds my jaw, thumb dragging down the side of my throat, slow, reverent. His voice is low, steady. “I hated you, Luna. Gods, Ineededto hate you. You shattered everything I’d built to survive in this world, and you didn’t even flinch while doing it.”

“Sorry,” I whisper, not sorry at all.

He huffs a laugh, but it’s not cruel. “Don’t be. You were always meant to ruin me.”

Then his mouth crashes into mine again—no patience this time. No control. It’s all teeth and breath and desperation, the kind of kiss that forgets where it started and doesn’t care where it ends. His hands slide down my back, greedy and careful at once. My name leaves his mouth like a curse and a promise, reverent and wrecked.

And then—

From the tree line, a whisper.

“Are they… are theykissing again?”

Lucien goes rigid. I freeze.

“Silas,” I hiss under my breath, not even needing to turn.

“Oh, thankgod,” Silas says, full volume now, from wherever the hell they’re hiding. “I thought we were going to have to do, like, a whole romantic intervention. I was going to bring glitter. Or maybe doves.”

“Stop talking,” Elias groans from beside him, clearly mortified. “You’re ruining theirmoment,you idiot.”

“Ruining? I’m giving it ambiance! This is better than sex. I mean—not better than sex withme,but you get it—”

Lucien’s head tilts back slowly, jaw ticking.

And then, softly, deadpan:

“I am going to bury them both alive.”

I smile. I can’t help it. Because this—this mess, this madness, thisus—it’s exactly where we belong.

Lucien

There are moments in my life where I wonder—briefly, darkly—why I didn’t kill Silas Veyd the first time I met him. I could have. Easily. Would’ve been cleaner than this. No foam on my cheek, no powdered sugar shrapnel in my hair, no chaos incarnate sitting across from me looking like a child caught mid-crime with his hand still in the goddamn marshmallow jar.