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The inevitable descent.

I don’t recognize the man I was when she first arrived. That version of me was stone carved around sharpness, spiked with old cruelty and disinterest. Pride incarnate. Unshakable. Unreachable.

Now? I’m the man sliding his thumb over the curve of a photo I shouldn’t have saved.

Luna, sprawled across the bed in my shirt, hair wild, eyes daring. Her smile caught mid-laugh—gods, it wasn’t even meant for me. It was Silas who made the joke, probably something about edible glitter and orgasms, and I took the photo like a thief in the night. She never saw. She would have teased me mercilessly if she had.

I tilt the phone just slightly to avoid Elias peering over my shoulder and press my palm over the screen, heat coiling low in my gut. She’s going to kill me if she finds out.

I look up—seven pairs of eyes blinking at me like I just missed a cue in a play I wrote myself. Riven is deadpan, arms crossed like he already knows I’m hiding something. Orin’s expression is unreadable, though I swear I see amusement curl at the edges of his mouth. Ambrose…he watches Luna, always. Caspian, silent, his fingers tracing the rim of his coffee cup like a tell.

But it’s Elias who breaks the quiet first. “You planning to sit here brooding until your cheekbones dull or are we going to this ridiculous corn maze?”

I don’t dignify it with a response. Just shove the phone back in my coat and rise.

“It’s time,” I say simply. And that’s all it takes.

Silas nearly jumps from his seat, sloshing half his latte across the table in the process. “Corn maze!” he sings, as thoughhe’s been waiting his entire undead existence for this moment. “Do we get to split up and get murdered, or is this one of those cutesy, non-haunted ones where you hold hands and contemplate mortality?”

“It’s October,” Elias mutters. “They’re all haunted.”

“Speak for yourself,” Silas replies, already wrapping a scarf around his neck like he’s about to trek across the tundra. “This is my aesthetic peak. Fall is my slut era.”

I glance at Luna, who’s fighting a smile—failing. She’s wearing something soft. Cozy. The kind of sweater that’s meant to be touched, sleeves tugged over fingers, neckline just wide enough to tempt. She looks at me like she knows I’ve already lost this battle, and I have. Of course I have.

She asked for a corn maze.

And I said yes.

She walks beside me as we leave the café, the others falling into their usual rhythm. Elias tossing acorns at Silas’s head, Caspian quiet and strangely content, Ambrose trailing at the edge of the group like he always does. Riven’s hand brushes hers once. Just once.

It doesn’t bother me.

Except it does.

Luna falls in step beside me, our arms brushing, her voice pitched low. “You’ve been different lately.”

“Define different.”

“Less homicidal. You only glared at Elias twice this morning.”

“I’m evolving.”

She huffs out a laugh. “It’s unsettling. You even smiled yesterday.”

“It was indigestion.”

“Sure it was.” She pauses. “I like it, you know.”

That quiets everything in me. And when she threads her fingers through mine, casually, like it doesn’t shake thefoundations of who I am, I let her. Because she asked for a corn maze. And I would burn the world to the roots just to walk beside her through a field of rotting stalks and teenage screams if it meant she’d look at me the way she is now.

Gods help me, I would.

Silas barrels past like the fucking apocalypse, arms flailing, a ridiculous cackle echoing off the brick storefronts like a war cry. Elias is clinging to his back like a badly balanced toddler, one arm looped around Silas’s neck, the other extended in my direction with an exaggerated middle finger pointed skyward like he’s been waiting his entire life for this moment of theatrical rebellion.

I don’t react. Not visibly.

But Luna laughs. Loud, wild, head tilted back—gods, that sound could break me. It’s untamed, unpolished. It doesn’t belong in this sterile little town with its pumpkin garlands and quaint witch window decals. It belongs in my chest, clawing at everything I’ve ever tried to bury.