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Riven says, “Then stop watching it.”

“But she likes it,” he groans, burying his face against my thigh. “And I love her more than I love my dignity.”

“You’ve never had dignity,” Elias says, voice bone-dry.

“Luna has it for both of us,” Silas announces proudly. “She’s, like, our collective dignity reservoir.”

“Are you done?” I ask, brushing popcorn off his head.

“I’m never done.” He rolls onto his back and looks up at me, face too open, too sincere. “But I’d die for you, so maybe we pause the murder movie?”

I lean down and kiss him once. Light. Brief. A breath of affection in the chaos. He melts like I carved his spine out with it.

“Fine,” I say, reaching for the remote.

From the other side of the room, Lucien’s voice cuts through the warm glow like a blade.

“Don’t turn it off.”

I look up.

He doesn’t blink.

“You want to stay?”

“I want to remember this,” he says, so low I almost miss it. “While we still can.”

And something in my chest tightens. Because I think he’s right. This peace is temporary. The darkness isn’t done with us. But tonight… we’re still whole. And for once, that’s enough.

Smoke curls from the center of the room like a ribbon torn from the world. It’s slow at first, delicate, as if it’s asking permission to exist—until it thickens, darker, faster, filling the air with the sharp, electric scent of old magic, of something older than time pretending to be a man.

Silas lets out a high-pitched scream that shatters the lull of lazy comfort. He flings himself over my shoulder in a move that might’ve been acrobatic if it hadn’t ended in him knocking over the popcorn bowl and kneeing me in the ribs.

“What thefuck,” he gasps, breathless, already crouched behind me with his arms around my waist like he thinks he’s shielding me.

He is not.

Riven and Ambrose rise first, silent and instinctive. Caspian is slower, always slower, but he doesn’t hesitate to step in front of me. Orin stands like he’s been expecting this for years, ancient calm sharpening to something almost reverent. Elias mutters a curse but moves too, protective in his own sideways, irreverent way.

Lucien is already there. His magic presses outward, a hum just beneath my skin, Dominion sliding into the air like it has a right to everything it touches.

The smoke parts.

And Headmaster Blackwell stands at the center of it. But it’snothim. Not really. Or maybe it always was. He’s unchanged and completely transformed—same dark coat, same dark hair swept back from a face that’s too ageless to place. But it’s his presence that splits something open. It’s wrong. It's right. It’s impossible.Magic rolls off him in waves—no, not magic. Somethingolderthan magic. A force. A truth. A reckoning. He shouldn’t have any. He was human. Mundane. Just a headmaster. I can feel it pulsing, heat that isn’t heat, pressure that isn't weight. I feel it in my bones.

Silas grabs my hand, voice cracking. “Luna, babe, that’s—uh, that’snotHeadmaster Daddy Issues. That’s—”

“Power,” Orin says softly, not even blinking. “That’sdivine.”

Blackwell’s eyes sweep the room, and there’s no sharpness, no cruelty. Just… affection. Like a father watching his children play in the dirt and finally, finally seeing them bloom.

“You did it,” he says, voice steady, threaded with pride. “All of you.”

No one moves. Not even Elias, who usually can’tnotmake some sort of snide quip during revelations like this.

“I had my doubts,” Blackwell continues, smiling faintly. “You’ve all spent so long resisting what you are. Fighting what was made for you. But look at you now.”

He lifts a hand. The weight of his gaze lands on me.