Page 52

He says it kindly. Like a man offering the knife before he uses it.

Esmara’s smile doesn’t shift. It stretches, sharpens, like she’s trying to peel his patience apart with her teeth. She shakes her head, a soft little motion that doesn’t match the wildness in her eyes.

“I only wanted to see you all,” she says sweetly, and her gaze flickers to Elias like a blade slipping into flesh. “You disappeared.”

“You died,” I remind her lazily, leaning back against the doorframe. “That tends to cause a bit of distance.”

Her eyes snap to me. Sharp, furious, adoring. It’s never one thing with her—it’s always too much. Too sweet. Too eager. Too vicious.

“I didn’t die,” she says quietly, voice dipped in syrup and acid. “I’ve been here, waiting. Like all the others.”

Lucien’s jaw flexes, his posture stiffening beside Orin. But Orin, ever the diplomat, only inclines his head slightly.

“And you can keep waiting,” Orin replies, his voice still gentle but iron underneath. “But not here.”

For a moment, she doesn’t move. I watch her mouth twitch, her eyes calculating, and I know what she’s doing—adding it up. Who’s here. Who’s not. Who stands too close to Luna without meaning to.

And then she laughs. The sound cracks through the space, too bright, too brittle. It scrapes at the edges of my spine, and I catch Luna flinching behind me.

“Oh, darling,” Esmara says, smile razor-wide. “I think I’ll stay.”

Orin’s patience doesn’t falter, but something sharpens beneath it—his shoulders straighten, his magic unfurling subtly, a quiet pressure behind his words now. “You don’t want to do this.”

But she’s already made up her mind. You can see it in the way her fingers twitch like she’s holding onto something sharp and invisible. You can see it in the way she’s looking at Luna—not like she’s curious. Like she’s hunting.

My lips curve, humorless. “Well,” I murmur, voice low, curling toward her like smoke. “We did tell you we’ve moved on.”

Her smile doesn’t waver. But her eyes flash like she’s about to set the world on fire.

The moment Luna speaks, the world shifts. Her voice isn’t sharp—it’s soft, almost sweet. But it cuts like a knife because she doesn’t ask Esmara to leave. She tells her.

"You should go now," Luna says, her gaze pinned, unflinching. "They’re mine now."

Esmara stills. The wild light in her eyes flickers, confusion briefly threading through the madness. She looks at Luna like she’s something Esmara can’t quite understand—like a puzzle with jagged edges she doesn’t know how to bleed on.

It’s a declaration. A claim. Not possessive, but undeniable. It hangs in the air, sharp as the weight of every bond between us humming beneath my skin.

I just watch her. Luna. Our anchor. Our reckoning. The little thing that’s cracked us all open and keeps sinking her claws deeper every day without even realizing.

Esmera’s smile falters for the first time. "Yours?" she repeats, voice twisting around the word like it tastes foreign on her tongue. "They belong to me."

I laugh under my breath, sharp and low. "They don’t."

Luna’s chin lifts a fraction higher. "You’ve had centuries to let go. You’re already dead, Esmara. You don’t get to haunt them."

Her smile breaks then—splinters, cracks at the corners until there’s nothing left but something too empty, too sharp.

"You don’t understand what they are," Esmara says, her voice quieter now, but no less frayed. "You don’t know what they’ve done."

Luna doesn’t flinch. She smiles, soft and lethal. "I know exactly what they are. And they’re mine anyway."

I feel it in my chest, how stupidly that word curls around something I’ve tried not to acknowledge—how warm it feels, how dangerous.

Esmara’s fingers twitch at her sides. Her gaze flickers between all of us and finally lands on Orin again, desperate, like maybe he’ll be the one to untangle this madness and take her side.

But Orin doesn’t move. His expression is unreadable now, carved from something older than time.

"You should go," he echoes, softer this time. And there’s nothing polite in it now. Only finality.