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Riven doesn’t bother softening the edge in his voice when he finally speaks. “She’s not the enemy.”

Like I don’t fucking know that.

But I don’t look at him. I stay leaning against the rough stone wall, head tipped back, eyes closed because it’s easier thanmeeting the calm certainty in his gaze. Because he’s right and I don’t want him to be.

He leaves without waiting for an answer. I hear his footsteps fading down the street, swallowed by the pull of the Hollow’s unnatural hush. And I stay there, until the burn of the whiskey stops numbing me and starts turning me raw again.

The walk home is a blur. The tavern lights behind me, the weight of everything pressing heavier with each step. The ground pitches beneath me, and maybe I deserve it, deserve to stumble and scrape against the consequences of everything I’ve done.

A hand slides under my arm before I hit the edge of the stairs.

Warm fingers. Steady. I know that scent before I even look—rosewater and ruin.

Luna.

She doesn’t say a word. She just presses in beside me, shoulder firm under mine, guiding me without ceremony, without pity. Like it’s her fucking right to carry me when I fall apart.

“Go away,” I mutter, voice slurred and sour.

Her grip tightens when I try to shrug her off, her fingers curling like she’s holding something fragile. She leans her body into mine as if she can anchor me without words, as if she can carry the weight of me without it crushing her.

“You’re heavy,” she breathes, half a laugh, half a reprimand, but there’s something else threaded beneath her voice. Something sharper. Something that sounds a lot like she cares.

I hate it.

I hate that I lean into her anyway.

Her arm stays wrapped around my waist until we make it to the house, her warmth a brand pressed against my side. When we step through the threshold, she doesn’t let go. She gets me to my room, pushes the door open, and walks me to the bed like I’m a fucking invalid.

When I turn to push her away, to tell her to leave, her eyes are already on mine.

And she looks at me like she sees everything. Like she knows I’ll never stop fighting this. Like she doesn’t care.

“You’re not doing this alone,” she says quietly, firmly, like a fucking promise I never asked for.

I sit heavily on the bed, and she kneels in front of me like she has any right, like it’s her job to peel the ruin off of me piece by piece. Her fingers slide over the worn leather of my boots, deft and certain, as if this is something she’s done a hundred times. As if she knows me well enough to undress me without hesitation.

I tell myself to stop her. That I don’t want her kindness, her hands, her presence. But my body is a liar. Her fingertips brush my ankle, featherlight, and the air cracks inside my chest.

“You don’t have to—” I start, but my voice scrapes raw and useless against the shape of her name trying to tear out of me.

She doesn’t answer, just works the boot off, then the other, her brows drawn in concentration like this is war strategy and not me, wrecked and half-drunk, pretending I don’t want her.

When she reaches for my shirt, I catch her wrists. Her skin is warm beneath my hands, pulse thrumming steady against my fingers. She’s too close. She’s always too close.

“Stop,” I rasp, but it sounds weak even to my own ears.

Her gaze lifts to mine, calm and infuriatingly patient, and she doesn’t flinch when I narrow my eyes. She’s not afraid of me. Never has been.

“You’ll sleep better without it,” she says softly, like that’s all this is. Practicality. Mercy.

But it isn’t. My hands drop, because I’m a fucking coward and because I want to see what she’ll do next. Her fingers find the buttons at my collar, and I’m certain she can feel the way my heart beats faster beneath her touch. She works slowly,deliberately, each button a declaration, an unraveling. When she parts the fabric and pushes it off my shoulders, her knuckles graze my chest.

I should shove her away.

Instead, I lean.

The room tilts, or maybe it’s just me, the warmth of her pulling everything off axis. My breath stumbles when she reaches for the hem and smooths the shirt from my arms, her hands grazing over bare skin, light as sin.