Page 73

I can feel it in the weight of the Hollow tonight, the way the walls breathe a little differently. A low, humming pull at the base of my spine like something has shifted beneath the skin of this realm.

“Elias,” I bark, sharp enough to cut through his argument with Silas. “Sweep the southern boundary. Now.”

He mutters something under his breath but obeys. Silas follows without another word, his usual grin wiped clean, something brittle and raw in its place.

I catch Lucien’s gaze across the room. He hasn’t moved since Riven’s announcement. Still as stone, jaw locked, eyes distant.

When the others have scattered, I move to him. “What aren’t you saying?”

Lucien’s shoulders stiffen. He doesn’t look at me right away. Instead, he glances toward the door like he wants to vanish right through it. Then, finally, he mutters, “Outside.”

We step into the cold night, the Hollow’s shadows crawling at the edges of the clearing, alive in ways they shouldn’t be. I wait, folding my arms over my chest, letting the silence stretch long enough that it forces him to speak.

Lucien drags a hand through his hair, exhaling sharp. “I may have said something.”

I arch a brow. “Define ‘something.’”

His mouth twists into something ugly, something bitter. “I tore her apart.”

The admission hits me like a blow.

“What. Exactly. Did you say?” I keep my voice steady, careful, but every word is a blade, poised at his throat.

His jaw flexes, guilt flickering behind his eyes like something he’s trying to smother. “I told her she wasn’t enough. That none of us ever wanted her. That she was a mistake.”

I stare at him, cold crawling beneath my skin like ice under flesh. “You told her that.”

“She came to me. Pushed.” Lucien’s voice cracks at the edges now, brittle and raw. “And I shoved back.”

“You shoved hard enough she ran.”

My pulse thrums sharp and brutal beneath my ribs, because I know Luna. I know what lives in her—the hollow places carved out by everyone who left before us, the doubt she keeps stitched beneath her skin. I know how words like his would cut deeper than any blade.

“She sealed the bonds.” The words slip past my teeth, quieter now. “All of them.”

Lucien’s breath shudders out, his composure fracturing. “She won’t come back.”

“She will,” I say darkly, already moving toward the trees. “Because I’ll drag her back myself.”

Because none of us survive if she doesn’t. Because I will not let him—any of us—be the reason she disappears. I haven’t courted her this long to let her shatter herself like this.

And because this realm, this cursed place, will eat her alive if I don’t find her first.

I move fast. Faster than I should. Every step calculated, every glance sweeping the tree line for a sign of her—a footprint, a broken branch, a thread of magic unraveled.

She’s ahead of us. She’s clever, too clever, and she’s hurting. That’s a dangerous thing. A hurting creature runs harder, disappears faster.

Ambrose crouches low beside me, fingers grazing the disturbed earth where her trail flickers like a pulse. His expression is taut, focused, all the sharp edges of him honed to one point. “She’s good,” he mutters without looking up. “Too good.”

“She’s desperate,” I say, voice low. “That makes her unpredictable.”

The others fan out behind us—Riven moving like a shadow through the trees, Elias and Silas bickering as they follow close, their voices sharp with something more brittle than usual. Caspian’s behind them, quiet but watchful, the way he always is when he’s afraid to lose something he doesn’t know how to keep.

Lucien lingers at the back. His power coils too tight around him, leaking out in the way the Hollow recoils from his presence, the way even the trees seem to bend away from him.

We stop when Ambrose lifts his hand, finding a strip of fabric caught on a thorn—Luna’s shirt, torn clean through. He tucks it into his pocket like a lifeline.

“She’s bleeding,” Ambrose mutters, too low for anyone else but me to hear.