Page 109

I wave my hand, shadows curling like smoke beneath the grass, swallowing the dying light. The trees seem to lurch, lean closer.
“You want to master Envy?” I murmur, stepping behind her. My voice drops low in her ear. “Stop pretending you don’t want what you’re not supposed to have. Me. Power. All of it.”
She doesn’t move.
Good.
Because I’m not done.
I raise my hand, let mimicry stir beneath my skin—Elias’s stillness, Riven’s wrath, Orin’s steadiness. I could be any of them. I couldbeall of them. But when she finally turns to face me again, I don’t have to be.
Because she looks at me like I’m the only thing she sees.
Her fingers curl slightly at her sides. She wants to touch me again. I just might let her.
“Envy’s not a strike. It’s aslow bleed.”
I step around her, slow, deliberate, but there’s no hiding the hunger in my eyes. Not now.
She watches me like she’s not sure if I’m teaching her or circling her—and, to be fair, I’m not entirely sure myself.
“Most people think envy is wanting what someone else has,” I murmur, drawing closer, letting my voice drop like molasses. “But that’s not it. Wanting? That’s innocent. Harmless. Sweet, even.Envyis what comes after.”
She doesn’t blink.
I lean in until my breath is on her ear. “Envy isdecay. It rots. It takes something beautiful and makes it unbearable. Makes youneedit,hateit,destroyit—just so no one else can have it.”
She swallows, throat tight. Her pulse flickers beneath her skin like a drum I’ve already memorized.
I step in front of her now, fingers flexing once—then letting go.
And I let it happen.
The mimicry splits wide in my chest. I don’t just tap into Envy—Ibecomeit. It licks out of me in a coiling, noxious rush. Like bile. Like smoke. It’s not just power—it’s apossession. It weaves around her, into her, before she even realizes it.
She gasps.
The shadows ripple under her feet. Her spine arches slightly, pupils blown wide.
I see the moment she feels it.
Me.
Her envy for Riven’s calm. For Elias’s snark. For Orin’s stillness. For the powersheholds but doesn’t understand. For the girl shewasbefore all this—the one who didn’t carry gods inside her skin.
“You feel that?” I whisper, stepping in until her chest brushes mine. “That’s you. That’smineinside you. That’s what you bind. What you anchor.”
She’s breathing fast now, lips parted, and her fingers curl like she might claw it out of herself.
But I don’t stop it.
Ipush.
Envy floods her, colors the world—saturates it. Everything she’s hidden starts to rise: the ache when I laugh with someone else, the pulse in her gut when I flirt with the others, the way her eyes linger just alittle too longon Lucien when she thinks no one sees.
It all becomes too loud.
“Make it stop,” she chokes, voice strained.