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And he still didn’t fold.
“She wants to rip it out,” he spits. “Whatever’s left of me that’smine, she wants it gone.”
He finally meets my gaze. No Dominion. No command. Just Lucien—furious, cracked open, still fighting.
“She’s fucking watching.”
I nod once.
“So let her.”
He’s hunched like the curse is trying to crawl out of him rib by rib. His voice is shredded. He’s not thinking in tactics anymore. He’s not calculating. He’sreacting, and that’s what makes this dangerous. Because Lucien doesn’t lose control. Heremovesit from others. That’s what Dominion is. That’s what he is.
And now it’s cracking around him.
“I’veclosedthe bond,” he growls, dragging a bloodstreaked hand across his jaw, eyes glowing too bright. “But she’s still clawing through. I can feel her fuckingnailstrying to peel it open—”
“Lucien,” Orin says, quiet but grounded, stepping closer like the world isn’t coming apart in front of him. His voice is a riverbed—deep, steady, immovable. “You need to calm down.”
Lucien’s head snaps toward him with a speed that’s unnatural. His entire body coils, and I can see it in the line of his shoulders—if he moves again, it’s not going to be rational.
“Calm down?” he spits, voice slicing the air between them. “She sealed my mouth shut while the girl wasreachingfor me. She nearly dragged me across this fucking courtyard with hermind,and you want me tobreathe through it?”
Orin doesn’t answer. He just watches, like he’s seen this kind of madness before, in another life, another time. Maybe he has. Hell, maybe he was the one doing the pulling back then.
Lucien keeps going.
“If I get my hands on her again—if she thinks forone secondI won’t tear her apart—”
His voice drops, not quieter, just deeper. Hot with somethingferal.
“I will rip her limb from fucking limb. Do you hear me?”
The ground beneath him ripples. Not visibly. Not for most. But I feel it. The old Academy reacts to that kind of hatred. It remembers him. It remembersus. And somewhere inside its bones, the walls lean in, waiting.
I step forward, careful.
Not because I’m afraid.
Because I’ve seen what happens when Lucien decides the leash is coming off.
“You tear her apart,” I say, low, slow, “and she’ll just put herself back together. And the rest of us won’t survive the in-between.”
He turns toward me now, fury sharp, teeth gritted—but he stops.
Because I’m not Orin.
I’m not Silas or Elias.
I’ve been under Branwen’s spell. I know the way it infects you. How you canfeelher inside your blood, carving you into something obedient while pretending it’s love. And I know what it costs to claw that shit out of your soul.
He sees that in my eyes.
And for one blink, one shattered heartbeat, he breathes.
But his fists stay clenched.
“I should have bonded to the girl,” he snarls, voice ragged and splintering. He doesn’t look at me. His gaze is turned toward thecracked stone wall beside us, but he’s not really seeing it. His hands are fisted, blood still wet on his knuckles, the muscles in his neck pulled so tight I wonder if they’ll snap. “Should’ve done it when I had the chance.”