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“Why now?” she whispers.
I drop my hand, let the shadows fade. Let her come back to herself.
And I meet her eyes, serious in a way I rarely am. “Because you needed to know what Ireallyam. What you’re tied to.”
She steps forward, voice hoarse. “And what is that?”
I smile.
“Sin, sweetness. Drenched in shadow. Dripping with need. And just a little obsessed with you.”
Her lips twitch, but she doesn’t laugh. Because she felt it.
Riven
I wear sunglasses to hide it.
The gray.
Because gray means soft. Gray means the bond is fucking humming. And the last thing I need is Silas spotting it and launching into some “emotionally repressed bad boy needs a cuddle” speech while Elias makes it worse with something snide about my broody aura.
I’m not broody. I’m building a wall.
Literally.
The side of the house took a hit last week when whatever the hell Ambrose pulled unstitched the foundation magic. So now I’m outside, sleeves pushed up, sweat clinging to my spine, and my hands raw from reshaping stone and sealing it in place. Earth magic wasn’t mine originally, but I’ve bent enough wrath into it to make it work. Violence always makes things cooperate.
I’m halfway through reinforcing the final arch when I hear them.
Two voices. Too loud. Too obnoxious.
“Are thosesunglasses?” Elias’s voice cuts across the courtyard like a scalpel wrapped in sarcasm. “Is our resident wrath god doing construction in disguise?”
“Maybe he’s hiding a black eye,” Silas adds, tilting his head, stepping up beside Elias with a conspiratorial whisper. “FromLuna. Did she finally hit him with that frying pan she keeps threatening?”
I don’t look at them. I keep working.
But the crack in the stone beneath my hand spreads like lightning.
“Hey,” Elias says again, coming closer, circling like a shark. “You good, man? You seem... tense.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter, standing straight, shoulder blades tight. I don’t need this. I need silence. I need hernotto be in my head like a song I can’t stop humming.
Silas leans in, squinting at my face. “You’re hiding something.”
“Obviously,” Elias says. “Who wears sunglasses while doing construction? You’re not in a Top Gun reboot.”
“I swear to every ancient god that ever crawled from the Void, if you don’t back up—”
“Let me guess,” Silas says, ignoring the growl in my voice like it’s background noise. “You and Luna had a moment. Abondingmoment. And now your eyes are gray.”
Elias makes a low, drawn-out “ooooh” and points at my face. “That’swhy. You’re full-on heart-eyes mode.”
“I will fucking bury both of you under this wall,” I say flatly, turning to glare at them.
Which is a mistake.
Because Elias grabs my glasses before I can stop him and pulls them off. Silas makes a gasp so dramatic it sounds like a dying opera singer.