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While Luna—gods,Luna—is weaving threads of Sin into her skin like they were always meant to live there.
The bond doesn’t exist between us, but I feel it all the same. A leash. A hook. A set of invisible instructions embedded into my spine. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Don’t touch Keira. Don’t challenge the Council.
And that last one burns.
Riven’s shoulders shift. A twitch. Barely perceptible. But I know him. I know when he’s about to snap.
Keira finally speaks, and her voice is smoke over snow. Cold. Smooth. Deadly.
“There’s been a violation,” she says. “One that threatens everything the Council has bound.”
She looks at Luna when she says it.
Not me.
Not Riven.
Her.
Luna stares back, chin high. Unflinching.
And I—I’m suffocating.
Because I don’t know what I feel. Hatred, sure. For Keira. For the Council. For what they took from me. But underneath that, coiled and hungry, is something darker.
A part of me that remembers what it was like to want Keira. And thatinfuriatesme.
Riven steps in front of her like the fucking world will end if Keira breathes too close. And maybe it would. Maybehewould end it.
I look away.
Because that moment—Riven, standing like a weapon between Luna and what hethinksis a threat—it does something I don’t want to name. Not jealousy. Not protectiveness. But something bitter and ancient that tastes too much like longing and not enough like power.
Keira’s eyes narrow like a blade sliding into place.
Predictable.
Her rage is always dressed up like righteousness. Like the fate of the world hinges on her ability to make everything personal.
Lorian steps forward, smooth and deliberate, and I hear the crackle of his bones under that too-perfect skin. His hood falls back, revealing that ageless, unreadable face. Lorian is beautiful in that carved-from-marble way—immortal beauty, devoid of soul. There’s no kindness in it. No warmth. Just perfection for perfection’s sake.
His voice is colder than the room.
“You should have summoned us,” he says, addressing no one and everyone. “When the barrier fell. When the Hollow shifted. Whenshewas bound.”
He doesn’t say her name. Like it might burn his tongue. Or worse—like naming her might give her power he couldn’t contain.
Riven doesn’t flinch. Gods, I love him for it. For the way he meets Lorian’s stare with something feral in his blood.
“We summon no one,” he says. “We created you. Don’t forget that.”
Andfuck, I want to cheer. Because Riven says it like it’s a fact etched into the marrow of the world. Because itis.
We didn’t bend knee to the Council. We birthed it. We breathed it into being when the world was raw and ruinous and screaming for someone to draw the first law in blood.
Lorian’s lips twitch—something between a smirk and a sneer—but Keira cuts him off before he can speak.
“This isn’t aboutauthority,” she says, stepping forward now. Her cloak parts, and her council insignia flares along the seam of her chest like a brand. “This is about containment. You know what she is. What she’s capable of.”