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“No,” he says, with a mockingly thoughtful tilt of his head. “I’m telling you the world has existed in cycles. And in every version of it, we’ve been there. Not always awake. Not always whole. But always present. Like marrow beneath the skin of civilization. We are not just a product of this world, Luna. We are its instincts made flesh.”
I stare at him. “So you’re not just old. You’re pre-everything.”
He smiles slowly. “Now you’re getting it.”
I laugh once, breathless. “Not at all terrifying.”
“On the contrary.” He tilts his head. “You should be terrified.”
I meet his eyes, unwilling to flinch. “And yet I’m not.”
He studies me in that calculating way of his, the way someone might study a storm cloud—waiting to see if it will break or pass.
“Then maybe you haven’t realized what that makes you,” he says softly.
“What?”
He leans in, voice low, meant only for me. “If we are the instincts of the world, then you… you’re the one thing it built to bind them.”
“Well,” I say, rising from the edge of his bed, empty bottle swinging from my fingertips, “I haven’t had nearly enough to drink to process the fact that you and your brothers are basically prehistorical demi-gods forged from the chaos of the universe.”
Ambrose arches a brow. “A generous title.”
“Not generous enough,” I mutter, brushing imaginary dust from my thigh as if that’ll help shake off the weight of everything he just unloaded. “So. I’m gonna go find another beer. Or a shot. Maybe both. Call it a night. Let my brain slowly implode in peace.”
I expect him to say something. A snide comment, maybe. A clever dig. But he just watches me. Cold. Curious. Like he’s waiting to see which version of me walks out the door—Layla’s sister or the Sin Binder; the girl or the storm.
I offer him a two-fingered salute and make for the hallway. The air outside his room is cooler somehow. Cleaner. Like even the magic doesn’t want to linger around Ambrose too long.
I descend the stairs, one hand trailing the rail, thoughts still tangled in him, in what he said. That they were shaped from instinct. From the Hollow itself. That I’m the thing the world made to cage them.
But that’s not what I’ve done. I haven’t caged them. I’ve let them choose.
I step into the corridor where the stones hum faintly beneath my soles, the bones of Daemon rebuilding themselves in real time. It breathes here. Slowly. Like it’s remembering who we are.
I head toward the kitchen, where I know Elias stashed a bottle of something wicked behind the dried blood-and-ink spellbooks. If I’m lucky, I’ll find Silas trying to juggle knives or planning something ill-advised. If I’m luckier, I’ll run into neither and have five minutes to figure out what the hell comes next.
Because I don’t know if Ambrose is cracking or if he’s just finally starting to show the pieces he wants me to see. And I don’t know which is more dangerous.
Lucien
She dresses us like we’re meant to amuse her.
Black suits, pressed within an inch of suffocation, cut to accentuate our bodies like we’re ornaments—glimmering reminders of what she’s stolen. A collar without the leather. A leash without the chain. Branwen’s idea of aesthetic subjugation.
I kneel. Not by choice.
Branwen likes when power looks like surrender. When it parades in front of her as if it chose to kneel. Her throne isn't carved from stone, but from illusion—crafted from men like us who should’ve never bowed to anyone.
But Dominion doesn't work here. Not against her. I’ve tried. The moment I opened my mouth to command, it snapped shut—lips frozen mid-order, lungs locking down like her name was etched into my marrow.
I dig my fingernails into the wood floor beneath me. Hard. I want the pain. I want it to remind me I’m still in here somewhere. That this isn’t real. That I’m not hers.
But I am.
At least, for now.
Caspian feeds her grapes. One by one. And he jokes, flirts, smiles with teeth that should be tearing her apart—but I know Caspian. I know the slow burn of loathing behind his dimples. The careful way he chooses the softest grapes, the ones that’llburst between her teeth, as if he's imagining something else popping.