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“You, uh…” he starts, then glances across the clearing. “Want me to, I don’t know, send him a little bouquet? Maybe a glitterbomb with a handwritten poem? ‘Roses are red, your soul’s unhinged, come back to us before Branwen wins?’”
I turn slowly and look at him.
He goes completely still.
Then clears his throat. “Right. So… too soon.”
“I don’t want him to come back,” I say quietly. “I want him towantto.”
That shuts him up for real.
Silas tosses the dagger into the dirt and flops onto a broken stone bench like it insulted him. “This is getting way too emotionally authentic. Someone throw a curse or fuck a demon already.”
I ignore them both.
Because across the clearing, Lucien still hasn’t looked back.
And that silence is starting to sound like a scream.
“What do you think she’s doing to Caspian?” I ask them. My voice doesn’t shake, but it lands hard between us, the kind of question that doesn’t want to be answered. And for a second, neither of them do.
Elias looks away first, rubbing the back of his neck like I just pressed my thumb into a bruise he thought I couldn’t see. His mouth twists, some too-clever quip dying behind his lips. Silas follows slower, tossing a pebble toward the broken fountain but not watching it land.
And it terrifies me. Because they’re not speechless. They’reprotecting me.Which means it’s worse than I imagined.
Caspian isn’t just missing. He isn’t just under Branwen’s influence. He’shersnow. Body. Magic. Desire. And Caspian, gods—heislust. He’s the embodiment of it. The pull, the ache, the way your breath catches before you even understand why. If Branwen is using him…touchinghim...
The thought hits like a blade to the gut, cold and slow and too deep.
I wrap my arms tighter around myself. Not to shield. To hold the pieces in.
“She could make himwant it,” I whisper, more to myself than to them. “That’s what she does, right? Not just take—corrupt. Make him crave the hand that cuts him open.”
“Luna,” Elias says, but softly. No jokes now. No stupid comments. And that scares me more than anything.
“She’d use that bond to twist everything he is,” I continue, pushing through it even as the images build behind my eyes. Caspian, undone and remade in her hands. Not fighting.Seduced.Gods, he wouldhatethat.
“She’d use him to break the rest of us,” I murmur.
Neither of them speaks.
Because we all know I’m right.
“She’d make him want to be the blade.”
Silas shifts, unease flickering across his expression before he covers it with a low whistle. “We don’t know for sure that’s what’s happening. Could be she’s got him locked in some creepy mirror maze making him relive all his bad sex jokes in a loop. Eternal punishment and all that.”
“Silas,” I say, voice tight.
He meets my eyes then—and for once, there’s no chaos in his grin. Just something raw and grieving. And that’s how I know it’s even worse than I imagined.
“She’ll keep him alive,” Elias says finally. “That’s what she does. Shesavors.Doesn’t kill until she’s had every last piece of what she wants.”
“And what does she want from him?”
Elias’s answer is a whisper, bitter and sharp. “To prove she can stillownsomeone like him.”
My breath catches.