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“You’re not asking for help,” I say, stretching my legs out along the banister, watching her approach like she might crack the world open just to spite me. “You’re out here yelling at squirrels and vibrating with unresolved sexual tension. I assumed this was your sacred alone time.”
She stops at the bottom step, arms crossed under her chest, which is a problem. She knows it. I know it. We’re both pretending I’m not staring.
“I was trying to practice,” she says. “But you and your stupid magic is impossible to copy.”
“Because I’m special,” I say, flashing a grin. “And irreplaceable. You should probably start worshiping me properly. Sacrifice a goat. Or your dignity. Either works.”
“You’re exhausting.”
“Only because you’re obsessed with me.”
She makes a noise in her throat that might be annoyance, might be affection. Hard to tell. I make her feel too much and she hates it. I hate that I love it.
But then she walks up the stairs, slow and deliberate, and she doesn’t stop until she’s standing between my legs, peering down at me like I’m the one misbehaving. Her hand lands on my knee. Casual. Deadly.
“I can’t get the timing right,” she says finally, quieter now. “It’s like trying to grab air. It slips through before I even—”
I reach up, curl a hand around her wrist, not to stop her, just to feel her. “Because you’re trying to replicate instead of wield. You’re not me, Lu. You’re not supposed to copy my power. You’re supposed to break it. Rebuild it into something else. Something...”
She waits.
“...yours.”
The silence hangs like a string pulled tight between us. Her fingers slide into my hair, tug gently like she’s grounding herself, and I tilt my face up to her.
“You think I can?” she asks.
“I think you already are,” I say. “And I think it scares the shit out of all of us.”
She leans down, just enough to brush her mouth against mine—not a kiss. Not yet. But I feel it in every slow-burning inch of me.
And just before she pulls back, I murmur against her lips, “Besides, if it’s a stasis you want—I’ve got a bed upstairs and absolutely no problem being unconscious for hours after.”
She laughs. Shoves me back.
I let her. But I’m already following.
Because gods help me, I’d let her stop time if it meant I got to stay in the moment where she looks at me like I’m hers.
She actually did it.
One second I’m sipping coffee, explaining the mechanics like some ancient, all-knowing stasis guru—and the next, Silas fucking Veyd is mid-gesture, halfway through what was probably an obscene mimed squirrel impression, and then boom. Timber. The man drops like a Victorian damsel in a corset too tight.
I blink. Stare.
Then I glance at Luna, whose face is a masterpiece of horror. Wide eyes, hands half-lifted like she’s just summoned a goddamn meteor instead of borrowing a fragment of my power. Her mouth opens, no sound. And then—
“Oh my god—I KILLED HIM.”
She bolts toward him, and I follow at a much more leisurely pace, because a) I’m 112% sure Silas is still breathing, and b) I refuse to run for a man who once used my toothbrush to clean his boots “by accident.”
Luna drops to her knees beside Silas’s dramatic, crumpled mess of a body, clutching at his shirt like she’s reenacting the third act of a tragic opera.
“Silas?” she says, shaking him. “Silas, wake up. This isn’t funny!”
It is. It’s so fucking funny I might actually lose consciousness myself.
She presses a hand to his chest. Then starts thumping it.