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“What are you doing?” I ask, leaning against a tree because this moment is going into the memory vault forever.
“CPR, obviously!” she yells without looking at me. “Is he not breathing? Elias, help me!”
I snort. “Oh yeah. Let me just reverse the cardiac arrest caused by your spectacular magical prowess. You’re a murderer now, Lu. Congratulations.”
She gives me a death glare, then slaps Silas’s face lightly. “Come on, you idiot. Don’t die. Not like this. Not mid-squirrel impression. You’re too pretty to die like this.”
At that, Silas groans.
I smirk.
He stirs dramatically, blinking his eyes open like he’s waking from a century-long slumber, and then—because of course he does—he whispers, voice hoarse and tragic, “Tell Luna… I died loving her bosom…”
Luna jerks back so fast she nearly falls over.
“Iknewyou were faking!” she shrieks, and then she starts hitting him in earnest—light little punches to his chest, shoulders, anywhere she can reach.
Silas, still splayed across the grass like he’s auditioning for a Shakespearean tragedy, grabs her wrist and sighs. “You stopped time. Forme. Youloveme.”
“I’m going toactuallykill you.”
“I knew that would be how I went,” he whispers. “Murdered by beauty. It's poetic.”
I groan. “If you two start dry humping in front of the squirrel mafia, I’m leaving.”
Silas grins, wide and unrepentant. “Elias, I saw the light. And it looked like Luna’s thighs. I’m a changed man now.”
“You werenevera man to begin with,” I mutter. “You were conjured in a lab full of glitter and erotic shame.”
She’s on her knees beside him now, muttering apologies between panicked gasps, hands fluttering like she’s deciding whether to perform a resurrection spell or a slap to the face. And Silas—absolute menace incarnate—curls on the grass like he’s about to be buried with honors. Arms folded across his chest, face twisted in noble suffering.
“I didn’tmeanto hit him that hard,” Luna says, her voice shrill with guilt. “You said I couldn’t actually do it!”
I stretch out on the bench like I’m sunbathing, arm draped over my eyes. “Correction—I said you couldn’t do itproperly. This? This is just dramatic overachievement.”
She glares at me over Silas’s prone body, which he shifts ever-so-slightly so his head lands more strategically in her lap. Snake.
“I think he’s unconscious,” she whispers, stroking his hair like he’s Snow White.
Silas lets out a long, theatrical moan. “Shestruckme with her love,” he croaks. “Felled by affection, undone by power and beauty and… and squirrels.”
I lift my head just enough to raise a brow. “You’re the reason no one takes immortality seriously.”
“I saw the gods,” he murmurs. “And they were… judgmental.”
“Shekilledyou with a level one drain,” I add, deadpan. “Wow. We’ll have to downgrade your combat rating. Maybe demote you to distraction duty.”
“I’vealwaysbeen the distraction,” he hisses, then lifts a hand and taps her thigh. “But what a way to go.”
Luna swats his fingers away like he’s a particularly clingy cat, but she’s laughing now. That soft, startled kind of laugh that pulls from somewhere low, like she doesn’t trust it. Her guilt is still flickering, but it’s losing the battle against amusement.
“He’s fine,” I say, pushing up from the bench and brushing off my shirt. “The day Silas Veyd dies from a girl’s first spell is the day I stop being devastatingly attractive.”
“You’re not—” she starts, but Silas cuts her off.
“He is,” Silas says dreamily, eyes still closed. “But I’m prettier.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re concussed.”