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Because the booth has space for three more. And I’m still watching the door like if I look hard enough, one of them might walk through it.
I’ve torn apart every book that’s survived the Hollow’s corruption. Pried open hidden archives, forced answers out of trembling mouths, bled sigils across the floor until they burned black—but nothing. The Pillar won’t speak to me. Not anymore. Whatever Lucien did to it... it’s sealed. Silent. Like it’s already mourned them and moved on.
But I haven’t.
I won’t.
Lucien, Orin, Caspian—gone, but not dead. Not exactly. I’dfeelit. So why the fuck did Lucien close the portal?
He knows what Branwen is. What she’s done. What shewilldo if left unchecked. She’s not a queen—she’s a parasite. Feeding off reverence, manipulating the past like it’s a crown. And still, somehow, they’ve chosen to stay in her orbit. The most brilliant tactician I’ve ever known, the most ruthless strategist in a thousand years—and his best idea was toshut the dooron us?
It doesn’t make sense. Unless… unless he’s buying time.
Unless killing her isn’t just impossible—it’s the point.
Lucien doesn’t do things halfway. If he’s cut us off, it’s because he thinks we’re a liability. Or bait. Or worse—he thinks this is his war to win without us.
I haven’t told Luna any of this. I don’t know how. It’s not that I don’t trust her—I do. More than anyone. Which is exactly why I can’t drop this at her feet. Not when she already has the weight of every choice pressing down on her chest. Not when she looks at me like I’m still capable of pulling us out of this, like I’m not just trying to keep from splintering into pieces that can’t be remade.
She doesn’t know I wake up hearing Orin’s voice, clipped and calm and damning—you hesitated. She doesn’t know I see Caspian’s smirk in every reflection, and Lucien’s glare whenever I close my eyes.
And shecan’tknow that part of me wonders if theymeantfor us to stop looking. If they chose this. If they’ve decided that she and I and the others are safer apart.
But that’s not how this works.
I grip the edge of the table hard enough to crack the wood. That’snothow this ends.
They areours. Mine. No magic binds me to Lucien’s commands, not anymore. He may be the crown in exile, but I never followed him for his strategy. I followed him because we were built to wintogether. We burn together or not at all.
So whatever Branwen has planned, whatever sick theater she’s directing behind those golden walls, it ends. She ends.
Because I don’t care what it takes. I will rip apart the Hollow with my bare fucking hands if I have to. I will drag them back, spine by spine if I must. Lucien might think this is checkmate, that he's sacrificing himself for some larger move.
But I never learned to play by his rules. And I don't care who I have to bleed to break them.
The fries hit the table like an afterthought—golden, crisp, steaming. Silas makes this exaggerated gasp like someone just delivered the crown jewels on porcelain plates, and not four baskets of fried starch we didn’t ask for. He claps, actuallyclaps,and the waitress shoots him a look like she’s not sure whether to roll her eyes or ask for his number.
“Okay,” he says, already reaching across the table like a damn gremlin, “everyone gets their own, but communal fry culture is sacred, and I will be policing it. You fry thieves have been warned.”
I glare at him, but I still take one. It’s habit by now—surrendering to Silas' chaos before he gets louder. I dip it into the edge of my milkshake like he showed us ten times already, even though we all know how it works. My fingers flip him off as I eat it, middle finger high, elbow on the table like I’ve got all the time in the world to be pissed.
And the worst part?
It’s good.
Of courseit’s good. Salty, sweet, that ridiculous crunch giving way to cold vanilla that shouldn’t work together but somehow does. I chew slowly, like if I pretend to hate it long enough, I might actually convince myself I do.
Silas beams at me. “Told you so,” he says, and it’s smug and obnoxious and somehow affectionate. “You flipped me off, but I felt the love in it.”
I grunt. “It’s edible. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late. Already writing your approval into my will. You get the motorcycle jacket. Elias gets the glitter helmet.”
Elias—who’s currently doing a dramatic reenactment of death-by-fry, head back, tongue out, eyes rolled—mumbles, “Finally. Something sexy for me to wear in the afterlife.”
“Babe,” Silas says, leaning across Luna to grin at him, “I’m going to bedazzle your casket. It’ll be the most fabulous funeral anyone’s ever cried at.”
Luna giggles around her straw, elbowing Silas as he tries to nudge closer to her side of the booth. It’s a sound I haven’t heard enough lately—light, real, not haunted by strategy or what-ifs.And somehow, it makes the knot in my chest tighten instead of loosen.