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I watch her eyes, the way they flick between all of us—how she tracks each smile, every sarcastic jab, like she’s memorizing it. Maybe she is. Maybe we all are.
Because this? This is rare. Fries and milkshakes in a diner that’s too bright, with music that hums through the old speakers overhead and nothing hunting us—for now.
I chew another fry, dunk it again, this time deeper, and Silas lets out a ridiculous squeak like I’ve just given him a kiss. I growl low in my throat and toss a crumpled napkin at him. He catches it in his mouth.
Fucking dog.
But he’s our dog.
And for a minute, just one, the war doesn’t exist. The Hollow feels far away. Branwen’s name doesn’t taste like ash. And we’re not fractured. We’re here.
Fries. Milkshakes. Chaos.
Almost whole.
Ambrose wears grief like it’s tailored—pressed and silent and almost regal in the way it clings to him. He’s always been composed, but lately, the edges are too sharp, the pauses between his words too long, as if he’s chewing glass before speaking. I watch him now, his mouth set in that familiar flat line as Silas rattles on about his flavor-ranking system for the milkshakes, complete with dramatic reenactments and suspicious math.
Luna flicks Silas in the forehead mid-sentence. It’s a quick movement, half-annoyance, half-affection. Silas recoils like she’s shattered his dignity. “My brain!” he gasps, grabbing his head with both hands like he’s been mortally wounded.
Ambrose smiles.
It’s faint, almost hidden, like the man’s afraid it might betray him. But I see it. Hell, I feel it. The way the expression pulls at something long-frozen in his face—how it loosens his shoulders, just for a second. He doesn't look at Luna when he smiles, but I know she caused it.
She doesn’t push. Doesn’t pry. She never once asked me what the Hollow did to me when I came back half-dead and feral and barely holding it together. She just sat with me in silence, let me rage when I needed to, let me exist without expectation. And that’s what Ambrose needs too. Someone who doesn’t demand his broken pieces be fit back together in a certain way. She lets people come to her like a tide, patient and inevitable. That’s her magic, really—not just what lives in her blood or her hands or whatever cosmic trick the Hollow gave her—but this quiet, relentless gravity. Shepullspeople in, but never traps them.
And Ambrose… he’s moving. Not fast. Not loudly. But he’s moving toward her. In his way.
I could hate him for it. I really could.
But I don’t.
Because I see the way she looks at all of us—how it’s different for each one, but never less. She’s not splitting herself between us. She’s giving something whole to each of us in a way only she knows how to manage. It doesn’t make sense, but then again, nothing about her ever has. That’s probably why I can’t fucking stay away.
I shift in my seat, watching as Silas dips two fries at once into his milkshake and tries to feed them to both Elias and Luna at the same time. Elias rolls his eyes so hard they might detach, but he opens his mouth like the indulgent idiot he is. Luna dodges the fry and uses the opportunity to steal Silas’s entire milkshake like a damn gremlin. She drinks it while staring him down. He wails like she just slapped his grandmother.
Ambrose is watching too. And his smile grows.
It’s not love yet. Not the way it is for me, for Silas, for Elias. But something in him is turning. He’s thawing. And Luna… she’s giving him the space to do it. No pressure. No manipulation. Just a quiet offer to stay, if he wants to.
She’s more than my bond. More than the girl fate tethered to me in the dark.
She’s the only real friend I’ve had in a long, long time.
And I’d kill for her all over again. Just to make sure she never loses that smile. The one that makes Ambrose forget he’s still bleeding. The one that makes me forget I ever was.
Silas starts giggling before I even know what the hell he's looking at. It’s the kind of laugh that comes from somewhere too deep to be harmless—shoulders shaking, hand slapped dramatically over his mouth like he’s trying to contain a crime. And because it'sSilas, the crime is probably unfolding in real-time.
I follow his gaze and immediately regret it.
Two goth teens walk into the diner like they just crawled out of a B-horror movie set. Black mesh, chains that clink too loud, eyeliner thick enough to qualify as a weapon. One of them has a coffin-shaped purse. The other has fangs. Not metaphorical ones. Actual, molded, plastic vampire fangs.
Silas lets out a high-pitchedsqueakbehind his fingers, and I snap my leg forward under the table, nailing his shin with a satisfying thud.
Hechokes. Literally. Milkshake explodes out of his mouth and dribbles down his chin, the sound he makes somewhere between a dying goose and a child being denied candy. “Riven!” he gasps, clutching his chest like I gave him cardiac arrest. “You kicked me. I was mid-sip!”
“You deserved it.”
“I was appreciating local culture!” he hisses, dabbing at his mouth with the edge of a napkin like he's delicate and dignifiedand not covered in strawberry milkshake. “You should support the youth.”