Page 198

Ambrose
Her hand catches mine mid-throw. It’s soft, but not timid—steady in a way that makes my whole arm pause, like even my fury listens when she speaks without speaking. Her fingers wrap around my wrist, the cool brush of her skin somehow grounding.
“Why are you rage-throwing your phone?” she asks, and I hate how calmly she says it, like I’m a toddler caught mid-tantrum and not a man who could command the wind to flay cities bare.
I turn toward her slowly, biting down the immediate impulse to rip the phone in half anyway, if only out of principle. She’s wearing that hoodie again—Elias’s, of all things. Too big for her, sleeves hiding her hands. Her eyes are soft with amusement, not pity, which is probably the only reason I haven’t shattered the screen yet.
“This contraption,” I hiss, holding the device between us like it’s cursed. “It refuses to obey.”
Luna raises an eyebrow, mouth twitching at the corners. “You tried giving it an order?”
“I told it to take a photo,” I grit out. “And it mocked me. Flashed at me like it was going to obey—and then showed me my own face. Just my face. Nothing behind me, not what I was aiming for. A mockery. An insult.”
She laughs. Actually laughs. It’s not loud, but it’s real, and it lands low in my chest, spreading like something dangerous.“Ambrose,” she says gently, pulling the phone from my hand like I’ve handed her a live grenade. “You opened the front-facing camera.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She’s biting her lip now, trying not to grin. “It means it was taking a selfie.”
I stare at her. “A what.”
“A picture of yourself,” she says, deadpan now, like she’s trying to keep it clinical and not burst into another fit of laughter. “People take them. On purpose. Sometimes in bathrooms.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why.”
“Because…” She shrugs. “Humans are vain. And you’re pretty. I’m shocked you haven’t taken fifty already.”
I say nothing. Mostly because my brain has short-circuited on the wordpretty.
She flips the phone around, taps a few things, and suddenly the camera is showing what’s actually in front of us—the courtyard, the fading golden stretch of light against the stonework, the shadowed sprawl of Daemon Academy’s southern halls. The Hollow still hums beneath us, faint but insistent, like it’s never truly gone.
“There,” she says, handing it back. “Now you’re in control.”
I take it slowly, suspicious. The image shifts as I move. I can see her in the corner of the frame now, small and bright against the somber gray. I tap the little white circle. It clicks.
The picture captures her perfectly—caught mid-turn, hair sweeping over her shoulder, eyes glancing back toward me like she knows something I don’t. Like she always does.
I don’t say thank you. I never do.
But I don’t throw the phone either. I pocket it and look down at her hand still on my wrist.
“You stopped me,” I murmur, voice low. “That’s twice now.”
Her fingers slide away, slow and deliberate. “Someone has to keep your dramatic ass from declaring war on technology.”
I step closer. Close enough that the warmth of her reaches me before our bodies do. “You really think it would be a war?”
She looks up, steady and unfazed. “No. You’d win. But you’d be alone.”
And fuck. That’s the cruelest thing she could’ve said.
“Not if you’re still standing here,” I reply.
She blinks, once. Then smiles, but not the kind that reaches her eyes.
“Careful,” she murmurs. “You almost sounded like you meant that.”
I don’t reply. Not out loud. But I don’t walk away either.