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“She let you out again,” I murmur.
“She always lets me out,” he replies. “After.”
There’s no need to ask afterwhat. The air clings to him, thick with sex and magic and something colder. A brand, invisible, but no less permanent. I can smell it on him.
“She obsessed with you now?” I ask. Flat. Detached.
He doesn’t answer for a long time.
Then, quietly, “She always was.”
I lean back against the cold wall. “Must be nice.”
“Is it?”
I look at him. Really look. He’s not Caspian anymore. Not entirely. Something of him still lingers—the quiet intelligence, the slow-burning certainty—but it’s buried beneath layers of compulsion and guilt and whatever thrill she rips out of him when he forgets to resist.
“You still fight her?” I ask.
He nods once.
Then, “But I lose.”
There’s silence. Not empty. Loaded.
I study the cracks in the ceiling.
“I’m glad it’s not me,” I admit.
He snorts. “That’s fair.”
“I mean, it still might be.”
Caspian glances at me. “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
The door closes behind him. And I realize, too late—
He didn’t open it. Which means it wasn’t his choice to come in. Which means she’s still watching.
And maybe... she’s waiting for me to want it.
Too bad.
Because I don’t bend.
I buy.
And when I leave this place, I won’t crawl.
I’ll take it.
I don’t hear the footsteps. That’s the first clue. Branwen’s dominion doesn’t announce itself—it slithers in, threads itself through the seams of reality and waits. But when Caspian puts his head in his hands, when his shoulders slump like something invisible just sank its claws into his spine, I know she’s touched him again.
He’s not crying. Caspian doesn’t cry. But the sound he makes is worse.
A sigh, slow and gutted. Like he's trying to exhale her out of his lungs.
He scrubs a hand through his hair, rough, leaving it more disheveled than before. His jaw clenches. Opens. Then shuts again.