Page 20

I try to speak. Nothing comes out. Just that godawful dust, curling on my tongue like decay and something older. My lips are numb. My chest is on fire. There’s a weight pressing down on me from every side, like the ruins have turned into a tomb just for me.
Something inside me is answering it.
My body shudders, not from cold—but recognition.
This place knows me.
And it wants meback.
Orin
It’s beautiful, the way the two of them hold her. Not in the way people think beauty looks. There’s no poetry to it, no staged reverence. Just Elias, crouched low with one hand still on her wrist, two fingers pressed to the pulse point like he’s afraid it might vanish if he lets go. And Silas, sitting cross-legged at her side, his grin long since faded, rubbing lazy circles into the back of her hand like he doesn’t know he’s doing it.
They’re quiet now.
Which means it’s bad.
Luna’s lying on a patch of half-cleared stone, the ruins humming around her like they’ve drawn breath for the first time in centuries and can’t decide whether to exhale or scream. Her skin is flushed, her body still. Whatever the Academy woke in her, it hit deep. It’s clinging to her now. Feeding off something old and buried that none of us fully understand—not even me.
And that should terrify me.
But I’m too busy watching her sleep.
Elias put her under with a whisper and a glyph carved into the air with his thumb. He doesn’t always take things seriously, but when he does, it’s always for her. He won’t say it out loud—none of us will—but there’s something sacred about the way he moved when she started to fall. No hesitation. Just instinct. He reached for her like it was the only thing that’s ever mattered.
And now here we are.
Sitting in a broken circle of stone, five feet from where magic swallowed her whole.
Lucien stands off to the side, arms folded, posture rigid, but he hasn’t moved since Elias said she was stable. I know what he’s thinking. I know what it costs him tolookat her like this—peaceful, quiet, vulnerable. It isn’t rage in him right now. It’s something worse.Regret.
I move closer, careful not to cast a shadow over her. The pulse of energy in this place has settled, but not died. The stones arewatching.The magic’s listening. Luna stirred something, and it’s not finished with her. Not by a long stretch.
“She’s still connected,” I murmur, mostly to myself.
Silas glances up. “To what?”
I hesitate.
Then lie. “The Academy.”
Because the truth is heavier than they’re ready for. Because I saw the way her eyes glazed before she dropped. Saw the flicker of black ink crawl across her palm and vanish before Elias reached her. It wasn’t the Academy that touched her. It wasn’t Branwen, either.
It was somethingbeneathall of this. Something that remembers who Luna is becoming—and wants to claim her first.
Lucien moves finally, stepping closer. “Is she safe now?”
I look at her again. At the curve of her mouth, the faint twitch in her fingers. And the ache in my chest blooms sharp, selfish, and unrelenting.
“She’s quiet,” I say.
But safe?
No.
Because she’s never been safe.
Not from the magic.