Page 25

Lucien shifts, and for one heartbeat, I think he’ll say her name.Luna.
But he doesn’t. Because if he does? We’ll both bleed for it.
Caspian
If I took a thousand showers, scrubbed myself raw until the skin peeled from my bones, I still wouldn’t feel clean.
Branwen doesn’t just touch flesh—she imprints. Marks. Claims. Every inch of me sings with it, like her fingers are still there, ghosting across my skin with the kind of reverence you’d give to something you built to destroy. I used to think I could shake it off. Fuck it out. Drown it in someone else's heat. But the bond didn’t fade.
It just got smarter.
And now, I’m the one on the floor, limbs too heavy to move, spine pressed to cold stone that remembers me better than I do. The ruins whisper my name the way she does—like I’m a secret meant to be tasted. And maybe I am.
Because I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay again.
I don’t know if I ever was.
Branwen broke me the first time when she offered herself like a gift, all soft eyes and sacrificial sweetness. A goddamn lie wrapped in skin. And when we escaped her—when I felt that tether slacken—I thought that meant I was free.
But I wasn’t.
Because the moment she got her claws back in, she didn’t have to take me.
Iwent.
That’s the worst part.
I followed her.
And now I’m here—soiled, ruined, whatever word you want to stitch across my chest like a fucking brand—and I can’t even pretend otherwise. Not when Ambrose stands over me, not saying anything, just watching. Like he’s trying to figure out where the man ends and the whore begins.
“You can stop looking at me like that,” I mutter, voice thick, scraped raw. “Your pity smells like rot.”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move. Just tilts his head slightly, unreadable in that way only Ambrose can manage.
“I’m not pitying you,” he says at last. “I’m wondering what you’ll do next.”
I huff a humorless laugh. “What do you think? Crawl back to her? Let her tie a pretty bow around my throat and tell me I was born for it?”
Ambrose crouches beside me, sharp-suited and unbothered by the filth. “No,” he says, quiet. “I think you’re waiting.”
“For what?”
His gaze flicks to the far wall, to nothing, to everything. “For someone to ask you to stay.”
The words land like a blow I didn’t see coming. And maybe that’s his power—not some magic like mine, not Lust humming through the bones of every room—but truth, wielded like a scalpel. A slow slice to show you your own insides.
“I don’t want—”
“You do,” he says. “But not from her.”
I close my eyes. Not to shut him out.
To shuteverythingout.
Because he’s right.
I don’t want to be saved. Not unless it’shervoice saying the words. And gods help me—if Luna ever asks, I’ll kneel. Not because she makes me. Because she wouldn’t have to.