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“Never,” we say in unison.
But I glance at Luna again. And something inside me stills. Just for a moment. She’s not laughing, but she’s listening. And her eyes—fuck, those eyes—are soft in a way that makes me want to hurl a joke and a prayer at her feet.
The tavern looms ahead. Larger now. Like it’s growing with every step we take. I don’t know what we’ll find inside. But I know she’ll walk straight in. And I’ll follow.
Even if it kills me. Especially if it saves her.
The second we step inside The Fang’s Tooth, it hits me—the kind of thick, fermented scent that clings to old wood and older secrets. Spiced smoke. Ale. Ash. Maybe something darker curling beneath it, something metallic. Something that shouldn’t be here and yetalwaysis in places like this.
Silas holds the door open with all the pageantry of a court jester on his best behavior. He bows low. Too low. Arm stretched across his chest like he’s introducing a queen to a court of fools.
“Your throne awaits, my lady,” he murmurs, voice syrupy with dramatics. “And by throne, I mean whatever half-splintered bench we can find without a drunkard drooling on it.”
Luna doesn’t even pause. Doesn’t blink. She walks past him with that impossible grace of hers—like the world’s lucky she lets her feet touch the ground at all—and I watch her do it like the masochist I am.
I follow close behind and flick Silas in the forehead hard enough to make him hiss. “Don’t encourage your own delusions.”
He rubs his forehead like I broke skin. “You’re just mad I bowed better than you flirt.”
“Is that what you were doing? I thought you were stroking your own ego again.”
Inside, the tavern is alive with a wrongness that no one but us seems to notice. People move around us, but not like people. They glide. They shuffle. They don’t meet our eyes, and when they speak, it’s in hushed, stilted syllables that don’t quite match their mouths.
Lucien is already surveying the space like he’s going to find the floor plan hiding in the cracks between stones. Orin is silent at his shoulder, watching the crowd with the kind of stillness that makes me twitch. Riven heads straight to the back wall like he’s casing it for exits. Smart.
Silas beelines for the bar.
“Donotdrink the ale,” I mutter.
“It’s the only thing worth living for in this hellhole,” he calls back, and I swear I hear at least three people grunt in agreement.
I feel her before I see her. Luna. Standing still in the center of this mess, her head tilted just slightly like she’s trying to hear something no one else can. Her mouth is parted like she’s about to speak, but she doesn’t. Can’t. Because Orin and Lucien arehere, and we don’t trust anything that might crawl back through their bond.
I move toward her before I can think better of it. She messes with my calm, my rhythm, my whole damn worldview—but I’d burn down the world before I’d let her be alone in it.
“You okay?” I murmur, careful not to touch. Not yet. Not unless she needs it.
She doesn’t look at me, but I see her jaw tighten. And that’s answer enough.
Something’s wrong here. And not just the decor.
I let my fingers ghost over the edge of her sleeve, just enough to let her feel the weight of me beside her. And then I lean close, like I’m going to whisper something filthy and useless. Instead I say, “We should find out what they’re hiding here. Before this place remembers who we are.”
And then, because Ican’thelp myself, I add under my breath, “But if I get possessed, you’re still not allowed to kill me. Just tie me up. Gently.”
She doesn’t laugh. But her lips twitch. And that’s the best win I’ll get tonight.
Silas slams the tankards down like we’re celebrating something instead of, you know, teetering on the edge of annihilation. Foam sloshes over the rims, dark and frothy and smelling like a memory I don’t want to unpack. I raise a brow at him as he slides into the seat across from me, grinning like he just won a brawl he didn’t have to fight.
“To sin,” he says, lifting his tankard with mock solemnity. “And to the woman who’s made all of us her bitch.”
Luna just curls her fingers around the handle, lifts it, and drinks like she’s lived through worse than whatever fresh hell Lucien’s plotting from the other side of the room.
Which, fair. She has.
Still, I lean over the scarred wood table toward her, lowering my voice so only she and Silas can hear. “You realize we’ve been benched, right? Exiled to the chaos corner while Lucien and Orin talk strategy with their stoic faces and probably ignore everything Riven says.”
Silas shrugs, already gulping his ale. “We’re the fun ones. Let them sit over there and glower each other into submission.”