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I shove my plate away.
“I’m going outside,” I mutter, already rising.
“You didn’t eat,” Elias points out.
“Not hungry.”
“Not mad, either,” Silas adds without looking up, voice syrupy with sarcasm. “Just brooding for the aesthetics.”
I shoot him a look. One that would’ve made most men reconsider their entire existence.
Silas winks at me.
Luna doesn’t say a word. But as I pass, Ifeelher. That bond hums again, low and dangerous. And I know she’s watching. I know she’sfeeling.
And fuck me—I want her to stop. And Iwanther to never stop.
I step outside like I’m escaping a fire.
The tavern door creaks shut behind me, muting the sounds of laughter, clinking mugs, and the chaos that always swirls when Silas and Elias are in close proximity to anything combustible—including each other. My palms hit the outer wall, rough with age and grit, and I suck in a breath like I haven’t been able to take a full one in days.
The village is quiet. Too quiet.
For a place that should be waking up—chimneys smoking, shutters opening, feet crunching over gravel—it feels like the whole ravine is holding its breath. But that’s when I see them.
The banners.
Faded red and bone-white, strung from wooden beams to lantern poles, flapping gently in the breeze. At first glance, it looks festive. But the symbols stitched into the cloth aren’t celebratory. They’re ancient. Ritualistic. A distorted sun with too many rays, a mouth with no face, and a hand open at the center, fingers curled like it’s reaching for something that isn’t there.
There’s a festival coming. And something tells me we weren’t invited—we were summoned.
Lucien wants us to stay. Two more days, he said. Time to plan. Time to rest.
But there’s no rest here. No safety. Just a pause in the chaos long enough to make us think we might survive what’s next.
I glance down the alley between buildings, watch shadows shift like they’re being peeled back by something unseen. This place—it remembers. It watches. Maybe evenfeeds.
The door opens behind me.
And of course. It’s her.
Offuckingcourse it’s her.
She doesn’t speak. Just steps out into the soft morning light like she belongs in it. Her hair’s pulled back haphazardly, the kind of mess that’s deliberate. She’s wrapped in one of our coats—mine, I think. Or maybe Elias’s. Doesn’t matter. She could wear ash and still look like she was carved from prophecy and sin.
“You ever consider just… not?” I say without turning.
“Not what?” Her voice is quiet. Not sharp. Not sweet. Just... her.
“Not following me. Not pushing when I want space.”
She comes to stand beside me, arms crossed over her chest. “You say you want space. But you breathe me in like I’m the last clean thing in a poisoned world.”
I don’t respond. Because she’s right. And I fucking hate that.
The bond hums between us, quiet but insistent. It knows what I want, even when I don’t. It drags her thoughts into mine like vines curling around stone. Sometimes it’s a whisper. Sometimes a scream. Right now—it’s a pulse.
She doesn’t say anything else. Just stares at the banners, the way they sway in rhythm with something older than this village, older than her, older thanus.