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“Come back inside,” she murmurs.
“No.”
“I’m not asking.”
I step in close, grip her chin in my hand—gentle but firm. She gasps softly, just once. I lower my head until my breath hits her lips.
“I don’t belong in the light, little flame,” I whisper. “And if you keep dragging me into it, I’ll burn you with me.”
She doesn’t blink.
Doesn’t flinch.
Just smiles.
“Then stop pretending you don’t want to.”
“What the fuck do you want from me, Luna?”
The words come out like gravel scraped from my throat, rough and louder than I meant them to be. My back hits the stone wall beside the tavern, fingers curling into fists at my sides, desperate for something to punch, somethingotherthan the helplessness wrapping around my lungs like barbed wire.
She doesn’t flinch. Of course she doesn’t. She never flinches when it’s me.
She just steps closer, arms crossed like she’s tired of this conversation—but still not walking away from it. From me.
“I wantyou,Riven,” she says, voice low, calm, maddening. “Just as you are. I would change nothing about you.”
And there it is. That sentence. That curse.
She says it like it’s simple. Like it’s sane.
But it’s not.
It’snot.
Her gaze doesn’t waver. “I won’t cage you. I won’t press my will or whims on you. And I think I’ve made that clear.”
She has. Shehas,and that’s what makes me want to tear the sky in half. Because she’s giving me a freedom I don’t know what the fuck to do with.
“You say that,” I grit out, shoving off the wall. “Yousayit, Luna. But everything about youasks.”
Her brows furrow. “Asks what?”
“For me to stay,” I snap. “For me to stop pretending this bond is a fucking mistake.”
She stares at me, and gods, her expression—it's not pity. It's not softness.
It’sclarity.Like she’s always seen what I refuse to. What Ican’t.
“You’re the only one still calling it that,” she says quietly. “A mistake.”
I stalk toward her before I can stop myself, shadows wrapping around my boots like they’re drawn to the heat radiating off my skin. My anger, my desire—it bleeds out, twists around us. She doesn’t retreat. She never does.
“I am wrath, Luna. I was made to destroy. That’s all I’ve ever been good for.”
“You were made toburn,” she whispers. “And maybe I was made to survive the fire.”
I press my hands to the wall on either side of her head, caging her in without touching her, without making contact—and gods, I want to. I want to drag her into me until the war in my chest quiets.