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I already know what I want.
And it’s not her.
It never was.
“One day,”she breathes again, voice fainter, like the last note of a dying song,“you’ll come to me, Ambrose. They always do.”
“Then I guess I’ll be the one who doesn’t,” I mutter, and I slam my palm against the stone.
It vibrates beneath my hand. Rejects the touch. I feel her recoil—just a flicker. But it’s enough.
And just like that, the walls go still again.
Her voice retreats.
But it’s not over.
She’ll try again. And next time, she’ll come as something else. Something I used to want. Maybe something I still do.
That’s what makes her dangerous.
Not the power. The persistence.
And the knowledge that no matter how many times I say no, she’ll always make it sound like I already said yes.
Lucien
The second my boots hit the stone, the bond lashes. It doesn’t warn, doesn’t build. Itgrips. Coils around the base of my spine like a snare pulled tight, dragging my lungs into my throat. I freeze—just long enough for Orin to notice. His eyes meet mine across the overgrown path, steady as always, but grim. He nods once. And it’s not reassurance.
It’s confirmation.
The moment we stepped onto these grounds, she felt us.
Branwen.
And she’s pulling.
I clamp down on the bond immediately, hurling every inch of Dominion I have into locking it out. My power usually slices through resistance like a hot blade. But this? This isn't resistance. This is a fucking echo of something ancient—etched into my marrow by a curse I never agreed to but let happen anyway. I can close the door. I can press it down like a lid over boiling water. But I can’t sever it.
She’s alive.
And she knows I’m here.
The worst part? I can feel how glad she is.
We should’ve never come back to this place.
The Daemon Academy I remember was already a lie, already soaked in secrets and blood. But this version? The one we’ve been dropped into? It’s older. Wilder. Built from a time beforeeven the Hollow fractured. Magic stitches the stone walls like veins—pulsing faintly, glowing softly beneath the ivy that shouldn’t be this green. Nothing decays here. Everything ispreserved. Not by time, but obsession.
And the paths... gods, the paths.
They stretch too far in directions that don’t exist anymore. Halls curve where they used to end. Towers rise that haven’t stood in centuries. It’s not just the past. It’s the memory of the place reanimating itself—piecemeal, fevered, as if trying to remember who we were when it stillownedus.
I keep my distance from the others as we move. Let Riven stay closest to Luna—of course he does. His bond with her pulsing steady, anchoring him in ways I refuse to admit I envy. He was bound to Branwen once too. But Luna severed it.
She saved him.
And I didn’t let her save me.