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She stiffens. Finally gets it. She gives Elias one last hopeful smile—he doesn’t return it—and turns, heels clicking as she disappears into the crowd.
The moment she’s gone, I round on him.
“You were enjoying that.”
Elias raises his hands, wine sloshing slightly in one goblet. “I didn’t even get her name.”
“You smiled.”
He steps closer, pressing the wine into my hand like a peace offering, but I don’t take it. He leans down instead, mouth near my ear, voice dipped in that lazy drawl that always sounds like he’s half-asleep or half-hard.
“You jealous, darling?”
“Wouldn’t you like that.”
He chuckles, and it’s low. Rough. “Yeah. Actually. I would.”
My breath stutters, just for a second. Then I take the wine. Sip once. Slowly. Let him watch my mouth the whole time.
“I’m not the jealous type,” I say, licking a drop from my lower lip. “I’m the possessive one.”
“Hot,” he says immediately. “Deeply toxic, but hot.”
Behind us, Silas howls from the tavern steps, “Are we doing a murder or just threatening one?”
“Always threatening,” Elias mutters. Then to me, quieter, “Unless you want it to be more.”
The bond between us is warm, sharp, coiling. He can feel it. The possessiveness. The stake I’ve driven into him that no one else can see—but he bleeds from it just the same.
I turn, leading him back toward the others.
And Elias, obedient for once, follows.
It’s low, quiet, not mocking—but it stokes something in me anyway. Not because of him. Not entirely.
Because he smiled.
He smiled back at her.
And I didn’t realize it then—too caught up in how her voice grated, how her perfume clung to him even after she left—but now it hits me full force. Like a backdraft. Like heat that’s been building behind my ribs for too long.
He smiled.
And the earth responds. The cobblestones beneath my boots hum with something primal, something I didn’t call but that answers me anyway. A beat, like a second heartbeat. Like footsteps shadowing my own.
I stop walking.
Silas notices first. “Hey, you good?” he asks, grinning like he’s about to say something wildly inappropriate. But his grin falters when the ground beneath him gives a shiver. “Uh…Luna?”
The ground pulses again, like it’s alive. Like it’s breathing through me.
I glance down—and the veins of blackened rock stretching beneath the cobblestone flicker faintly red. A glow barely visible, but growing.
Elias looks at me then. Really looks. His smirk dies. “Shit,” he says under his breath. “You’re bleeding Wrath.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I snap, except I am. I’m burning. And it’s not the girl. Not anymore. It’s the fury that I can’t control this. That Ihavethis. That the world keeps handing me weapons and expects me to use them without ever telling me how.
Wrath curls in my palms like claws unsheathed. I clench my fists and try to breathe around it.