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“You mean saving your ass?” she fires back, voice a blade.
“Funny,” I say, tilting my head, “because from where I was sitting, it looked like you lost.”
“You think this is winning?” she snaps.
“No,” I murmur, eyes dragging over the ruin. “But I think it’s beginning.”
Something cold pulses between us. The others fall quiet. Even Silas senses it now—the shift in pressure. The feeling that this is the moment we all start choosing sides, whether we admit it or not.
“I’m not yours,” I remind her.
“No,” she says, stepping close enough that her voice is breath-warm. “But you wish you were.”
Silas kicks his legs up onto the torn sofa like he’s royalty in a house that still smells like charred memories and blood-soaked regret. His grin is too wide, too bright for this place, and it should’ve been enough to ignore him. But then he says it.
“She’s better than mold, Ambrose.”
The words hang there—dumb and saccharine, like everything that crawls out of his idiotic mouth—and still, it sets something off in me.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” I snap, sharper than I intend. But he shrugs like it’s a badge of honor.
“I’m right, though. Mold grows on you. She grows in you.”
He’s too pleased with himself. Too amused. And I want to shove him through the nearest wall. Instead, I grip thecountertop between me and Luna tighter, the granite cool against my palms. A barrier. Useless, but necessary. Because she’s standing on the other side of it, looking at me like she’s already seen through the cracks I keep so perfectly sealed.
The pull has changed.
Before, it was faint—nagging at the edge of something primal, but easy to dismiss. Now it coils in my ribs, threads through my lungs when she breathes too close. I feel it under my skin, a thrum that makes me sick with how much I want to be near her and how violently I reject the idea of it.
“You’re back,” she says. Simple. Steady. But there’s something in her eyes—something ancient and amused. Like she already knows the answer to a question I haven’t asked.
“Regrettably,” I murmur, watching the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. The motion is innocuous. Mundane. It shouldn’t make my thoughts spiral.
I glance at Elias. He’s lingering near the doorway, arms crossed, feigning disinterest while his eyes track every inch of her. The idiot probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. And Silas, well—he’s humming a lewd melody and mouthing exaggerated kissy faces every time I glance his way. It’s not helpful.
“You think we’re all just going to fall back into step now that you’re here?” Luna asks, cutting the distance between us by a single step. She doesn’t touch the counter, but she might as well have shoved a knife into it with her tone.
“Fall back into step? No.” I smirk. “You’ve all gotten worse in my absence. And considerably more attached.”
Her lips twitch, a half-smile I can’t read. “And you’re not?”
I let silence answer. Not because I don’t have a response—but because the only one that matters would sound too much like truth. And truth is the last thing I’m ready to offer her.
She’s looking at Riven, but her magic’s reaching toward me. Just a flicker. A thread. And I hate that I want to touch it.
“I’m going to kill Lucien,” I mutter under my breath.
Silas perks up from the couch. “What for?”
“Leaving me alone with all of you.”
“Sounds like jealousy,” Elias says, too loud, too amused.
“Sounds like you want a broken nose,” I fire back.
“Only if Luna’s the one sitting on me while it happens.”
“Elias,” Luna sighs, warning-laced.