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He nods once.
“Did she hurt you?” I grind out.
He lifts his eyes. “Not the way you mean.”
That’s worse.
He doesn’t flinch under it, but he doesn’t meet my eyes either. Whatever she did, it wasn’t just physical.
“Where’s Ambrose?” I ask.
He opens his mouth. Closes it.
“Caspian.”
“I don’t know,” he finally says. “She made me watch hertry.Whatever she wanted from him, he wouldn’t give it. Wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t scream. Wouldn’t evenmove.Just stared at her like she didn’t matter.”
That sounds like Ambrose.
“And then he was gone.”
“You saw her take him?”
“I saw herfailto break him.” He looks up, and there’s a flicker of the old Caspian buried beneath the wreckage. “And you know what that does to her.”
I do. She unravels.
And when she unravels, we bleed.
I step in closer and press a hand to Caspian’s shoulder, grounding him even if it burns me to do it. He’s shaking. Slight, but constant. I can feel it beneath my palm. I don’t say anything about it.
“We’re not staying,” I tell him.
He nods again. “Good. Because I don’t think I can.”
I want to tell him he doesn’t have to. That I’ll get him out. That we’ll find Ambrose, tear this place down, bury Branwen in her own bones.
But I can’t promise any of that. Not here.
So instead, I say the one thing I know he’ll understand.
“We’re getting her back.”
His jaw twitches. “All of her?”
I stare into the distance, where the pillar still pulses like a second heartbeat I can’t outrun.
“All of her,” I say. Even if it costs us everything.
He smiles. Not the Caspian-smirk we’re used to, the one that undoes buttons and rules in equal measure. No—this one’s quieter. Sad. A weight at the corner of his mouth that doesn’t lift.
“I don’t think you understand what I’ve done,” he says, voice low, threadbare. “She’ll never forgive me.”
I do understand.
I’ve spent decades pretending I didn’t.
Caspian is Lust. Desire incarnate. The one Branwen always called her favorite, like that wasn’t a curse in itself. The one she used to get under our skin, between our thoughts, behind our eyes. None of us were safe when she turned her obsession toward him. She’d wind her fingers in his hair, whisperdevotions against his throat, then make him kneel before her as punishment. She wanted to break him because he made her feel too much—and that’s the one thing Branwen can’t stand.