Page 27

It’s not shock I feel when I watch Maeve rise from the ash, her mouth still wet with Luna’s name like it’s a curse she can’t stop repeating. It’s not hatred, either. I’ve felt that—once. And when I did, it shattered mountains.

No. What unfurls in me now is something colder. Older. Disappointment.

She was someone we once loved. All of us. In different ways. Lucien’s precision. Riven’s quiet fury. Elias, somehow, loved her the longest and never said it. Even I... admired the way she fought to stand beside us, even when it was clear she was never meant to lead.

But this? This isn't strength. This is desperation dressed in nostalgia. A ghost parading in skin that no longer belongs to her.

She’s not supposed to be here.

And not because she’s dead. That means nothing to a Sin. We’ve always lived at the edge of mortality, where gods spit and fate folds itself into knots to keep us leashed. But Maeve knows—she knows better than anyone—that death is the severing of fate. The unbinding. She was cut from us with violence and fire, and the only thing crueler than that was this moment. This return.

Because if fate had meant her to stay...She wouldn’t have died. She wouldn’t be standing now with ash beneath her feet and Luna in her sights like some prize she thinks she has a right to take.

I step toward her, slow, steady. The others are braced—Riven’s blade slick, Ambrose unreadable, Lucien all ice and dominance with blood soaking through his sleeve. But none of them move again.

Because I’m speaking now.

And when I speak, they listen.

"You disappoint me, Maeve."

The words aren’t loud. But they land like thunder.

Her head turns sharply, eyes catching mine like she forgot I was still here. Still watching. “You were always the quiet one,” she says, voice low. “Always watching from the edge. Has that changed? Or are you going to kill me with your philosophy?”

I walk until I’m within reach. Not of her. Of Luna.

Because I’ve felt the way Luna’s pulse shifted the moment Maeve stepped into her light. I’ve felt the ache in her chest where certainty used to live. And I want to tear Maeve’s voice from the air just to silence the doubt she put there.

Instead, I offer her the kindest thing I can. Truth.

“You were fated once. And fate ended you. You don’t get to rewrite what the world has already stripped from your hands.”

Maeve’s mouth tightens. Her eyes flick to Luna, then to the Sins gathered behind me. “You all think she’s something new,” she whispers. “But she’s just another girl fate threw at you. She’ll die too. And when she does, we’ll rise again. One of us will take her place. And the bond will snap back into place like it always has.”

My jaw ticks. Not at her words. At the calm she delivers them with. Like it’s not war. Like it’s inevitability. But this time, fate didn’t choose her. It chose Luna.

And fate does not make the same choice twice.

“She’s not your replacement,” I say, still watching Maeve, but reaching out—letting my fingers find Luna’s without looking. “She’s our evolution.”

Luna’s fingers tighten in mine.

And behind me, the world holds its breath as the Hollow shifts—just slightly, almost reverently. Like it, too, is listening.

Maeve’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. It never really did, not even back then. It was always practiced, softened just enough to appear inviting, but never enough to reveal anything real. But now? Now there’s no pretense. What’s left of her is stripped down to ambition and vengeance, and she wears them like armor.

She lifts her chin and says it like prophecy. “There are a hundred of us waiting in the woods. One hundred women who remember exactly who you are, what you did, what was taken from us. And they all want the same thing, . Her.”

Her. Not Luna. Her.

As if Luna is just a placeholder. As if the girl fate chose is some interchangeable limb of destiny, a name that can be swapped out when it no longer fits the story Maeve’s trying to claw back into.

I don’t react. I let her keep talking.

“Kill her,” Maeve continues, her voice low and even, “and the bond resets. It always has. I was the last true Binder. I died with the bond intact. Technically, I never released them. Lucien. Riven. Caspian.” She glances at each of them in turn, like her name might still ring inside their bones. “It would revert to me. Or to someone else in my bloodline. You’re playing with chaos here, pretending she’s permanent. But if Luna dies, I take her place.”

I tilt my head slightly, letting that sink into the others before I speak. Because Maeve’s not wrong. We don’t know what happens if Luna dies.

The bond was never meant to form like this, stretch like this, hold like this. And yet, here we are—anchored to Luna in ways none of us have language for. She changed the design of this entire existence by simply surviving it. No one’s tested what happens when a living Sin Binder, bonded to more than one Sin, is killed. Maybe the magic finds its way home. Maybe it fractures the world. Maybe it ends us all.

I study Maeve like she’s something already dead—something clawing its way back into relevance by weaponizing doubt. Her eyes flick to Luna again, but Luna doesn’t flinch. She just stands behind me, close enough that I feel the rhythm of her breath at my back. I know without turning that she’s angry. I can feel it—how her magic hums like a fault line beneath her skin. Not wild, not out of control. Just steady. Sharp.

And waiting.

I smile slowly. "You don’t sound confident, Maeve. You sound desperate."

She flinches. Just slightly.

I step forward once, not enough to provoke, just enough to place my body fully between her and Luna. If she tries anything, I’ll be the first she’ll have to get through. And Maeve knows better. She always did.

“You’ve told yourself that if Luna dies, the bond reverts. That the magic will recognize you. But even you don’t believe that, do you? Because if you did, you wouldn’t be wasting time talking. You’d already have loosed every weapon you have.”

I let the silence expand between us like a blade.

“You’re not here because you believe fate owes you something,” I finish, voice low. “You’re here because fate already answered, and you can’t stand the answer.”

Maeve’s mouth twists, and something bitter flashes behind her eyes—grief, maybe. Or whatever shadow is left of it after a hundred years of being dead. She opens her mouth to speak, but this time, I don’t give her the space.

“Go back to your hundred ghosts,” I tell her, my voice silk wrapped around steel. “Tell them the Binder they want is still standing. And if they come for her…”

I look past her to the trees.

“…they’ll find out why none of us were ever meant to be tamed.”

Behind me, Luna steps closer. Her hand slides against mine—not needing permission, not asking for protection. Just being with me. And it roots me.

I squeeze her fingers once, then let go. Not because I’m letting her face this alone. But because I’m about to show Maeve what the Sin of Gluttony really is—And I’ve always preferred to use my hands.

There’s something foul in the way she bleeds. I don’t mean physically—her body doesn’t bleed like mortals. Not anymore. She’s not alive. None of them are. They’re the echo of the women we once knew, their magic curdled by the bitterness of not being chosen, not surviving, not mattering anymore.

But there’s still a tether between the realms—between what they were and what we are. And I’ve walked between those states enough times to feel it when I tap into them.

My hand is on Maeve’s throat, and her magic pulses against my palm like a dying heartbeat, and I drink from it—not with my mouth, not in the crude way of lesser creatures—but with the gluttony woven into my existence. I drain her through the bond that no longer belongs to her. I feed on the residue of what she thinks she still deserves.

And it tastes like rot.

Magic, when pure, is symphonic. Luna’s magic tastes like starlight cracked over ancient bone—haunting and full of promise, like a spell half-whispered in a lover’s mouth. Even Riven’s rage, Elias’s sharpness, Silas’s chaos—they have flavor. They hold weight. But Maeve?

Maeve tastes like ash and failure.

“Still hungry, Maeve?” I ask her, my voice low and almost gentle. “Because I am.”

She screams—not in pain. In rage. It shatters through the clearing, and it is not her voice alone. It's a chorus—a hundred other voices answering her call from the tree line. The dead do not rest here. And neither does ambition.

They come like shadows pulled loose from the roots, a swarm of tattered white dresses and hollow eyes. Women we knew. Women who once touched us. Slept with us. Loved us. Lied to us.

They move fast, but they don’t move smart.

Lucien is moving, blood trailing down his arm from the arrow embedded in his shoulder. He rips the arrow free and crushes it in his fist like kindling, his eyes glowing with Dominion, voice rumbling low and absolute: “No one touches her.”

Riven is fire and stone beside me, already throwing two of them back with a wave of his hand. Silas laughs like this is a performance designed for him alone—he’s on top of a boulder hurling insults and enchanted daggers in equal measure, twirling one between his fingers like a conductor.

Caspian’s eyes have gone black. Deep magic—bone magic. His shadows ripple out across the wet grass like fingers made of grief and promise. Even Ambrose is laughing, that smug bastard—he lures one of the dead in close and murmurs something into her ear that makes her stop cold, then collapse.

I let go of Maeve’s throat and step over her collapsing body like she’s nothing but smoke and old memories. Because she is.

My hand lifts, fingers curling as I reach into the earth beneath us—deep, where gluttony lives not in hunger for food or power, but for more. More pain. More pleasure. More Luna.

Roots answer me. Earth groans. A low pulse of hunger wakes under the soil, magic older than even I am, and it is mine. I draw it up like breath through bone and let it spiral up my arms, veins glowing gold under skin that was carved from night.

The first of them leaps at Luna.

She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t flinch.

Because she knows we are already between her and death.

I catch the dead woman mid-air and twist—not her body, but the magic animating it. I crack it like glass, and she disintegrates into dust that shimmers before it hits the ground. A moment of beauty. Then it's gone.

Another comes.

And another.

And they will keep coming. Because this is what they are now. Desperate. Starving.

And I? I do not starve.

I consume.

There’s an artistry in war that no one speaks of—only the victors understand it. It’s not about rage. Not for me. Rage is cheap. Reactionary. No, I choose every strike I make. I craft it. I study it the way I studied ancient tongue, sacred geometry, the mathematics of seduction. I kill the way I love—slowly, deliberately, with reverence.

And they keep coming back.

The bodies we drop don’t stay down. These aren’t women anymore. They’re memories twisted to rot, animated by something spiteful and old. Hunger drives them, not conviction. And it shows in the way they move—jerky, too fast, reaching for Luna like she’s their salvation or their ruin.

Perhaps both.

I step in front of the third that lunges toward her, hand out, palm raised not in warning but in judgment. I don’t strike first—I strip her magic out of the air around her, draw it through the ley lines that lace my body like molten thread. She gasps, claws at her throat as her spell dies on her tongue.

"You were beautiful once," I murmur as I twist her magic into a thin blade between my fingers, spectral and bright. "But you’ve let your grief fester into envy. And envy has no elegance."

I drive the blade through her sternum and feel her unmake around the edge of it, her form dissolving like silk submerged in acid. No scream this time. Only the sound of defeat.

Behind me, I can feel Luna’s breath hitch—and not from fear. No, she’s watching us. Watching me. And I want her to see this. I want her to know exactly what I’m willing to become for her.

Caspian is to my left, silent and savage, shadows pouring from his sleeves like smoke drawn from the bones of saints. He doesn’t talk in fights. He lets his grief do the speaking. When one of the women breaks past the outer circle, Caspian slams her with a whip of shadow, dragging her across the stones and through the coals of the dead fire. She doesn’t burn. But she breaks. And that will do.

Riven roars, stone cracking beneath his feet. The ground heaves, roots and stone erupting to wall off a dozen of the attackers. But they claw through it. They bleed magic, and it coats the air in something putrid and desperate. My nostrils flare. It smells like failure.

“Still standing?” Silas calls across the madness, blood down his cheek, a giddy gleam in his eye as he spins two of his curved blades like a circus act gone murderous. “That’s cute. Anyone want to guess which one used to sleep with me?”

“That’s not narrowing it down,” Elias growls beside him, ducking low and sending a blade slicing into the thigh of a woman lunging for Luna. “Could be all of them.”

She almost gets through. Almost. But I’m there before Luna has to lift a hand. I slam the woman into the mud, crushing her spine beneath my boot. And this time, I don’t drain her. I don’t need to. My hunger shifts—narrows. She’s not worth it.

Only Luna is.

The circle tightens. Each of us moving like parts of a machine wound around her, muscle and magic designed to kill anything that comes close. And yet—

They rise.

They fucking rise again.

Some of them have no faces now. Just flesh stitched over where eyes and mouths used to be, still dragging their bodies forward with twisted elegance. One of them has half her scalp gone and I recognize her—Isolde. She kissed Riven once. She bled on Silas’s sheets. Now her jaw is half detached, and she whispers Luna’s name like it’s the last spell she remembers.

Lucien shoves past me then, all commanding presence and disgust. His voice rolls through the battlefield, Dominance coiled in every syllable: “Fall.”

The air shifts. Half the dead collapse. Not dead—unconscious in a way that doesn’t make sense. Not with their magic. But Lucien’s power wraps around them like a noose. His body is still angled toward her. Always toward her. Every man in this clearing orbits her like she’s the eye of the storm—because she is. And even if she doesn’t say it aloud, we can all feel it. Every blow we land, every strike we take—it’s for her.

She lifts her hand once—and the magic that pulses through her palm is stronger than anything the rest of us could conjure in that moment. Not because it’s violent.

Because it’s chosen.

And that… that’s what the women can’t stand.

They weren’t chosen.

She was.

And now we bleed for her.

I ready for the next wave, jaw set, power singing through me like a promise. If they want to die a second time for nothing, I will grant them the grace of a more permanent ending.

This isn’t over.

But it will be when we say it is.

We move fast—but not in panic. Not like prey. Lucien is ahead, carving a path with the brutal efficiency of a god grown bored with mercy. The woods blur around us in streaks of ash-soaked bark and dying light, branches clawing at my shoulders like the hands of the dead women behind us. They’re not slowing. They don't tire. They want her.

But they don’t have her.

They never will.

I shift to the edge of the formation, closest to the trees where the threat is thickest. The sound of pursuit comes like breath on the back of the neck—whispers and sobs, limbs snapping underfoot, the moan of magic tearing through the Hollow’s roots. It’s not just an army. It’s history come for revenge.

And Luna is at the center of it.

Her breath comes hard. Not from fear, but fury. That fire in her—it doesn’t flicker. It consumes. And every time I glance her way, she looks more like a queen than the girl who fell through this realm a month ago. There’s blood on her lip and a curse in her eyes. And gods, I’ve never wanted to fall to my knees for something more than I do her.

“Left,” I snap, spotting the shimmer of a spell drawn tight across a thicket up ahead. It’s meant to entrap, to redirect us back toward the open glade. Where the dead wait.

Lucien cuts toward the left, and the rest of us follow like a shadow broken into six bodies. Silas flips off something snarling from the trees. Elias mutters a complaint about cardio. And I break off—only a step—but enough to meet the first woman who lunges from the brush.

She used to be one of ours. I remember the red in her hair, the song in her voice. Now there’s rot at her collarbone and vengeance carved into the hollow of her throat.

She doesn’t even get her spell off.

My hand curls around her face. I don't crush. I consume. Her power shudders against mine like it remembers what I am—and in one pulse of gluttonous draw, I rip the breath from her lungs and the magic from her marrow. It tastes rancid. Desperate. Unworthy.

I don’t let it linger.

The earth shudders. Riven’s fury breaks trees in half as they fall in our path. Caspian moves through shadows like water, pulling them forward and twisting them into vines that wrap the throats of the undead. But still they come. Shrieking. Laughing. Screaming our names like old lovers.

They call for Lucien first—like he was always the one they thought they'd win. He doesn’t flinch when one of them leaps from a tree and claws his shoulder open. He just tears her arm from its socket and keeps moving. Ahead, a stream cuts through the path. Deep, cold, enchanted. The Hollow’s veins run with more than water, and the women hesitate.

I do not.

I lift Luna in one smooth motion, feel the way she gasps—angry, startled, turned on, all of it—and I wade across with her in my arms as the current threatens to pull at everything unmoored. But not me. And not her.

Her arms tighten around my neck and I feel it—her trust—raw and scorching.

“Don’t look back,” I murmur. “What’s behind us isn’t worth your attention.”

She does anyway.

Lucien follows last, dragging Ambrose through the current by the back of his collar. Silas cackles, fully shirtless now, bleeding and soaked and enjoying the hell out of this. Elias slips on a rock and takes Caspian down with him. The two of them hiss like wet cats as they haul themselves out of the riverbank.

Maeve stands just beyond the tree line, her expression unreadable as more women gather behind her like a wave waiting to fall. They won’t cross—not yet. The water’s magic is older than the Hollow’s vengeance. It doesn’t want them.

But I do.

“Let them come,” I whisper, not to Luna, but to the dark. To the magic that coils in my chest. To the thing I’ve become since she touched me. “Let them try.”

Because the further we run, the deeper I fall. And there’s no world—not now, not ever—where I let them take her from me.

Lucien

The ache is sharp. Bone-deep. The arrowhead grinds every time I move, but pain is something I’ve long since divorced from panic. I know where it is lodged. I know how long I have before the wound compromises the muscle. I catalog it like I catalog everything—dispassionately, ruthlessly, with no indulgence for distraction.

Because she’s running just ahead of me. I don’t need to see her face to know what it looks like right now. That flicker of stubborn focus, jaw clenched like she’s holding back the urge to snap at the chaos around us. Her shirt is torn along one side, blood—not hers—slick on her forearm. She hasn’t looked back once. And I hate that I notice.

I hate more that I respect her for it.

“Faster,” I bark, not at her—but at the others. They hear it. They obey it. Because my voice doesn’t ask, it commands. It carves the air, weight heavy enough to pull obedience out of bone. Even Silas stops mid-laugh and surges ahead, grabbing Caspian by the back of his collar when he stumbles through the uneven terrain.

And behind us?

The world is unraveling.

I hear Elias before I see him—his voice pitched too cheerfully for the violence he’s orchestrating. Time bends around him, fractures and loops like a dance he’s choreographed a thousand times. Women rush at him, faces from old lives, twisted with the hunger of what they believe they deserve. But he twists a finger, flicks his wrist, and three of them stumble mid-lunge—caught in a half-second repeat, looping a blink, a breath, a blink, a breath.

“I liked you better before you were dead,” Elias calls back, his grin a slash of feral amusement. “Now you're just sloppy and boring. And ladies—undead isn't a personality trait.”

A spell snaps around his ankle. He kicks free with a curse, voice sharp now. “Lucien! You wanna lend your charming voice to this party or are you too busy brooding?”

I glance over my shoulder once—and the sight of them turns my stomach. Sin binders in death are worse than the ones who lived. They swarm like vengeance in skirts, chanting Luna’s name like it belongs to them, like she’s a mistake they can still correct.

But she’s not. She’s ours.

And whether I want it or not, I know what that means now. Fate didn’t choose wrong—it chose to end them and birth something new. Something terrifying.

Something holy.

The thought burns. I clench my teeth, feel the arrow grind again. I deserve that pain for thinking the word holy in relation to her. But I see how she moves between us—how the others orbit her now, not protectively, but reverently. And I realize what I’ve been too arrogant to admit until now.

She will hold us all. Not through force. Not even through magic. Through something far worse.

Through love.

I grit the word between my teeth like it offends me. Maybe it does.

We’re close to the ravine now. Riven peels off left to shatter the tree line, clearing the way. is behind us, somewhere in the dark, fighting in silence. No grunts. No taunts. Just efficient violence. When he reappears, he’s drenched in black magic and blood that doesn’t belong to him, dragging the air colder with each breath.

“You’re injured,” he says to me, voice like stone cracked in half. No judgment, just observation.

“So are you,” I shoot back.

He glances down at the gash running along his arm. “Not critically.”

Neither am I, but I don’t argue.

Ahead, the ravine yawns wide, the Hollow’s throat open and waiting. And Luna—gods damn her—she doesn’t stop. She just jumps. No hesitation. No question of whether we’ll follow.

Elias whistles. “Now that’s my girl.”

I go after her. Not because I’m ready to die for her. Because somewhere between trying to avoid fate and trying to rewrite it, I forgot that I was never meant to be free of her.

I was meant to kneel.

But not yet. Not now.

Now, I fight.

The thunder of their footfalls rolls in behind me like a second heartbeat. The others crash down the slope, one by one, and the ground shudders with their momentum. I glance back just long enough to confirm what I already knew: they’re all here. Bloodied, burned, but alive.

Elias skids to a stop beside me, breathless and grinning like he’s high on the chaos. “If anyone asks, I totally didn’t get stabbed in the ass.”

“Noted,” I snap, dragging my arm tighter across my chest where the arrowhead still burrows under skin. The wound pulses with a heat I don’t acknowledge. I can’t. We’re not done.

Riven moves last, his massive form silhouetted against the glowing ridge above. For a heartbeat, he’s perfectly still—just wind and rage and the sharp glint of starlight caught on the curve of his blade. Then he pivots, spreading his arms like wings, and slams his palms into the earth.

The world screams in response.

The ground splits, groans, rises. Stone breaks through soil in jagged slabs, slabs that twist upward like teeth—layer after layer of obsidian and shale, until a wall climbs three stories high between us and the horde still clawing after Luna. They crash into it blindly, their screeches swallowed by the unrelenting roar of shifting rock.

A fucking mountain, summoned in seconds.

Dust explodes upward as the final slab locks into place, sealing the gorge behind us. The energy it took to move that much terrain should have killed him. But Riven just straightens slowly, blood running from his nose, and looks back at Luna like he’d do it again. Twice. For less reason.

Silas whistles low, dragging a hand through his matted curls. “Okay, Daddy Earth. That was some biblical shit.”

Riven doesn't answer. He’s staring at Luna like he wants to apologize for bleeding on her shoes. And Luna—gods—She’s watching the wall, breathing slow, lips parted, not afraid but watching. Like she's listening to something the rest of us can’t hear. Like the Hollow is whispering directly to her bones.

I step toward her before I think better of it.

The ground is humming under our boots, seismic energy leaking into the soles. The scent of scorched air clings to my skin, clotted with blood and dust and her. I want to demand she tell me if she’s hurt. I want to shake her for running. I want to kneel. I want—and I don’t know how to stop.

“What now?” Silas asks, tone too light, like we didn’t just nearly die—again. “Do we build a fire and braid each other’s hair or...?”

“Shut up,” Riven growls.

“I vote for braiding,” Elias adds, already digging through his bloodied bag for snacks like he hasn’t nearly ruptured every law of temporal physics today.

But the silence that follows is real. Thick. Weighted with more than exhaustion. Because none of us are stupid enough to think that wall will hold them forever. And none of us are stupid enough to say the thing we’re all thinking.

They’re coming for her again. They’ll keep coming until there’s nothing left to send. And then they’ll find new ways to haunt her.

To haunt us.

I turn back to Luna. My voice is low. Raw. “We move again in ten.”

She nods once.

And it should be enough. But I look at her and all I can think is: you made me hesitate once. You’ll do it again. And when you do—I’ll let you.

Gods help us all.

Her brows are drawn, lips parted, worry swimming behind her eyes like it’s a thing that belongs there now. She lifts her hand toward my shoulder, hesitant only for a breath—and then she presses her palm lightly against the edge of the break in my leathers, where the arrow went in.

The wound is raw, already clotted with blood that sticks to her skin now. But I can’t bring myself to move. She’s touching me and not flinching. She’s touching me and she’s not disgusted, not angry, not afraid.

She’s worried.

“Let me look at it,” she says softly, gaze flicking to mine like she expects resistance.

I should refuse. My whole nature rises up to do it—to scoff, to sneer, to say something cruel and cutting just to remind her what I am. But the words stick behind my teeth. They’re useless when she’s looking at me like that. Like I’m worth a second glance. Like her fingers weren’t meant to press gently against my ruined skin but against my soul.

“I’ll live,” I mutter instead, which is neither consent nor denial. Just noise.

She shakes her head, already tugging the strap of my jacket down, blood wet between her fingers. The sting is immediate as air kisses the wound, but I grit my teeth through it, watching the way her jaw tenses. Her hair’s a mess, tangled and windblown. She has dried blood on her cheek that isn’t hers. She hasn’t rested in days.

And still, she touches me like I matter.

She doesn’t speak while she inspects the damage—Luna knows better than to coddle. Her silence is its own kind of intimacy, a steady presence that roots under the armor I wear like a second skin. And gods, I want her to stop. I want her to keep going. I want—

“You should’ve said something,” she murmurs, not looking at me.

Her fingers hover over the broken shaft of the arrow embedded deep, the barbed tip still lodged in the muscle. A clean break, if such a thing exists. I can feel the heat radiating through my back, the burn of the wound held together by sheer force of will—and her presence, grounding and infuriating in the same breath.

“I need to pull it out,” she says, quieter now.

“I’m not going to scream if that’s what you’re worried about.”

She snorts—actually snorts—as if I’ve said something ridiculous. Maybe I have.

“You’re an idiot.”

“There it is,” I murmur, almost smiling.

She doesn’t smile back. Her lips press together in a hard line as her hand steadies on my shoulder, and with her other, she grips the shaft of the arrow and yanks. It’s clean and fast. A sharp, bright pain lances through my entire arm, down my spine—but I don’t make a sound.

I bleed. And she catches the blood with a strip of cloth like it matters. Like I’m not some weapon wrapped in skin. Like I’m worth the softness in her hands.

The others are behind us, gathering packs, muttering strategies, sharpening weapons. speaks quietly to Riven, heads turned to the treeline like they can feel something coming. I know I can. The pressure in the air is shifting again.

But all I can focus on is her.

Luna presses the cloth harder to my shoulder and looks up at me, her mouth twitching like she wants to say something—something that would unravel me.

“Why?” I ask before she can. The word is sharp. Ugly. Desperate.

“Why what?” she says, but she knows.

“Why care?”

She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t look away. Her voice is steady when she answers.

“Because even monsters bleed.”

The words gut me. Not because they’re cruel. But because they’re kind.

I want to kiss her. I want to hate her. I want to tell her that she’s the only thing in this cursed realm that makes me feel anything—but I say nothing. Because it’s not time. Because I’ll break it if I touch it. Because I’m not ready for her to know that I already have bent the knee in my own damn way.

She steps back. I’m colder for it. Like she left a part of herself there, embedded just beneath my ribs. And no matter how far we go, I’ll carry that with me. And gods help anyone who tries to take it from me.

There’s no time for softness, no time to savor the delicate weight of her attention—even though it presses into me deeper than the arrow ever did. I take one last glance at her face, memorizing the exact shade of worry in her eyes, and then I shift.

“Enough,” I say, low and final.

She stiffens, lips parting like she might argue—but she doesn’t. She knows what I feel in my bones. The pull behind us. The wrongness in the trees. The endless patience of the dead.

They’re regrouping.

I step past her, voice rising as I call to the others. “We move. Now.”

No one questions me.

Not even , who has a smear of ash across his jaw and the look of someone ready to rip through what’s left of the Hollow with his bare hands. Riven is already tightening the straps across his chest, his jaw locked as he scans the path ahead. Silas—bloodied and grinning like he enjoyed every second of the chaos—nudges Elias, who mutters something obscene about twisted ankles and needing a new spine, but still pulls himself up.

Caspian says nothing, just falls into place with that quiet, haunted obedience of his. He’s always been the one to move like shadow—fluid, unobtrusive, lethal when needed. And now, more than ever, I’m grateful for it.

“West,” I bark. “We find higher ground and we don’t stop until the Hollow doesn’t reek of resurrection.”

There’s no road. Just slick roots and uneven stone and thick, weeping trees that arch like bone over the trail. Luna doesn’t complain. She never does. She falls in step between Riven and me, close enough that the back of her hand brushes my hip every time she stumbles. My shoulder burns with every step, but I let the pain anchor me. Remind me of what’s real. Because what’s chasing us doesn’t belong in the realm of the living—and they won’t stop until they’ve bled us dry and dragged her back into the dirt with them.

“They’ll find another way across,” says quietly beside me, as if reading the thought from my skull.

“They’ll try.” My voice is gravel. “But they won’t get her.”

His silence is a kind of agreement. Not approval. Not camaraderie. Just shared certainty. The kind only men like us—monsters forged in prophecy and ash—can understand.

Behind us, the night hums. Something cracks in the distance. A whisper of branches breaking. Footsteps that shouldn’t echo the way they do in the Hollow’s ever-shifting soundscape.

Elias glances over his shoulder and smirks. “They’re not even subtle about it. You’d think for undead witches they’d at least try stealth.”

“Maybe they just want to see you run, pretty boy,” Silas calls ahead without turning. “You do flail impressively.”

“Bite me.”

“Ask nice.”

The banter is a poor shield, but it buys them something—a sliver of rhythm. Of normal. And even I’m not cruel enough to break it.

But I don’t relax. I keep my senses trained on the thrum behind us, on the way the Hollow stirs in unnatural pulses. On the sound of Luna’s breath. If they come again, I will kill them all. And if I have to burn this realm to keep her from being touched again—Then so be it.

This place is a grave wearing its own skin.

It breathes rot through the trees. The wind groans with voices that shouldn't have mouths. Every mile of the Hollow stretches longer than the last, time curdling in its own blood. I can’t stand the way it clings to my skin—like it's trying to crawl in, settle, nest.

This isn’t our home. It never was.

And gods, I miss it. The academy grounds with their shattered courtyards and cruel history, yes—but I miss the real world too. The mundane absurdity of it. Morning coffee that didn’t taste like ash. Phones. Electricity. Music that wasn’t filtered through the wails of the damned. A hot shower. A fucking car—though I’ve never learned how to drive one, and I’d kill anyone who tried to teach me.

I want to get us out of this hell.

Not just because it’s tearing at the edges of our sanity or dragging corpses from our pasts to use as puppets—but because I want that life back. I want a world where we can laugh again, where we’re not hunted or haunted, where the ache behind my ribs doesn’t gnaw every time I see her stumble, every time Luna’s shoulders square like she can carry all of us through this.

She shouldn’t have to.

And still… she does.

Even now, with mud caked up her calves, dried blood flaking off her neck, her jaw is lifted. She looks straight ahead like she can already see the way out. As if she knows it’s there, just a little further. Maybe she does. Maybe that's what she is—fate's cruel compass. Something that always points forward, even when everything else is falling apart.

There’s a heat that coils in my chest when I think of her now. Not rage. Not resentment. Something worse. Something heavier. Warmth. It’s not love. But it’s something that slows me down when I should be sprinting. Makes me hesitate. Makes me… hope. And that’s dangerous. That’s not what I was made for. I was created to command, to conquer, to survive.

Not to feel. Not like this.

Not for her.

And yet. She brushes her fingers along the moss-drenched bark as we move, grounding herself in every piece of this world she doesn’t belong to. And I watch her. Not because I want to. But because I can’t not. Every flick of her gaze, every furrow in her brow, every quiet breath like she’s carrying the weight of all our sins and still hasn’t buckled.

She follows—but she leads. Always.

And I think—I know—none of us would make it out of this without her. Not one. Not even me.

Especially not me.

I should be thinking ahead, planning for what’s next, calculating the safest path through this damn place. But all I can see is the gentle way she just pulled Elias into a smile without saying a word. The way her touch steadied ’s hand without apology. The way she glanced at me, like I wasn’t some monster she should be wary of. She looks at me like I’m worth something. And that’s a power I don’t know how to counter. She could command my soul with a whisper.