Page 28

The water is almost too warm. The shallow bend of the river curls like a secret kept for too long, cradled between jagged rocks and moss-slick roots that reach out like fingers. It’s not peaceful—nothing here ever is—but there’s a lull in the chaos, a pocket of stillness stolen between storms. The pond is dark, murky in places, glowing faintly in others where magic has bled into the current, ancient and alive. It smells of wet earth, of copper and moss and something faintly floral I can’t name.

I peel off the torn remnants of my clothes and step into the water without ceremony, letting the heat sting my skin as I lower myself down, inch by inch. My muscles scream, but I welcome the ache. It’s proof I’m still here. Still human. Or whatever approximation of human I’ve become.

The first breath I take once I’m submerged is ragged. Ugly. It hitches in my throat and stays there, lodged like a splinter. I don’t cry. I don’t sob. That’s not what this is. This is something quieter. More violent.

The silence lets things in.

Like the image of Lucien throwing himself over me, the arrow hitting his shoulder instead of my throat. Like the sound of Ambrose whispering something soft to Riven when they thought I was asleep. Like the look Orin gave me—steady, unfaltering, like he knew something I hadn’t caught up to yet.

I dunk my head beneath the water. Let it surround me. The warmth slips over my scalp, clings to my hair, loosening some of the blood and dirt caked there. My fingers find the knots and start to pull, slow, deliberate, uncaring if it hurts.

Pain is manageable. It gives me something to do.

The pond shifts around me, steam curling off the surface in lazy spirals. Silas must’ve woven the heat into the earth itself, into the stones buried beneath the water, like he knew I’d need this more than I’d admit. And they’re not far—none of them ever are. I know Elias is probably pretending not to peek, I know Riven’s watching the perimeter like it might bite back, and Orin… gods, Orin is likely waiting just out of sight, knowing I’d hate it less if I thought he was near.

They give me space, but they don’t let me go. I don't know what to make of that. My hands tremble when I reach for the cut across my ribs. The skin is raw. The wound shallow. It’s not the worst thing I’ve endured in the last forty-eight hours, not even close. But it’s the one that makes me pause. Because it’s the one I gave myself.

I stare at it, and for a moment I forget how to breathe.

The Hollow is warping us. Twisting us all into versions of ourselves I’m not sure we’ll recognize when this is over. I’ve been angry. Cold. Detached. I’ve let go of things I should’ve held tighter and clung to things that are burning me alive. I keep wondering if this place will eventually swallow who I am—and whether anyone will even notice the difference.

I lean back into the water and let it take me again, deeper this time, until even the sound of my breath is gone. No Sins. No ancient magic. No . Just quiet. Just heat. Just water that feels like it remembers things I haven’t lived yet.

When I surface, my skin is flushed. My eyes burn. But the weight pressing down on me is a little lighter. Not gone. Never gone. But less suffocating. I trace my fingers over the bruises blooming across my thighs, the constellation of pain left behind by the last battle. I don’t mind them. They’re reminders. Proof that I stood my ground, even when I wanted to run.

The river keeps moving around me, gentle now. Patient. Like it knows I’ll leave it soon. And I will. But not yet. Not until I’m ready to put the blood back on and face the world that demands too much from me. Not until I remember who the hell I am.

Not until I remember that I’m not just theirs.

I’m me. Even here. Even now. Even if this world tries to take it from me.

I drag myself out of the water with slow, reluctant limbs, steam coiling from my skin like I’ve just clawed my way free of the underworld. The heat has worked its way deep into my muscles, but it hasn’t loosened the knot in my chest. That’s a kind of ache the river can’t touch.

The clothes are waiting for me on a smooth, flat rock. Black shirt. Black pants. Barely folded, but definitely deliberate. The shirt glints in the sunlight that slips through the tree canopy above—silver dust laced across the fabric like some unspoken Silas signature. No one else would’ve had the audacity to add shimmer to survival gear. It's so him it almost makes me smile.

I step toward them, water sloshing at my thighs, then knees, then ankles, until I’m barefoot on the mossy bank. My hair drips steadily onto my collarbone, my back, trailing moisture like a breadcrumb trail to whatever finds me next. I don’t care. I’m too tired to care. And I’m too aware of the hours we still have ahead—hours of trudging through forest and ruin and whatever hell waits at the Keep.

The Keep.

We don’t know what Branwen left behind. The possibility of a portal—our possible escape—is the only reason Lucien hasn’t already started barking orders, pacing the perimeter, pushing us harder. Last night we ran blind. Veered off the mapped path and deeper into Hollow-rot. It’s not just the terrain that shifts here, it’s the very rules of movement. Of direction. Of time.

Still. He’ll expect us to move. Soon. And he’ll be right to.

I pick up the pants first, soft and dry and just thick enough to hold shape. Not conjured, I realize. Transmuted. Real fabric, pulled from something else, some matter Silas toyed with until it resembled what I needed. Or maybe just what he wanted to see me in. I try not to think about that.

Pulling them on, the cloth clings at first, catching at my hips and thighs where dampness still lingers. The shirt goes on last, the shimmer catching again at my shoulder. A little glamour spell maybe. A Silas flourish. Or a joke I haven’t uncovered yet.

I wring out my hair with both hands, watching the dark spiral of it soak into the moss. I don’t feel cleaner. I don’t feel reborn. But I feel ready.

I let my eyes wander past the water’s edge to the tree line beyond, shadowed and quiet for now. We’re in borrowed time. Borrowed breath. The women will come again, and next time, it won’t be arrows. It’ll be blade and bone and poison dressed like beauty. I know that as surely as I know the names of the Sins.

And when they come, they’ll come for me. Not for the boys. Not even for Orin. Me. Because I am the one fate chose, and they are the ones it discarded.

I don’t bother putting my boots on yet. I sit on the edge of the rock and press my forehead to my knees for a long moment, just breathing, letting the forest seep back into me. The mud-caked soles of my feet are already drying, already cracking, like everything in this place forgets how to be soft too quickly.

We still have miles to go.

But I’ll walk them. Because if Branwen left a way out, I’ll find it. If she didn’t—well. I’ll burn the Keep down and build one of my own. One that doesn’t demand blood for passage.

One that doesn’t belong to her. I lift my head. Time to move.

The grass is tall here—feral, untamed, towering past my head and brushing across my arms like it knows something I don’t. I push through the stalks slowly, letting my bond with Riven tug like a faint pulse beneath my skin. He’s due west, steady and calm, the others not far off, but I don’t call out. I need a moment longer in solitude before we all go back to pretending we aren’t bleeding beneath our armor.

But when the clearing opens in front of me, everything stills.

Sunlight breaks through the canopy in fractured gold, spilling down across the small glade like the gods remembered how to paint. And in the center of it—Orin.

Naked.

Not pacing. Not lecturing. Not performing some quiet, deliberate ritual with his blades. Just being.

He’s seated on a flat slab of stone, one knee up, one arm slung lazily across it. Head tilted toward the sky, throat bared like he’s offering it to something holy. The sun catches in the strands of his wet hair, curling black and silver as it dries, and glides over the long slope of muscle across his chest and abdomen. Even at rest, his body is coiled, taut with a kind of stillness that feels more dangerous than motion.

I should go.

I should turn around, clear my throat, make some noise, announce myself like a halfway decent person instead of some lurking feral thing hiding in the brush.

But I don’t move. I don’t blink.

And I don’t even try to pretend I’m not staring.

The Hollow stole so much from us—comfort, sleep, dignity, even time. But this… this feels stolen back. Or maybe it was never mine to begin with, and I’m only now realizing how badly I want it to be.

The hard line of his jaw is dusted in stubble, and his lips part slightly as he exhales. Calm. Content. Like he knows the chaos is still coming, but he’s letting himself have this one breath, this one sun-drenched silence. His scars catch the light too—old, pale things carved into his ribs and hips and thighs. Not hidden. Worn without shame, like they were never meant to be forgotten.

My stomach flips.

It’s not fair. How devastating he is without even trying. How he’s made peace with the hunger in him, while the rest of us are still fighting ours. I press a hand to my lower belly, trying to will myself back to reason. But reason has never once survived Orin Vale.

I tell myself it’s not wrong to look. He’s offered himself to me in every way that matters. Patiently. Unflinchingly. Without coercion or expectation. With a hunger so deep it borders reverence, and gods, it shouldn’t undo me the way it does—but it does. Every time.

I lean my forehead against the bark of a nearby tree, as if the cool bite of it will ground me.

It doesn’t.

It just lets me look longer.

He shifts slightly, just enough to stretch his spine, the slow, sinuous ripple of his body dragging a sound from my throat I don’t let escape. I bite down on it. Hard.

This is insane.

I survived an ambush, ran for miles in torn clothes, bathed in river water still slick with blood, and this is what’s going to kill me? A sun-drenched philosopher built like a war god with thighs carved by fate itself?

I edge one step back, praying he hasn’t noticed me, and then pause again.

Maybe he wouldn’t mind. He did tell me he wanted me to see him—truly see him. And I wonder if that was more than metaphor, more than poetic phrasing designed to make me spiral the way he always does.

I close my eyes, trying to reset the flutter under my skin.

It doesn’t work.

When I open them, he’s still there.

And now he’s smiling.

Gods help me.

"You're not very good at hiding, little light."

His voice cuts through the grass like it’s been waiting there the whole time, coiled in the air and just now choosing to strike. Deep, velvet-rich, smug without needing to try. And I freeze like a rabbit under a hawk's gaze, hand still pressed to the tree like it might save me from his attention.

“I can hear your breath,” he adds. “You hold it when you watch me. Like you think it’ll make you invisible.”

My cheeks burn. Not the delicate pink of embarrassment—no, this is molten, sharp, something that crawls down my spine with a dangerous awareness. I don’t move. I’m not ready to look at him again. Not yet.

“Come out, ,” Orin calls, unhurried, amused. “Unless you prefer to stalk from the shadows. I don’t mind. But it’s warmer in the sun.”

He makes no effort to cover himself, and somehow that makes it worse. Or better. Or something else entirely that I don’t have a name for.

“You’re naked,” I manage, voice strangled, dry.

“So?”

“I—” I choke on the word. “I was trying to give you privacy.”

“You were trying to disappear into the trees like a guilty thief,” he corrects smoothly. “After ogling me long enough to memorize every scar on my body. Including the ones below the waist.”

My fingers dig into bark. “I wasn’t—”

“You were.” That low laugh, gods help me, it's molten. “And I liked it. I’ve been waiting for you to look at me like that.”

I risk a glance, squinting through my fingers.

And there he is—unashamed, bare in every way that matters, skin kissed gold from the sun, and that infuriating, devastating half-smile aimed right at me. Not arrogant. Just… certain. Like I’m not a surprise to him. Like he knew I’d come walking out of the trees with grass in my hair and dirt under my nails just to get one more look at him.

“I thought you were meditating,” I mumble, eyes darting everywhere but his lap.

“I was. Until you showed up, breathing like you’d run ten miles. I assumed something was wrong.” His tone drops an octave. “And then I realized—something is.”

I scowl. “What?”

“You want to touch me,” he says simply. “But you haven’t yet. And it’s making you feral.”

I nearly choke. “Oh my god—”

“It’s fine. I want you to touch me, too.”

I groan into my hands and finally step forward, just enough for the sun to find me. “Could you not say that so casually? You’re naked. This is not normal.”

He tilts his head. “I’m a centuries-old creature of desire and wisdom, and I’m in love with you. What part of this situation was ever going to be normal, ?”

That shuts me up.

His eyes skim over me then—not lascivious, not even particularly hungry. Just… thorough. Present. Like he’s taking a mental photograph of this exact moment: me, half-wild and flushed and barely composed, standing in the mouth of a clearing trying not to combust from the weight of wanting him.

“You’re beautiful like this,” he murmurs. “Scraped up. You look like a goddess who’s been through war and came out ready to take what’s hers.”

My stomach clenches. “You’re infuriating.”

“I know,” he says, smiling wider now. “But it’s only because you’re trying so hard not to crawl into my lap.”

I shoot him a glare and drop my hands from my face. “Maybe I should just walk away and let you finish communing with your sun god.”

“Maybe.” He leans back on his palms, that long, powerful body unfolding like a spell. “But then you’d miss what I was about to say.”

I narrow my eyes. “Which is?”

He gestures lazily toward the sun. “I sit here because I wanted you to find me. Because I knew you’d follow the bond until you stumbled into me. And I knew when you saw me like this—uncovered, unguarded—you’d feel it, too.”

I say nothing.

“Not just desire,” he continues, voice softer now, reverent. “You feel safe with me. Even when I’m naked. Even when I say the kind of things that make you blush and want to slap me. You know I’d never take anything from you.”

My throat tightens. “I know.”

“Good,” he says, and stands without shame, without urgency, just unfolding like water becoming fire. “Then let me offer something instead.”

He steps toward me, and I don’t back away. Not because I’m brave, but because something in the air has changed—charged not with magic, but something older. Deeper.

“You don’t have to want me yet,” he says, voice low and steady as he closes the distance between us. “You don’t have to touch me. Or kiss me. Or claim me.”

He stops inches from me, not touching, just letting me feel the heat of him.

“But when you do,” he whispers, “you won’t regret it.”

My heart stumbles in my chest.

I swallow hard. “You’re still naked.”

“And you’re still staring.”

Gods. I am. And I can’t seem to stop.

He lifts his hand like it’s nothing—like it’s everything. Fingers open, steady, palm facing the sky. A silent request. A soft command. Or maybe an invitation. I don’t know. I just know it’s deliberate. Everything Orin does is deliberate.

The sun behind him burns gold across his skin, catching in the faint shimmer of water that still clings to him, and somehow, somehow, he’s not even trying to be beautiful—he just is. Ancient and unbothered and devastating in that slow, aching way that makes it impossible to look anywhere else.

“I want my gift now,” he says, his voice calm, sure. “You brought one for me.”

I blink, confused, and my gaze drops to his hand. “I didn’t,” I say softly. “I didn’t bring anything.”

He doesn’t lower his hand.

“You did,” he says again, like he knows me better than I know myself. “You just haven’t given it to me yet.”

Panic curls in my chest. I feel stripped bare, standing here with nothing in my pockets, no trinket or token or clever words to offer. What gift? What the hell could I possibly—But then something inside me clicks into place, and my hands move before my brain catches up.

I take a step closer, barefoot in the grass, and curl my fingers around his. His skin is warm, sun-kissed and waiting, and I press my lips to the center of his palm, slow and reverent, like I’m trying to pour everything I can’t say into that one, fleeting touch.

And I whisper, “You’re beautiful.”

It’s barely a breath. A truth I’ve never spoken aloud.

Orin doesn’t move. For a beat, he just watches me like he’s not sure I’m real. Then his lips curl—wide and unguarded, so brilliant it makes my chest ache. Not the smirk he gives when he’s playing philosopher, or the subtle amusement he carries when teasing me, but something younger. Softer. Honest.

His eyes squint with the force of it, creasing at the corners like a boy who just received exactly what he wanted for his birthday and is trying not to cry about it.

“That,” he murmurs, voice rough now, “was perfect.”

My throat tightens. “It wasn’t a real gift. I didn’t have anything.”

“You did,” he counters, still smiling like I’ve given him the world. “You gave me you.”

And gods help me, I want to cry. I don’t, because I’m not that girl, but I feel it—deep and thick in my chest, the way his words burrow under my skin and plant themselves there like they’re meant to stay.

“I don’t know what you see in me,” I whisper.

He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses my knuckles, slow and unhurried. “Then you’ll just have to keep watching me until you figure it out.”

And when I look at him—I realize he’s not just pleased. He’s moved. Like I touched something inside him that doesn’t get touched often. Like maybe, just maybe, I am enough.

He lowers our joined hands between us, thumb brushing mine. “Come here,” he says softly, not a command, not even a request—just the promise of safety, of something solid in a world still crumbling.

So I go.

His arms wrap around me with the same deliberate ease he does everything—with weight, with presence, with this devastating certainty like he knows what I need before I do. And maybe he does, the bastard. Because the moment I step into him, I forget how to breathe.

I’ve hugged the others—Elias with his weird, jittery limbs and mouth that won’t shut up, Silas like he’s going to pick me up and swing me in a circle while whispering the dumbest thing he can think of—but Orin?

Orin hugs like worship. Like gravity. Like he’s been waiting a thousand years for permission to hold me like this. Skin to skin. Breath to breath. The entire length of him pressed against me, and yes—he’s still naked, and yes—I’m absolutely shameless, because when a man looks like him and touches like this, you cop a feel or you’re a damn coward.

So I do. I slide my palms across his back, fingers skating lower, nails grazing over muscle that shouldn’t be this hard while he smells like sunlight and old magic and something almost edible. His chest is against mine, and I swear I feel his heart skip.

“You’re not going to pretend to be shy now, are you?” he murmurs above my ear, his mouth barely brushing the shell of it.

I squeeze his ass in response. A full, greedy, unapologetic handful. “You’re naked,” I whisper, even though he knows that damn well.

“I noticed.” His voice is dry, amused, and low. The kind of low that vibrates through my chest. “And yet here you are. Arms around me. Eyes roaming. Hands very much not in appropriate places.”

I don’t let go. I have no shame left. “You complaining?”

He leans back, just enough to look down at me, and the grin he gives me could melt the fucking world. “If I start complaining,” he says, “you’ll know. I’ll be unconscious.”

“Noted.”

I don’t move. Neither does he. And maybe that’s the most dangerous part—how easy it feels to just exist in his space. No pressure. No expectation. Just heat curling through the air, thick and hungry and laced with a kind of patience that only makes it worse.

He tilts his head, watching me. “Do you want me to cover up?”

“No.” It comes out too fast.

His grin deepens, smug and slow. “Didn’t think so.”

I roll my eyes, but my hands stay exactly where they are, my body greedy for the contact, for the momentary pause in a world that’s trying too damn hard to break me. And he lets me have it. Lets me hold him. Lets me steal just a little more of him before the others come looking.

“I like when you touch me,” he says, voice rougher now, quieter. “I like it more when you want to.”

“I always want to.”

He nods like I’ve confirmed something he already knew. His hand slips up, brushing my hair back, his fingers tracing down the curve of my spine with the kind of reverence that turns my bones to ash.

“I’ll never take without permission, ,” he says, serious now, that heat simmering to something deeper, steadier. “But I will take everything you offer. So be careful what you give me.”

I meet his gaze. “What if I want to give you everything?”

His eyes go molten. “Then you’d better be ready for how much I’ll worship it.”

And gods help me, I might actually melt right here. But before I can say something reckless—or do something worse—he kisses my forehead, soft and maddening and so full of promise that my knees actually buckle.

Then he steps back, not even bothering to hide the way he’s very naked and very aware of what he’s doing to me, and starts dressing like he didn’t just completely ruin me with a hug. I stand there for a beat too long, heart racing, heat crawling across my skin, and think: I am so screwed. And not in the way I want to be. Not yet.

But soon.