Page 41

“You—” His voice is hoarse, like he’s speaking through gravel. “You what?”

“I loved you first,” I say. Quiet. Final. “Before the others. Before any of this made sense. I hated you, too. But it started with you.”

Lucien doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. But his eyes—gods, his eyes—burn with something that makes me want to crawl inside them and set up a home. That makes me want to carve my name into the surface of him so no one ever forgets I was here first, even if I was last.

“I didn’t deserve it,” he says, and there’s no power in his voice now. Only raw truth. “I still don’t.”

“You didn’t need to,” I murmur. “You never did. It just was. Like breathing. Like bleeding.”

Lucien leans in, his mouth brushing mine again—barely there. Like he’s afraid if he takes too much, I’ll vanish.

“Say it again,” he whispers, and I swear he’s trembling. “Say you loved me first.”

I smile. And it’s cruel. And it’s soft.

“I still do.”

He doesn’t flinch when he says it. Doesn’t look away. Doesn’t try to soften it with a smirk or lace it in venom to make it easier for him to carry.

Lucien Virelius says, “I love you too,” like it’s an oath.

A sacrament.

A blade he’s waited a lifetime to bury in his own chest.

It doesn’t come out of him as a question or a mistake or a panicked reaction to my confession. It’s a truth older than either of us will admit aloud. A truth that has waited—feral and patient—beneath every glare he ever gave me, under every cruel dismissal, every cold word sharpened not because he didn’t care, but because he did and couldn’t fucking stand himself for it.

“I love you too,” he says again, quieter this time. Like he’s tasting it. Like he’s giving himself permission to bleed with it now that the war is over.

My lungs seize. My magic spikes. Something inside me—that old thread between us, stretched so taut for so long I thought it had snapped—thrums like it’s just now waking up, like it’s heard him.

Lucien’s hand finds my jaw, thumb dragging down the side of my throat, slow, reverent. His voice is low, steady. “I hated you, . Gods, I needed to hate you. You shattered everything I’d built to survive in this world, and you didn’t even flinch while doing it.”

“Sorry,” I whisper, not sorry at all.

He huffs a laugh, but it’s not cruel. “Don’t be. You were always meant to ruin me.”

Then his mouth crashes into mine again—no patience this time. No control. It’s all teeth and breath and desperation, the kind of kiss that forgets where it started and doesn’t care where it ends. His hands slide down my back, greedy and careful at once. My name leaves his mouth like a curse and a promise, reverent and wrecked.

And then—

From the tree line, a whisper.

“Are they… are they kissing again?”

Lucien goes rigid. I freeze.

“Silas,” I hiss under my breath, not even needing to turn.

“Oh, thank god,” Silas says, full volume now, from wherever the hell they’re hiding. “I thought we were going to have to do, like, a whole romantic intervention. I was going to bring glitter. Or maybe doves.”

“Stop talking,” Elias groans from beside him, clearly mortified. “You’re ruining their moment, you idiot.”

“Ruining? I’m giving it ambiance! This is better than sex. I mean—not better than sex with me, but you get it—”

Lucien’s head tilts back slowly, jaw ticking.

And then, softly, deadpan:

“I am going to bury them both alive.”

I smile. I can’t help it. Because this—this mess, this madness, this us—it’s exactly where we belong.

Lucien

There are moments in my life where I wonder—briefly, darkly—why I didn’t kill Silas Veyd the first time I met him. I could have. Easily. Would’ve been cleaner than this. No foam on my cheek, no powdered sugar shrapnel in my hair, no chaos incarnate sitting across from me looking like a child caught mid-crime with his hand still in the goddamn marshmallow jar.

His wide eyes meet mine like he's the victim.

“It was the ghost’s fault,” he says immediately, shoving the whipped cream canister behind Ambrose like that makes him less guilty.

“There is no ghost,” I say flatly.

“There could be a ghost. It’s Halloween. Veil’s thin. Spooky things happen. Your face just happened to be in the blast radius.”

Elias makes a choking sound beside him, his coffee mug halfway to his lips. “I mean… you do have a very blastable face,” he says, which earns him a sharp elbow to the ribs from Riven, who doesn’t even look up from his croissant.

’s laughing—soft, low, that slightly wicked edge she gets when she's trying not to—tucked between Caspian and Orin like she was born there. And maybe she was. Maybe we all orbit her now without realizing we stopped having a choice.

Orin, of course, is unbothered. Regal. He lifts a napkin and hands it to me with a slow, knowing smile, like this is all some cosmic joke he saw coming eons ago. “You missed a spot,” he murmurs, eyes dragging across my jaw with intent.

I take the napkin. I don’t thank him.

leans forward then, elbows on the table, lips curled at the corners. “So… now that the bond’s complete… nothing feels different?”

Seven pairs of eyes flick toward her, all variations of guarded, curious, reverent. Nothing exploded. No visions. No divine voices from the Hollow whispering ancient prophecy. Just… her. Still mortal. Still mine. Still wearing the weight of all of us like it’s a second skin she never wanted but refuses to take off.

“No,” I say after a beat. “Nothing feels different.”

Except I see more now.

I see the burn marks beneath her skin, her body lit from the inside with all seven of us etched into her soul. I feel the pull at the root of my spine, the kind of bond Dominion was never built to obey—because it doesn’t command, it asks. And I am the one who says yes.

“But something is different,” Ambrose murmurs, voice low, thoughtful. “You just don’t know what yet.”

Silas, predictably, grins like a goblin. “Maybe it’s her boobs. Maybe her boobs got bigger. You know, metaphysically.”

throws a sugar packet at his head. He flinches with the exaggerated horror of a man under siege.

“I’ll conduct further tests,” he promises solemnly. “For science.”

“I’ll kill you,” Elias mutters.

meets my gaze across the table, the edge of her mouth twitching like she can barely keep it together. “Do you regret it?” she asks, voice soft enough it nearly drowns in the background noise of the coffee shop—witch cackles, plastic bats on the walls, steaming mugs and laughter from students with no idea they’re sitting beside monsters.

I don’t blink. “No.”

She tilts her head, waiting.

“I should,” I add. “But I don’t.”

She swallows, throat bobbing. “Not even a little?”

I lean forward, elbows on the table, stare locked on hers. “I would do it again. Even if it damned me. Even if it killed me. Even if it meant losing every ounce of the control I built my existence on.”

Her breath stutters. The others fade into the noise for a second, irrelevant.

“Because you were always going to be mine,” I say quietly, “and I was always going to be yours. The bond just made it official.”

The whole table goes quiet.

Until—

Silas clears his throat. Loudly. “So… if we’re all done confessing our eternal, undying devotion over pumpkin spice lattes—”

Elias tosses a cookie at his forehead. “Shut the fuck up.”

Silas makes a strangled noise behind me—something between a scoff and a cackle—and I don’t even have to ask. His laughter is never for something benign. It's a warning wrapped in ridiculousness. And when I turn, slowly, deliberately, like I’m bracing to see blood on the walls, what greets me instead is… worse.

Teenagers.

A full horde of them, loud and brimming with sugar-high chaos, bursting into the Halloween-themed café like they own the realm. Fake blood. Glittered horns. Tailcoats. One in a full velvet cloak, dragging dust and drama with him. There’s a girl in a plastic crown that glows like a migraine and a boy shirtless beneath a cape, fangs stuck so far into his mouth he’s drooling.

My eye twitches.

Silas inhales like he’s found religion.

“Lucien,” he whispers, reverently, clapping a hand over his heart. “They’ve come to pay homage. Look. That one—he’s you. You if you were made of felt and hope and poor life choices.”

He’s pointing to the one in the long black trench coat and terrible eyeliner. The kid slinks through the tables, muttering something that sounds like a curse from a roleplaying handbook, and throws himself dramatically into a chair. He adjusts his fake dagger belt like he’s expecting to be knighted.

I glance at Elias. He’s got his hood up, staring blankly at the chaos like if he doesn’t move, maybe no one will notice he exists.

“Ten bucks says Silas tries to join them,” he mutters, voice deadpan.

“Five says he already has,” Riven adds, flipping a page in his book. “That’s his wig on the kid in the back.”

Orin sips his tea with the serenity of an immortal who has seen actual apocalypses and still finds this moment offensive.

“I do not understand,” he says, slowly, with enough depth to make it philosophical, “why teenagers are permitted in places that serve caffeine.”

“I do,” Caspian murmurs, glancing up. “Punishment. For living.”

The girl in the glowing crown trips over her cloak and nearly lands in Ambrose’s lap. His look could curdle stone, but she grins at him like she wants to offer a love potion or a tarot reading. He shoves his chair back without a word and stands like a fallen god woken too soon.

“You scare me,” she says, delighted.

He doesn’t answer. Just walks to the window, hands in his pockets like he’s counting down the seconds until he can set something on fire.

Silas, of course, stands. Silas, of course, cannot help himself. “Don’t worry,” he announces, loud enough for the entire café to hear. “We’re not judging. In fact, I’d like to personally commend the commitment to cult fashion.” He gestures to the cloaked vampire. “You—do you lead blood sacrifices or just attend?”

The kid beams. “Lead, obviously.”

Silas clutches his chest. “A fellow commander. My people.”

puts her face in her hands and mutters, “Why do I bring him in public?”

I glance at her. She's smiling though. Pink in the cheeks. Lit up in a way that makes my breath catch—like she belongs here, in this mess, in this moment, like we didn’t drag ourselves out of the Hollow weeks ago with war on our bones. Like she survived it, and is learning how to laugh again.

And gods, it ruins me. Because this is what I was afraid of. Not the knife. Not the bond. Not the surrender. But that somehow, impossibly, I want this to be our normal. Her laughter. The quiet chaos of found family. A world where I don’t need Dominion to have her close.

She looks at me, then. Catches me staring. Doesn’t flinch.

Her smile fades into something quieter. Warmer. Her hand slides across the table until her fingers brush mine—just once, barely a touch, but it’s enough to burn.

And I don’t pull away.

“Lucien,” she says, voice low so it doesn’t carry over the din. “You’re smiling.”

I am. I didn’t notice.

“It won’t last,” I say softly.

But I hope it does.

I don’t flinch when Silas smirks at me like he’s trying to communicate a prophecy through espresso foam and eyebrow raises. I don’t have the patience for his chaos today.

What I do have, however, is a decision to make.

Because Kiera’s request for a summit isn't about diplomacy. It's about leverage. She wants a seat at the table because Ambrose is still on her leash, even if ’s sleeping in his bed now. Even if she wears the mark of our bond like a second skin. Kiera sees power the way most people see currency. She doesn’t care that we died and clawed our way back. She doesn’t care that saved us. She wants to own something—anything—that bleeds significance.

And I’m done pretending that her time isn't up.

Elias leans back in his chair beside me, popping the lid off his drink and sipping like he’s a disinterested bystander in a war he’ll absolutely instigate later. He’s watching me sideways though, and that tells me more than I want to know. He feels the shift too.

“You’re thinking about murdering someone,” he mutters under his breath. “Should I pretend to be shocked?”

I don’t answer.

He whistles. “Right. Definitely murder.”

Caspian doesn't even look up. “Is it Kiera this time, or just the concept of the council in general?”

“Does it matter?” I ask, my voice low, surgical.

Riven, lounging across from us, doesn’t blink. “Only if you’re planning to make it public.”

“I’m not. Yet.” I glance at —who’s engaged in some animated debate with Silas over whether Mr. Beans would survive a horror movie scenario. Her smile is real. Untouched by the politics waiting outside this café. I want to keep it that way. I won’t let her name be dragged through council chambers built to exploit her.

But it’s Ambrose who surprises me.

He doesn’t speak often anymore unless provoked. Since the Hollow, something in him changed—deepened, maybe. Went still. But now, he lifts his head, eyes sharp as broken glass.

“If you’re replacing her,” he says, tone deceptively calm, “don’t make the mistake of choosing someone worse.”

I meet his stare. “I don’t make mistakes.”

He exhales once, like he wants to disagree but doesn’t have the energy to argue. “Just don’t forget—she’s already made enemies for . If you cut her loose without a leash, she’ll burn us all down for sport.”

“I won’t forget.”

Silas, not even bothering to whisper, mutters loudly, “Can we not talk about Lucien’s sex-political vendetta with Ambrose’s evil ex while I’m imagining our cat fighting off demonic forces armed only with a sparkly bowtie?”

“I think she’d win,” says, thoughtful. “But only if he was possessed. Otherwise, he’d just nap through it.”

Orin chuckles. Low. Fond. “Even cursed creatures need their rest.”

And I glance across the table again, at all of them, and feel the dissonance crack down my spine like lightning. Monsters, every one of us. Some more charming than others. But there’s something resembling peace here.

And I know it’s temporary.

Because the council won’t stay quiet forever. Because ’s growing stronger, and they’ll want to test the limits of what she is. Because Orin and I both bear her mark now, and that means something more ancient than anyone in this room is willing to say aloud.

I lean in slightly, toward Elias.

“I’m going to make the council choose,” I say softly. “Between Kiera’s name and ’s.”

Elias snorts, sips his coffee. “You say that like it’s a threat.”

“It is.”

“Good.” He grins lazily. “Just let me know when to clap.”

Across the table, turns and catches my eyes again. She holds me there—for a moment too long, for a beat too raw. Then she smiles, soft and warm, the kind that feels like forgiveness and destruction all at once.

And I feel it. The call.

The inevitable descent.

I don’t recognize the man I was when she first arrived. That version of me was stone carved around sharpness, spiked with old cruelty and disinterest. Pride incarnate. Unshakable. Unreachable.

Now? I’m the man sliding his thumb over the curve of a photo I shouldn’t have saved.

, sprawled across the bed in my shirt, hair wild, eyes daring. Her smile caught mid-laugh—gods, it wasn’t even meant for me. It was Silas who made the joke, probably something about edible glitter and orgasms, and I took the photo like a thief in the night. She never saw. She would have teased me mercilessly if she had.

I tilt the phone just slightly to avoid Elias peering over my shoulder and press my palm over the screen, heat coiling low in my gut. She’s going to kill me if she finds out.

I look up—seven pairs of eyes blinking at me like I just missed a cue in a play I wrote myself. Riven is deadpan, arms crossed like he already knows I’m hiding something. Orin’s expression is unreadable, though I swear I see amusement curl at the edges of his mouth. Ambrose…he watches , always. Caspian, silent, his fingers tracing the rim of his coffee cup like a tell.

But it’s Elias who breaks the quiet first. “You planning to sit here brooding until your cheekbones dull or are we going to this ridiculous corn maze?”

I don’t dignify it with a response. Just shove the phone back in my coat and rise.

“It’s time,” I say simply. And that’s all it takes.

Silas nearly jumps from his seat, sloshing half his latte across the table in the process. “Corn maze!” he sings, as though he’s been waiting his entire undead existence for this moment. “Do we get to split up and get murdered, or is this one of those cutesy, non-haunted ones where you hold hands and contemplate mortality?”

“It’s October,” Elias mutters. “They’re all haunted.”

“Speak for yourself,” Silas replies, already wrapping a scarf around his neck like he’s about to trek across the tundra. “This is my aesthetic peak. Fall is my slut era.”

I glance at , who’s fighting a smile—failing. She’s wearing something soft. Cozy. The kind of sweater that’s meant to be touched, sleeves tugged over fingers, neckline just wide enough to tempt. She looks at me like she knows I’ve already lost this battle, and I have. Of course I have.

She asked for a corn maze.

And I said yes.

She walks beside me as we leave the café, the others falling into their usual rhythm. Elias tossing acorns at Silas’s head, Caspian quiet and strangely content, Ambrose trailing at the edge of the group like he always does. Riven’s hand brushes hers once. Just once.

It doesn’t bother me.

Except it does.

falls in step beside me, our arms brushing, her voice pitched low. “You’ve been different lately.”

“Define different.”

“Less homicidal. You only glared at Elias twice this morning.”

“I’m evolving.”

She huffs out a laugh. “It’s unsettling. You even smiled yesterday.”

“It was indigestion.”

“Sure it was.” She pauses. “I like it, you know.”

That quiets everything in me. And when she threads her fingers through mine, casually, like it doesn’t shake the foundations of who I am, I let her. Because she asked for a corn maze. And I would burn the world to the roots just to walk beside her through a field of rotting stalks and teenage screams if it meant she’d look at me the way she is now.

Gods help me, I would.

Silas barrels past like the fucking apocalypse, arms flailing, a ridiculous cackle echoing off the brick storefronts like a war cry. Elias is clinging to his back like a badly balanced toddler, one arm looped around Silas’s neck, the other extended in my direction with an exaggerated middle finger pointed skyward like he’s been waiting his entire life for this moment of theatrical rebellion.

I don’t react. Not visibly.

But laughs. Loud, wild, head tilted back—gods, that sound could break me. It’s untamed, unpolished. It doesn’t belong in this sterile little town with its pumpkin garlands and quaint witch window decals. It belongs in my chest, clawing at everything I’ve ever tried to bury.

Elias yells over his shoulder as Silas sprints into the distance, “CORN MAZE ROYALTY COMING THROUGH!” And then, quieter but still perfectly audible to my cursed ears, he adds, “Tell she looks hot. Like sexy-scarecrow hot. I’m into it.”

I catch staring after them, shaking her head like she can’t decide whether to laugh harder or commit arson. Her gaze flicks to me. “You going to say something snide, or just let them embarrass us both in public?”

“They don’t embarrass me,” I say, dryly. “They concern me.”

“You say that like they’re children.”

“Children don’t usually have access to hand grenades.”

She smirks. “Silas does?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

She grins wider, and fuck, I’m helpless. Entirely. There's a moment where we both stop walking, standing beneath a canopy of string lights hung between rusted lamp posts. The lights buzz faintly above her hair, catching the strands and turning them molten. Her fingers nudge mine again—barely—and I almost lean into it, but I don’t. Not yet.

Not when I know what she’s about to ask.

“You sure you want to do this?”

The corn maze.

The fall festival.

The illusion of normalcy.

I should say no. I should remind her we’re not the type of creatures who blend into this world. We are gods of old sins and darker instincts, clawing through a place made of soft humans and soft rules.

But she’s looking at me like I’m worth dragging into the light.

I give her the only truth I have left.

“I want to go wherever you are.”

She doesn’t respond right away, but I see it in her eyes—the way her breath catches, the smallest, sharpest hitch. Then she tugs my hand, quietly, deliberately, and I follow.

Through the noise of town, the garish laughter, the smell of cinnamon and distant bonfire smoke. Through the edges of this life we’re borrowing. Through the sharp sting of knowing we’ll never really belong here, not fully. But maybe, gods, maybe with her, I could try.

And just as we reach the edge of the festival lot, Caspian sidles up beside us, holding two caramel apples and offering one to without a word. He barely looks at me.

Ambrose appears a breath later, his expression unreadable but his steps in time with ours. And somewhere in the background, Silas is shouting about losing a shoe and Elias is arguing with a scarecrow that isn’t real.

I let myself smile. Just a little.

Because this might be hell, but it’s ours.

There’s something about the quiet before a descent that tastes like divinity. A sacred hush the world holds before it fractures. The path is nothing but crooked stalks and sharp turns ahead, shadows bending strange in the dusk light, but none of us pause. Maybe because we’ve walked worse labyrinths—Branwen’s mind, our own histories, ’s unraveling power. Or maybe because this isn’t a descent at all. Maybe it’s an emergence.

I feel her fingers squeeze mine before she drops them entirely, disappearing into the entrance of the maze like she’s daring us to chase her.

Gods.

She wants to be hunted.

And there’s no part of me left that can resist.

The others move around me—Silas darting after her like a dog off-leash, already yelling about being the Minotaur. Elias muttering under his breath, elbowing Caspian who just smiles like the sun lives in his mouth now. Riven’s quiet, purposeful. Ambrose flickers like smoke. Orin moves last, silent and sure, a ghost in mortal skin.

I follow.

Not because I’m afraid she’ll get lost.

Because I will if I don’t.

The corn swallows sound, sharpens it. You hear things too late in here—the crunch of steps, the whisper of breath. It’s disorienting. Dreamlike.

I catch glimpses of them all. Ambrose leaning against a stalk wall like it’s a cathedral. Riven whispering something into Elias’s ear just to watch him flush and shove him away. Caspian handing Silas a fake skull he definitely stole from a kid at the entrance. Orin standing still, face tilted to the darkening sky as if reading a language written in wind.

And then ’s there.

In front of me.

Like she’s always been.

She leans against the stalks, arms crossed, mouth quirked.

“You found me.”

“I never lost you.”

Her head tilts. “Didn’t you?”

And fuck me. Maybe I did. I step forward, slow, because she deserves that. Because she’s survived too much to be chased anymore. She doesn’t retreat.