"That was one time," Elias mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. "One time."
Caspian doesn’t even lift his head. He’s curled up small, withdrawn, the weight of everything Branwen did still heavy on him, and none of us know how to fix it.
Except her.
Luna flicks her eyes to the rearview mirror, the faintest quirk at the corner of her mouth. She’s listening but not intervening. Yet. She knows they’ll burn out eventually, and when they do, she’ll be the one left with the ashes.
I glance at her, taking in the way she’s biting the inside of her cheek, the way her hands tighten around the wheel every time Elias and Silas trade another barbed comment. She’s trying not to look at me. She’s trying not to look at all.
Good.
Because if she did, she’d see me watching her like a man starving.
Elias’ knee knocks against mine again, and I grit my teeth.
"This is torture," he mutters low enough that only I hear, voice frayed at the edges. "You smell like a fucking problem."
I smirk, slow and sharp, leaning back like I’m unaffected. "I am."
He grumbles something obscene under his breath and slouches deeper into his seat like he could disappear if he tried hard enough.
Silas keeps going, voice bouncing off the leather interior. "Hey, Cas, you dead back there? Wanna tell Elias how he confessed to Luna last night that he can’t sleep without a nightlight?"
Caspian doesn’t react. Riven lets out a low sound—half growl, half warning.
Luna’s smile tightens.
I shift, letting my knee brush hers deliberately. Not enough to be obvious, but enough to remind her I’m here.
That I’m always here.
Her grip flexes once, and that’s all I need. Because she’s not immune. Not to me. And that’s what drives me wild.
I glance back just as Elias flips Silas off with a muttered, “You’re gonna die screaming, you know that?”
"Promises, promises," Silas sings back.
The weight of what we’re driving toward sits heavy, the Council’s summons burning a hole in all of us, but no one’s talking about that. We’re too busy clawing at each other, because the alternative—the truth pressing in around us—is too sharp to hold.
We’re five sins shoved into a tin can, stuffed with power and lust and betrayal, and one woman behind the wheel who could undo us all without even trying.
The rain comes down like the sky’s got something to prove, slicing against the windshield in sheets so thick the world outside dissolves. The rhythmic swish of the wipers doesn’t quite cut through the weight of it, but Luna keeps her gaze pinned forward, jaw tight, fingers flexing around the wheel like she’s holding the whole damn world together.
And maybe she is.
I watch her out of the corner of my eye, the way the shadows drag across her face in the low light, her mouth pressed flat in concentration. She’s too focused, too determined—like if she looks at me, she’ll unravel.
And I wonder, not for the first time, if that’s why I stay alive.
The prophecy sits somewhere behind my ribs like a loaded weapon. That I’ll die. That it has to be me. That somehow, it ends with me undone, crumpled and cold.
But death’s a fickle thing. It’s tried me before. I’ve bled out on marble floors, been shot clean through, torn apart in ways most wouldn’t crawl back from—and every time, I woke up the next day, body stitched back together by the sickening will of whatever made me.
Immortal, yes. Untouchable? No. I can die a thousand ways. I just never stay dead. And that’s the part they never talk about in those poetic little prophecies—the after. What it looks like to come back over and over, until dying becomes more exhausting than living.
I shift in my seat, Elias grumbling beside me under his breath as Silas makes some crude, stupid joke from the back that I don’t even register. None of us have the energy to dance around each other tonight.
Outside, the Hollow’s landscape blurs—a mess of half-formed buildings and flickering shadows that bleed into each other. It’s always raining here, it feels like. Always rotting quietly beneath the surface.
