His breath warmed the side of my neck, and I hated how I leaned into it.

Just enough to betray the wall I’d worked so hard to keep between me and anyone else that wasn’t Damien.

“You feel it too,” Caelum murmured again, and his voice was calm, like he’d already accepted what I hadn’t.

And I did feel it. The quiet hum in my chest that used to belong only to Damien, now answering to a second call.

Every inch of space between us burned. He didn’t touch me beyond the fingers still resting lightly on my waist, but he didn’t have to. The space around him seemed to do the work of pulling me closer, curling under my skin like a familia I hadn’t remembered missing.

I breathed him in, and it was not intentional. It just” happened.

Crisp pine, salt, dusk. He smelled like storms waiting on the shore of a field, and clarity after chaos. And gods, it wrecked me a little. Mostly because it felt like home, which made me question everything I thought I knew.

“I don’t want this,” I whispered, the words sticking to my throat.

“I know,” he said, and I hated how gently he said it. “But want has nothing to do with it any more.”

I looked up at him, and he was already watching me again. It was different this time. His eyes weren’t as emotionless as they used to be. There was a flicker of emotion in them that caught me off guard.

“Then what does?” I asked. “I don’t want a life with prophecies dictating whom I’m supposed to love.”

“You’re not supposed to love me,” he said.

That stopped me. I wasn’t?

He didn’t look away. “You’re supposed to complete me.”

There was a sharp, aching pulse in my chest. The pain pulled at my ribs like it was trying to pull something out of me.

My fingers twitched at my sides, and I felt it—the way his breath caught. He’d noticed. The way I was breathing like I couldn’t find enough air. Then his eyes dropped to my mouth.

I should’ve stepped back. Instead, I whispered, “Then why do I feel like I’m already yours?”

Caelum’s jaw clenched, and then he exhaled slowly, like it was taking everything in him to stay still.

“You’re not mine,” he said. “Not yet.”

“But you think I will be?”

His hands curled slightly. The cup between us forgotten.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But if you are” it won’t be gentle.”

The look in his eyes nearly undid me. My heart slammed against my ribs, loud and I almost groaned.

He looked like Fabian, but not at all. Same face, same eyes, but nothing like him. Caelum was restraint. Power held in silence. A mystery wrapped in calm. He wasn’t all soft words and charm, and he made me feel seen in a way that scared me.

I wanted to touch him. To trace the edge of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the gold-dusted skin shadowed with stubble that made him seem more real than anything else in this place.

But I didn’t move, well, not until I did.

Slowly, I reached up. My fingers brushed the front of his robe, caught in a moment I didn’t fully understand. Maybe I wanted to test the connection, or feel if this thing between us was real or just imagined.

He caught my wrist gently, then lowered it with a tenderness that hit harder than a kiss. His fingers grazed my palm as he let go, and I felt it all the way to my spine.

“No,” he whispered. “Not here. Not like this.”

The restraint in his voice broke something inside me. I hated how badly I wanted him to stay close, and how good it felt to want anything at all.

Then he stepped back. Created space like it was armour. Like he knew if he stayed, we’d both lose whatever hold we had left.

And just like that, the moment passed.

I cleared my throat, turned away, and reached for my tea. My hand shook, enough to be noticed, so I curled my fingers tighter around the ceramic cup and pretended it was from the cold.

Caelum didn’t say anything. He moved back to the low table like nothing had happened, as if we hadn’t just nearly come dangerously close to something we weren’t ready to touch.

I sat down again, refusing to look at his mouth. Or his hands. Or the soft edge of his collarbone where his robe had fallen open.

Instead, I sipped my tea. It had gone lukewarm.

“Nice tea,” I said, staring into the cup, “you drink this often? Or was this a special “you might be unravelling” blend?”

His mouth twitched. “A temple keeper has his secrets.”

I shot him a look. “That’s a suspiciously evasive answer.”

He shrugged. “You’ve had your moment with the divine. I think I’m allowed to be a little cryptic.”

I snorted. “You people and your riddles. I miss the days when tea just meant tea.”

His gaze softened. “I imagine you miss a lot of things.”

The words were simple, but they cut deep. And just like that, I was thinking of everything I’d lost and never had.

I looked down again, my fingers curling tighter around the cup as if it could anchor me.

“I didn’t mean to offend,” he added, with a gentleness that made me look up.

His eyes met mine, and they were not apologetic. They were honest and unflinching.

“I just made the assumption,” he said, “that you’ve never really had the chance to enjoy something simple. Like tea. With someone who made you feel safe. Someone who looked at you” without trying to measure what you’d one day be worth.”

That cracked something open in me.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, closing the distance just enough to pull my breath tight again.

“As a female Baudelaire, you were always an anomaly,” he said. “A bloodline built to defy reason. You challenged order just by existing. And that made you dangerous. That made you prey.”

My throat worked as I swallowed. “How do you know so much about me?”

“Because I’ve spent my life studying the fault lines of Anarion. And you’ve always been one of them.”

His words should’ve stung, but there was no malice in them. Just quiet fact. That was what I was beginning to understand about Caelum. He didn’t soften truth to make it easier. But he didn’t weaponise it either.

He glanced down at his cup. Steam curled between us like smoke rising from a ritual not yet spoken aloud.

“I wish,” he said, voice quiet now, “if you’d let me” that I could give you memories you’d want to keep. Not because of fate or a bond you don’t want. But because you deserve to know what it feels like to choose something that doesn’t hurt.”

His voice cracked a little at the end, and I felt it in my ribs.

“A lot of firsts you’ve never had. Peace. Ease. Being seen without being studied, and wanted without being owned.”

I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath until he exhaled, and when he did, I matched it like my lungs had synced to his.

Gods, he was dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with spells or prophecy.

Because part of me wanted what he was offering. That soft ache of maybe, and safety without strings. But another part of me was thinking of Damien. I was thinking of his voice like thunder in a storm, and the way his hands always knew how to catch me, even when I didn’t know I was falling. Or was it the heat between us that never asked for permission and never pretended to be gentle.

Damien never offered ease. He was fire, not comfort. But gods help me, I had always been drawn to flame.

So why now—why with Caelum—did I crave stillness?

Why did this man, who looked like my mate but moved like my undoing, feel like something I might still want to run toward?

And if I ran toward him, would Damien even try to stop me?

My fingers curled around my cup, anchoring myself to something solid.

Caelum was still watching me, but not with expectation. With that patience that was becoming familiar. He could sense the war in me and wasn’t trying to win, no, he was just willing to stand there while it happened.

That scared me more than anything else.

Because I didn’t know how to want someone who didn’t demand to be chosen.

“I know you’ve had a hard life, Luna,” Caelum said softly. “I know losing your mother left a wound that never really closed. Your father’s death raised more questions than anyone dared answer. And your brother’”

He hesitated. The pause didn’t feel hesitant, if anything, it felt respectful.

“’he protected you in his own detached way. But it was always Kael who stepped in when it mattered.”

My spine stiffened as I sat up straighter. “Damien did too. In his own way.”

“Yes,” Caelum said, nodding like he’d expected the defence. “But not in the way you needed.”

I met his gaze, sharper now. “You don’t know what I needed.”

“I don’t,” he said. “But I know what you didn’t get.”

I looked at him sharply.

“I’m not judging him,” he added quickly. “I’m just saying” I see the cracks you’ve learned to hide in. The ones they left behind when they failed to make space for you.”

My jaw clenched. I hated how true that felt. I’d learned to survive in silence. To shrink and shift, and fill in the spaces left behind by others. I was a patchwork girl sewn together from duty and expectation, always too much or not enough, depending on who was looking.

The wolves never saw me. Not really.

And Damien” even his love felt like it was rationed. A careful, broken thing that never crossed the invisible line between protection and possibility.

Only now, with Caelum, whose voice didn’t rise, whose touch didn’t press, I was being asked to be more than what I was made into.

“I’m not asking to replace him,” he said, watching me with that raw readable emotion in his eyes. “I’m asking to know you. Not the unifier or the Baudelaire anomaly. Just you.”

I blinked against the heat behind my eyes. “I don’t know who that is,” I whispered.

He smiled, and it wasn’t pitying. It was just real.

“If you don’t mind having me, let’s find her together,” he said, the words like a vow spoken into dusk.

I let out a breath of a laugh, startled by the sound of it. A soft thing, unguarded and small. It felt like a thread snapping loose in my chest. And gods, it felt good.

It cracked something open in my chest that had felt welded shut for years.

Caelum confused me in ways I wasn’t ready to admit. Every word, look, and pause between his sentences. None of it felt rehearsed. There was no agenda, no power play. Just honesty, and terrifying in how deeply it asked to be trusted.

He didn’t want to own me or fix me. He wanted to see me—as I was. And maybe even help me figure out how to live in a body that had always felt borrowed.

So why was Damien still in my head?

Why was it his name that pressed into the silence, crawling back when I finally felt something clean?

Damien had never made space for this. Not once. And maybe that wasn’t his fault. Maybe it was just how he loved—distant, disciplined, quiet in ways that left no room for softness. He protected me like I was porcelain, not a person.

Caelum had done more with a few quiet truths than Damien ever had with all his silence.

I stared down at the cup in my hands. The tea had gone cold. And for the first time since all of this began, I wondered if the bond pulling me toward him?

Or had I started walking on my own?

Then Caelum shifted. His posture changed—spine straightening, head tilting toward the entrance like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear. His whole body stilled, alert in a way that made my pulse jump.

I set the cup down. “What is it?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just rose in one fluid movement and moved toward the door, the warmth of our moment vanishing with him. I followed, unease blooming sharp in my chest.

The second we crossed the threshold, I felt it too.

Something was wrong. The trees were moving more than they should. Not wildly, but in a way that felt like they were bracing for impact.

Then, across the valley, a line of lanterns began to flicker out—one by one.

Caelum inhaled sharply. “That’s not the wind.”

My skin prickled. “Then what is it?”

He turned to me and in that brief second, I saw it. The thing I didn’t think he was capable of showing.

Fear.

“We have to go,” he said.

“Why?”

His jaw clenched. “Because the Pale Grove just sealed its borders. And it only does that when it senses a threat already inside.”