Minutes later, Mina slumped into a chair, cheeks glowing, head tipped back in careless abandon. That's when a new presence fell across the room.
"Looks like she's done for the night," the voice said.
I looked up to see him—a young man with the same dark hair and sharpened angles that tied him unmistakably to Mina's family. His presence was steady, confident, a quiet authority that didn't need to be announced.
"I'm Ethan," he said, sliding into the seat beside Mina. His smile came easy, but his eyes didn't match—it was the look of someone studying me, measuring. "Her cousin."
Lowering his voice just slightly, as though the admission was meant for me alone, he added: "Her mom told me I'm in charge if she gets drunk. Guess that makes me responsible for you, too."
It sounded like a joke, but it landed differently—something heavier, edged with curiosity. Almost as if he wasn't sure whether I belonged here at all... or whether he wanted me to.
Together, we managed to pull Mina away from the noise and flashing lights, half-guiding, half-dragging her up the stairs. She laughed at nothing, leaning heavily against me one moment and against Ethan the next.
By the time we reached the guest room, she had gone pliant, eyes fluttering as though the world was already slipping away. We laid her down on the bed, her arm flung across her face, mumbling something incoherent before slipping into silence.
I tugged the blanket over her shoulders, brushing damp hair from her forehead. For a brief moment, I thought Ethan would leave—but he lingered, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded loosely across his chest.
"She always does this," he said, almost amused. "Drinks too much, trusts the wrong people, ends up needing someone to watch her back." His gaze slid to me, steady, unreadable. "Guess tonight... that's you."
There was nothing sharp in his tone, no obvious judgment—but something in the way he said it made me feel measured, as if he were quietly weighing what kind of person I was.
"I'm her friend," I answered, smoothing the blanket over Mina's shoulder.
"I know," he murmured, mouth twitching with the ghost of a smile. "Still. You're... different."
He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. The silence that followed pressed in tight, broken only by Mina's soft breathing. And though Ethan's words had been vague, harmless on the surface, they clung like a question I couldn't quite shake.
The quiet grew heavier the longer Ethan stayed. He didn't move from the doorway, his arms still folded, his eyes fixed—not on Mina, but on me.
I busied myself with small, unnecessary tasks: straightening the blanket, adjusting the pillow, tucking Mina's hair back again even though it didn't need it. Anything to keep my hands occupied, to ignore the way his presence filled the room.
And then the air shifted. The faint creak of a floorboard. Another presence.
He stepped aside almost unconsciously, as if making way. Eros was there, filling the doorway, his shadow stretching across the room, pulling my attention to him as though I hadn't already felt it coming.
The dim light caught the sharp lines of his face, his eyes flicking first to Mina asleep on the bed, then to me.
Neither spoke at first. The air seemed to constrict, caught between the slow gravity of Eros's stare and Ethan's unreadable calm.
"You're still here," Ethan said lightly, though something flickered underneath it—something more pointed.
Eros didn't answer. His eyes found mine again, holding me still, as though my silence was the one that needed filling. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, deliberate:
"I told you before... Amara doesn't need watching."
The way he said my name—like it belonged to him before I'd ever spoken it myself—sent a shiver down my spine.
Ethan tilted his head, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Maybe. But Mina does." He didn't move, didn't back away, and though the words were smooth, his gaze slid back to me, reminding me that his earlier suspicion hadn't vanished.
I stood caught between them—their silence, their presence, the strange weight of their attention folding in on me until it was hard to breathe.
The air didn't break. It only thickened.
Ethan was the first to move, leaning fractionally closer, close enough that the edge of his presence brushed against mine.
"You seem unsettled," he murmured, eyes steady.
I stiffened, words caught in my throat.
From the other side of the room, Eros's voice cut in—not sharp, not raised, but cool in a way that left no room for reply.
"She's fine."
That was all. No explanation, no embellishment. But the quiet certainty in it made Ethan pause, his faint smile fading into something harder to read.
Still, no one moved. Mina's soft breathing was the only sound, but I couldn't draw calm from it. The silence pressed, and I felt pinned, my pulse a frantic metronome in my ribs.
Then Ethan spoke again, low, teasing, almost casual:
"So, when's your birthday?"
I frowned, caught off guard. "My... birthday?"
He smirked. "Yeah. Since I'm the unlucky guy stuck keeping an eye on you tonight, I should at least know a few basics."
Reluctantly, I answered. "In a few days."
For a heartbeat, he stilled. Then the grin stayed—but something shifted, sharpening.
"In a few days, huh?" he echoed, voice dropping deliberately. "That's right about when the prophecy's supposed to kick in."
The word hit me like ice water. Prophecy.
"When the moon bleeds and the gates awake, the heir shall bleed or reign. Born of shadow, hunted by blood—her birth will mark the fall or the binding."
The line, jagged and half-remembered from my grandmother's black book, rushed back so vividly it felt carved into my bones. Hearing him tie it to my birthday—so exact, so deliberate—made my stomach twist.
I must've flinched, because Ethan's grin curved wider, too casual to be innocent.
Across the room, Eros hadn't moved. He only watched, pinning me between them, as if the weight of the prophecy itself had closed in, leaving me nowhere to run.