New Orleans never really slept. It just changed its music.

By midnight, the Quarter hummed with ghosts — brass bands bleeding through cracked shutters, laughter stitched to sorrow. The kind of city that didn’t ask questions about blood under fingernails or gunfire behind the church.

Cassian and Luca didn’t speak as they left the scene of the shootout. They didn’t have to. The silence between them was thick with things unsaid — the smell of gunpowder, the echo of that woman’s voice, and something else that neither man wanted to name yet.

They ended up at the pier on instinct. The water there was black, slick with reflected moonlight. Cassian leaned against the railing, pale under the sodium lamps. Luca stood a few feet away, watching him the way soldiers watch a fuse — knowing it could burn out or explode.

“You should be in a hospital,” Luca said finally.

Cassian let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “And tell them what? That the dead are talking to me?”

“You need rest.”

“I need answers.”

“You’re shaking.”

Cassian’s hand stilled on the railing. “It’s the Sight. It’s stronger near the river. The city’s… louder here.”

Luca stepped closer. “Louder how?”

Cassian glanced up, eyes catching the faint gold of the streetlight. “She’s calling through the water. The woman. Every time I close my eyes, she’s there — whispering your name.”

Luca froze. “Mine?”

Cassian nodded. “She wants you.”

“Why?”

“You’ve got her attention.” His smile was small, haunted. “You always do.”

Luca stared at him for a long moment, the tension coiling tighter. “You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.”

Cassian didn’t answer. His breath hitched when Luca reached out — slow, deliberate — and brushed a thumb across the blood at his temple.

“Don’t,” Cassian whispered.

“Don’t what?”

“Make me forget where we are.”

Luca’s voice dropped. “Where are we, Prophet?”

“Halfway between death and something I can’t name.”

Their eyes locked, the space between them shrinking until the sound of the river drowned out everything else.

Then Cassian stepped back, breaking the spell. “We should go.”

Luca didn’t move for a beat. When he finally did, he cupped him under his chin and smashed his mouth over his. The moment their lips touched, a surge of energy flooded lower, and Cassian groaned as he pushed his tongue inside. Cassian melted while Luca commanded the kiss, devouring his mouth. His hands inched down his throat while the other held him tight around his waist. Luca’s tongue glided in and out of Cassian’s mouth, and he sucked greedily on it, his hands still fisting Luca’s shirt in case he thought of ending the kiss too soon. Which he did. Cassian gasped for air when Luca pulled away, his lips tingling and tender from the assault.

He dipped his head and pressed their foreheads together, his eyes screwed shut as if he couldn’t believe what he’d done. “Yeah. Before one of us does something more stupid.”

Cassian turned away, but the tremor in his hands gave him away.

They found shelter in an old safehouse off Dauphine Street — one of Rosa’s forgotten warehouses. The electricity still worked, barely. The walls were papered with shadows.

Luca locked the door behind them. “You need sleep. No arguments.”

Cassian stripped off his gloves, blood crusted at the knuckles. “Sleep doesn’t come easy.”

“I noticed.”

He looked up, meeting Luca’s gaze. “You stay because Rosa told you to?”

Luca hesitated. “I stay because you keep walking toward things that want to eat you.”

Cassian smiled faintly. “You think you don’t?”

Luca took a slow breath, then closed the distance between them — close enough that Cassian could feel the heat off his body, smell the faint burn of bourbon and gun oil.

“You scare me,” Luca said.

Cassian blinked. “That’s rich.”

“I’m serious. I’ve seen men bleed out laughing. I’ve watched monsters crawl out of graves. None of it gets under my skin like you do.”

The confession hung there — raw and unexpected.

Cassian’s chest tightened. “Maybe it’s because you see yourself in me.”

“Maybe.” Luca’s voice dropped lower. “Or maybe it’s because I don’t.”

Cassian looked away, but Luca caught his chin, turning his face back gently. The gesture was soft — too soft for a world like theirs.

The air vibrated between them. Every breath a dare.

“Tell me to stop,” Luca said quietly.

Cassian’s lips parted — no words, just breath.

“Tell me,” Luca repeated.

Cassian’s voice trembled when it came. “I can’t.”

That was all it took.

The distance closed, not in violence but inevitability — the kind of gravity that had been pulling them closer since the first gunfire, the first smirk.

They didn’t kiss again. Not yet. The tension stayed where it belonged — wound tight, electric.

Luca exhaled against his skin, the words almost a vow. “You keep walking toward the dark, I’ll keep following.”

Cassian’s eyes closed. “Then maybe I’ll finally stop running.”

Hours later, the city had gone quiet again. The rain returned — slow, steady, relentless.

Cassian sat on the floor by the window, sketching symbols in a half-burned notebook: circles, serpents, names.

Luca lay stretched out on the couch, gun still in hand. Watching. Waiting. Protecting.

Neither of them slept.

When dawn broke, Cassian turned, met his gaze across the dim light, and said, “When this ends — if it ends — what happens to us?”

Luca didn’t hesitate. “We find out what we were before the blood.”

Cassian smiled softly. “And if there’s nothing left?”

Luca’s answer was quiet, but steady. “Then we build something new.”

Outside, the church bells began to toll again — soft, distant, and off-beat.

This time, Cassian didn’t flinch.

Because for the first time since the Sight cursed him, he didn’t feel alone.