Page 191 of The Sin Binder's Chains

I hear a crash behind me.

Of course I do.

“Silas!” Elias’s voice rings out. “For fuck’s sake, that vase was already broken, why are you throwing pieces of it at the wall now?!”

“I’m expressing grief,” Silas calls back, voice way too chipper for the scene we’re in.

“You’re expressing dumbassery!”

I don’t move as they bicker. Not yet. Not until I find the scorch mark on the wall above the fireplace Ambrose’s mark.

His magic tried to fight.

Didn’t matter.

The house lost.

“Luna?” Elias’s voice shifts.

Closer. A beat quieter. I brace myself. He enters slowly, holding a broom like a weapon, which would be funny if I didn’t feel like I was vibrating from the inside out.

“Oh,” he says when he sees me. “You’ve got that whole… ‘on the edge of bloodshed but too pretty to be stopped’ look going on.”

I don’t respond.

He walks closer. Still holding the broom. “You good?”

“No,” I say.

He exhales. “Cool, cool. Just checking. So… should I start sweeping or preparing a ritual sacrifice?”

I may not say her name. But I feel it like a curse inside my bones. The first Sin-Binder. She’s supposed to be dead. She was erased. Gone before the world even understood what it meant to hold something like us.

But someone forgot to close the door on her properly. And now she’s back, and she took them from me.

I grip the edge of the hearth, fingers curling around the scorched stone like it can keep me upright.

Riven’s the first to come in. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask. Just looks around, mouth tight, fists tighter. His knuckles arealready split. Like maybe he knew what he’d walk into. Like maybe he felt it too.

Lucien follows. Slower. More composed. But his eyes flash the moment he sees the damage. Not surprised. Just confirmation.

Orin’s the last to enter. And his silence is the worst. He stands there, gaze moving over the ruined walls, the shattered mirror, the spiral cut into the floor like it means something.

It probably does.

“She did this,” I say, and my voice barely sounds like mine.

They all look at me.

“I don’t need you to tell me her name,” I go on, stepping forward, the heat inside me rising with every breath. “I don’t need to hear the how or the why or the fucking when.”

I meet Orin’s gaze. His is the only one steady enough to hold mine.

“She’s supposed to be dead,” I say. “So why is she walking through the house like she owns it?”

“She was bound once,” Orin answers, quietly. “But not destroyed. Not truly.”

Lucien nods. “Something unbound her. Or someone.”

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