Page 195 of The Sin Binder's Chains

I turn to him, searching his face. “What could she possibly need to prove?”

“That the bond doesn’t belong to you.”

The words slice.

Orin’s eyes are heavy with something older than time. “Caspian was bound to her once.”

He nods slowly, as if confirming it to himself. “And if she could reclaim him, if she did, then we may be facing something worse than resurrection.”

My voice doesn’t want to work. “You said she was erased.”

“She was.”

“Then how - ”

“I don’t know.” He turns to face me fully now. “But Luna… Lucien and I- ”

He stops.

The air shifts.

He swallows it and tries again.

“We were bound to her too.”

It’s not a confession. It’s a reckoning. My heart doesn’t skip. It slams.

“You and Lucien- ”

“Yes.”

I can’t think. Can’t speak. Because that word, bound, isn’t just magic. It’s blood. It’s memory. It’s something primal and vicious and mine.

And someone else had it first.

Orin watches me without flinching. “She was the first Binder. And she made us hers. Not gently. Not like you. She didn’t offer us peace. She carved it out of us.”

I close my eyes, nausea curling under my ribs. “So she’s not just a threat.”

“No,” he says. “She’s a claim.”

“And she’s coming to reclaim what was hers.”

“Yes.”

My throat’s too dry. “And what happens… if she takes back more than Caspian?”

I feel it now, just under my skin, just deep enough to terrify me, the bond doesn’t know how to forget.

And if she reaches for it, she might pull them all under.

Even Orin.

Even Lucien.

Even the ones who’ve sworn themselves to me.

I stare at the broken courtyard, the roses that never made it.

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