Page 126 of The Sin Binder's Destiny

And then she says it—“Hello.”

Like it hasn’t been over a century since she last saw us die a little for her.

Lucien is steel beside me. But not untouched. Riven, silent and unmoving, watches her with that unreadable expression he wore the day he buried someone he swore he'd never love again. And I—I can’t help the way my chest tightens, because there was a time her voice was the only one I trusted to say my name without trying to own it.

Maeve doesn’t reach for anyone. Instead, her gaze lifts and finds Luna.

And everything in the square shifts again. She doesn't smile—not yet. She justlooks. Long enough to register the balance. The way we all unconsciously align around Luna, as if drawn by orbit instead of loyalty.

“You,” Maeve says, not coldly, not sweetly. Just—you. Like an answer to a question she hadn’t let herself ask until now.

Luna doesn’t react. Her posture remains fluid, but I feel the fire beneath her stillness. This isn’t jealousy—it’s something older. A primal recognition between women who’ve both loved monsters. Women who never needed to raise their voices to be heard.

Maeve’s gaze flicks from Silas to Elias to Riven, lingering longer on Lucien. “So this is what you needed,” she murmurs,not accusatory, just aware. “One woman to do what I couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.”

Silas shifts beside Luna, visibly uncomfortable but not foolish enough to interrupt.

Lucien finally speaks—low, quiet, knife-edged. “That’s not what this is.”

“No?” Maeve asks, still looking at Luna. “Then what is it?”

No one answers.

Caspian steps forward, his voice careful, stripped bare. “She didn’t replace you, Maeve.”

“I know,” Maeve says, meeting his gaze briefly before her eyes return to Luna. “She made you stop grieving me.”

It shouldn’t feel like an accusation. But it does.

Riven moves first. Only a step. But his body places itself near Luna’s like a shield he doesn’t know he’s drawing. It’s instinct. It’s unthinking. It’s telling.

Maeve notices.

“I see,” she says quietly. “Even Riven.”

That’s when Luna finally speaks.

Her voice is steady, unapologetic. “Do I need to apologize for what they gave me?”

Maeve studies her a moment longer, and then something cracks—not bitterness, but the quiet unraveling of expectation.

“No,” she says. “But I think I might need to apologize for what I left them with.”

Elias clears his throat, eyes darting between them like he’s reading a battlefield and already losing the war. “Is it weird if I say I missed you?” he mutters, clearly regretting it mid-sentence. “Because I did. Like, in a sexy ghost-of-Christmas-past kind of way. You haunted the shit out of me. In a good way. Mostly.”

Luna glances at him. He shrinks visibly.

Silas claps a hand to his shoulder. “I’ve never seen you crash and burn in slow motion like that. It was beautiful.”

Maeve smiles faintly, not at them—but at Luna. And for a moment, it’s not sweetness. It’s sorrow.

“You should know,” she says, voice softer now, “they aren’t easy to love. Not because they’re broken. But because they don’t know how to stop carrying what they’ve already lost.”

Luna’s expression doesn’t shift. “I’m not here to fix them.”

“Good,” Maeve says. “Because they’d let you try. And you’d bleed yourself dry doing it.”

The breeze moves, gentle and strange, and for a heartbeat, I could swear the Hollow itself is listening. Maeve steps back, giving Luna the space she never had. Not defeated. Not gone. Just quieter. She looks at each of us again—Lucien, Riven, Ambrose, Silas, Elias, Caspian, me—and I see it in her eyes. She isn’t angry we’ve moved on.

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