Page 77 of The Sin Binder's Destiny

“She’s not blocking me. She’s not throwing up shields.” My mouth feels dry, my throat tight around the next words. “It’s like she’s not even on the other side.”

Orin exhales slowly, and I can see the calculation happening behind his eyes, the way he’s tearing apart every possibility, every magical theory, every contingency. But he doesn’t say what we’re both thinking.

If she’s cut herself off so completely, it’s because she believes there’s nothing left on this end to come back to. And that—that’s my fault. And Lucien’s. And all of us, really, every last one of us who pushed and pulled at her until she unraveled.

A branch snaps up ahead. Riven lifts a hand to signal us forward. Silas and Elias fall in line behind him like hounds too long off the leash, but I pause one second longer, tilting my head back to the Hollow’s sky—black and endless, bleeding with faint slashes of crimson. This place is alive. It breathes around us. It wants her.

If she keeps running like this, it will find her before we do.

I push the bond one last time, this time harder, rougher—like dragging knuckles over broken glass.

Luna.

Still nothing.

A void where she should be.

And something cold unfurls in my chest, sharp and sharp-edged. She’s slipping further away. And if we don’t find her soon, none of us are going to survive what happens when we lose her.

The forest shifts around me like a living thing—low-hung branches slicing at my arms, brambles clawing at my ankles like they want me to bleed for every step. I move faster, slicing through the shadows, the pulse of magic under my skinhumming like a live wire. Ahead, the footprints grow staggered. Scattered. Hers.

She’s slipping.

Every few yards, the dirt tells me a different story—the drag of her boot where she stumbled, the heel mark when she pivoted too sharp. She’s zigzagging, but she’s not clever enough right now. Not careful enough. She's too upset to hide herself properly, and that alone makes my chest pull tight.

Because it’s not just the Hollow that hunts here.

It’s not just the wild, maddened things Branwen left behind when she made this place her graveyard.

It’s the others.

Two hundred binders—or what's left of them. Monsters, half-mad with grief and magic, with their own histories and grudges. Half of them would tear her apart if they caught her. The other half would tear her apart just for the hell of it.

And she’s running right toward them.

I pause at a break in the path, crouching low. The soil here tells me more—lighter footsteps overlaying hers, trailing her path like shadowy echoes. Not one. Two, maybe three. Too far apart to be animals. Too light for men.

My gut knots, and when I glance over my shoulder, Orin is already closing the distance to me, his eyes sharp as cut obsidian. “What is it?”

I rise slowly, wiping my hands off on my thighs. “We’re not the only ones following her.”

His gaze sharpens. “Sin binders?”

“Could be,” I murmur, glancing back down the trail. "They’re smart. Keeping to the edges. Watching."

Behind us, Elias and Silas are arguing—loudly, annoyingly—about whether she could have gone left at the last fork, and I snap my fingers to get their attention, cutting them off mid-bicker.

“She’s not alone,” I tell them, voice cool but sharp enough to slice through the rising panic in the group. “Something’s following her.”

For one heartbeat, the air feels like it might split open.

“Is she leading them?” Orin asks quietly, but it’s not judgment. It’s worry.

I shake my head once. “No. She’s not leading anyone. She’s running blind.”

And that’s the part that terrifies me the most. Because she’s smart. Smarter than most people I’ve met. But grief makes you stupid. Fear makes you desperate. And nothing out here—none of us—can save her from what’s coming if she keeps moving like this.

Lucien’s voice slices into the space between us, low and sharp. “We move faster.”

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