Page 1 of The Sin Binders Ascent

Luna

The citrus scent hits me the moment I step into the produce aisle, bright and too clean. Like the world trying to convince itself that nothing rots underneath. I grip the cart tighter and let the wheels hum over linoleum, sidestepping a pyramid of lemons stacked like offerings to some suburban god.

Grocery shopping is my one non-negotiable. They can command armies, summon violence with a look, splinter worlds with their hungers, but none of them are allowed in this store. Not after the “pasta sauce debate of 2035.” I still haven’t forgiven Silas for weaponizing three different kinds of penne like it was a battlefield.

I need this. The quiet. The ordinariness. The anonymity.

No one here knows I’ve loved Wrath so hard it’s carved valleys through me. No one feels Lucien’s dominion scraping under their ribs when he walks into a room. No one sees Elias trip over his mouth just because I looked at him too long. They don’t know the things Orin’s voice does to me when he reads recipes like ancient incantations, or how Caspian can’t cook for shit but will still try if I ask, while Ambrose writes down exactly how I like my tea, like it’s sacred scripture.

Here, I’m just the girl with too many bags and a shopping list organized by aisle.

I pluck a head of lettuce off the shelf and study it, as if it might confess a secret. It doesn’t. Just stares up at me, innocent and unbothered. Unlike my household, which runs on appetites that aren’t exactly FDA-approved.

Lucien won’t eat anything processed. Caspian lives on things that look like sin baked into butter. Elias eats cereal at midnight with orange juice because “he’s trying to feel something.” Orin wants raw, whole ingredients only, “Things the earth remembers,” he told me once, and I nearly dropped the basket just from how he said it. Silas insists on anything phallic-shaped just so he can make me regret existing. And Riven eats whatever I cook like it’s a truce between us. Like it might stop him from burning the whole world down.

Bananas go into the cart. Silas’ll get a kick out of it.

I pass the meat section, and something, memory or instinct, flares in my ribs. It’s always the blood that gets me. Cleaned up, sealed in plastic, drained of violence, pretending to be tame. I wonder if anyone around me notices how deeply I stare at the ribeyes.

A small child barrels past me, nearly clips the cart. I blink, and the moment’s gone. Back to reality. Just shopping for the men who were never supposed to be mine.

My phone buzzes. Group text. I brace.

SILAS: If u don’t get me those chocolate muffins I will CRY. Real tears, Luna. I’m not above public sobbing.

ELIAS: Don’t listen to him. Get the muffins but tell him they were all sold out. Let me watch him spiral.

ORIN: No processed sugar. It unsettles the others.

CASPIAN: I’ll trade you something pretty if you come home with cheese danish.

RIVEN: Muffins. Blueberry. Please.

AMBROSE: Luna. You promised croissants. I intend to collect.

LUCIEN: Get what you want. Ignore them.

I stare at the messages, a breath curling at the back of my throat, and for a second, just a second, I let myself smile. Thirty years later, and I still can’t decide if I’ve been cursed or crowned. Either way, they’re hungry. And I’m the one who feeds them.

I flick open the keyboard, thumbs moving fast, practiced. The cart squeaks under my hand as I steer toward the bakery aisle, dodging a woman comparing bags of gluten-free something with the intensity of a war general.

LUNA: Youallmade a list. Remember the list? The carefully color-coded, category-sorted, soul-destroying list you insisted I follow?

Three seconds.

LUNA: We're already off track. Muffins weren't on it. Neither were danishes. Or emotional manipulation via baked goods.

A beat. Then they start flooding in.

SILAS: I WAS EMOTIONALLY STABLE when we made the list. Now I’m fragile and damp and desperate.

ELIAS: You hadmewrite half the list. That’s on you, Moonspawn.

CASPIAN: I maintain that anything drizzled with icing qualifies as essential.

ORIN: You are veering dangerously close to chaos.

SILAS: @orin tell me more

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