Page 147 of The Sin Binders Ascent

I swallow hard.

“They began to disagree,” Brashir says, low now. “On everything. On how to grieve. On how to live. On how to endure without you. And in the end, they fractured.”

He lifts one heavy hand, the silver symbols on his robe catching the light as he begins to count them off.

“Lucien and Orin are imprisoned.”

I stagger back a step, and Theo’s hand hovers at my lower back, not quite touching, but there if I want it.

“High-security containment,” Brashir goes on. “A facility buried beneath the deadlands of what was once called Evala. They surrendered themselves during a conflict with one of the new Regencies. It was… strategic, at first. But now they’re trapped. Magic doesn’t work the same inside the compound. Orin is fading. Lucien keeps him stable.”

I close my eyes for one breath, then open them again. “Why haven’t you gotten them out?”

“They chose to go in,” he says, and his voice carries something that almost sounds like sorrow. “They thought they were protecting something. Or someone.”

He drops the hand and lifts the next.

“Ambrose is off the grid. Has been for nearly a hundred years. We’ve tried to trace him through echoes, bloodlines, divine residue. Nothing holds. Whatever he’s hiding from, he’s buried himself deep. There are whispers of him moving across thedesert cities, sometimes called a ghost, sometimes a saint. None of it’s reliable.”

My chest tightens. Ambrose was always the quiet one. The one who listened more than he spoke, who steadied me with a touch when I didn’t even know I was coming apart.

“Silas,” Brashir says, voice shifting like it’s cutting through something thick, “has crowned himself king.”

I blink. “What?”

“He rules a fractured kingdom built from the bones of old cities. It’s chaos, but itworks.He has loyalists. Power. His own priesthood. He calls himself the Flame Monarch.”

I laugh. It slips out bitter and sharp. Of course he does.

Brashir nods, just once. “And Elias is with him.”

That stills me.

“Elias?” I ask.

“Yes,” Brashir says. “Your sloth has decided a throne suits him. He stands at Silas’s side, not as an advisor or second-in-command, but as a shadow. A jester, some say. A war tactician, others claim. But he is always there.”

My mouth goes dry. I try to picture it, Elias in gold robes, Silas draped in flame, both of them laughing while the world burns. It doesn’t feel right, but it doesn’t feel wrong either.

“Caspian,” Brashir continues, and his tone flattens, “is a hunter.”

My stomach turns.

“What does that mean?”

“He walks the wild spaces between what remains of civilization,” Brashir says. “He doesn’t answer to anyone. Doesn’t belong to any kingdom. He tracks what shouldn’t exist. Monsters, gods, immortals gone mad. And he destroys them. Efficiently. Without mercy. He lives alone, and he never speaks of the past.”

My throat closes for a second. Caspian was always the quietest. The coldest. But his hands never shook when he held me.

“And Riven?”

Brashir’s gaze softens. Just a flicker. But it cuts more than anything else he’s said.

“Riven rules the mountains now.”

I know the answer before he speaks it.

“He lives alone?”

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