Page 20 of The Sin Binders Ascent

Riven growls.Growls.Not metaphorical.

Luna's hand tightens against her thigh. She hasn't even touched her fork; she doesn’t need to. She's dangerous without it. I can see it. The way she positions herself just outside the moment. It's a mix of rage, restraint, and, gods help us, interest.

And Theo sees it too. That’s what makes me hate him more than anything. Because he knows exactly what he’s doing. She’s deciding whether to kill him or carve him into something she canuse. And I don’t know which answer terrifies me more. He watches her like she’s not made of knives. Like, we aren’t all sitting at this table like barely sheathed weapons.

He tilts his head, eyes flicking toward Luna again, this time slower. Purposeful. Calculated the way a serpent coils, lazy until it strikes.

“You know,” he drawls, swirling his spoon in the risotto like it's her spine he’s stirring, “you were a lot more dismissive in the dairy aisle.”

Luna stiffens, and I feel it like a seismic shift down the length of the table.

Theo smiles wider. “I mean, I didn’t expect the woman who told me to go fuck myself next to the Greek yogurt to besharing dinner with me a few hours later.But fate’s weird like that.”

The fork in my hand bends. Not figuratively. The metal screams between my fingers as I curl it in half without meaning to.

He keeps going. Of course he does.

“And now look at us,” he says, gesturing with his damn spoon. “Same table, shared air, palpablechemistry, ”

Lucien straightens. That subtle movement that means the Dominion’s whispering at the edges of the room, waiting to beunleashed.

“Shut up,” Riven mutters, low and venom-slick.

But Theo’s gaze stays locked on Luna like none of us matter. Like we’re furniture. Like this ishis storynow.

“Tell me, darling…” he muses, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand like he’s lounging on some lover’s pillow. “Was it the smile? The charm? My boyish arrogance? Whatexactlymade you change your mind between produce and prophecy?”

Luna’s chair scrapes back. Slowly. Deliberately. She stands, eyes fixed on him with that cold, surgical heat she wears when she’s deciding what to ruin first.

“I didn’t change my mind,” she says. “I just haven’t gotten around to gutting you yet.”

Theo laughs.Laughs. Soft and wicked, like he’sthrilled.

Riven pushed his chair back too quickly. Orin moved, subtle but ready. Silas vibrated at the edge of his seat, as if preparing to fling himself across the table with a butter knife and a monologue.

I drop the bent fork onto my plate. The sound is sharp, final.

“You think this is a fucking performance,” I say, voice low, calm, because I don’t need volume to kill. “A game. A charming little seduction arc. But every second you breathe her name like it belongs to you, you’re crawling closer to a death you won’t see coming.”

Theo turns to me slowly. That grin dimples, wolfish. “Oh, Ambrose. If you wanted to flirt, all you had to do was ask.”

Luna steps around the table. Not to approach him, gods, no, but to walk past.

Dismissal.Power.

She doesn’t say a word as she exits the room.

Theo watches her go with a look like a man who knows the fall is coming, andwants it anyway.

I reach for a second fork. And this one’s going through his fucking eye.

Theo is still smiling, relaxed, and confident as if Luna's departure wasn't a rejection but rather a promise. He picks up a piece of Caspian’s handmade sourdough, which took three hours, several floured tantrums, and at least one culinary spell to make, and he dips it into the risotto as if it isn't something sacred.

“Mm,” he says, chewing like the asshole he is. “Your chef haspassion. You can taste the suppressed trauma.”

Lucien’s chair slides back with the quiet scrape of authority beingrevoked.

“You need to leave the table.”

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