Page 23 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“You’re immortal,” Luna calls back. “You don’thavechildhood.”

I lean on what’s left of a chair, watching her as she takes in every ruin, every man bruised and bloodied and somehow still too proud.

“You broke my home,” she says, softer now. “You don’t get to break each other in it.”

We hear it.Feelit. That edge beneath her calm. Not a threat.

A promise.

And all of us, Sins, gods, bastards, start to clean.

Even Theo.

Though Iwillenjoy watching him mop up his blood.

We clean like schoolboys caught cheating, aggressive, sulking, anddangerous. The risotto gets scraped from the hardwood in angry clumps. The shattered glass is gathered like evidence. Even Caspian, who treats his table like a lover he built with his own bare hands, is sanding the splintered edge in tight, furious circles, jaw clenched like he’s imagining Theo’s spine under the grit.

And Theo? He hums.Hums, the absolute bastard. Kneeling in a pile of broken dishware, dabbing blood off the floor like he’s helping clean up after brunch.

I crouch beside him with a rag, smile sharp enough to gut.

“Just so we’re clear,” I murmur, voice low enough Luna can’t hear over Silas’s dramatic sighing from the other side of the room, “if you touch her without permission, I won’t make it quick. I’ll make it art.”

Theo doesn’t even look up. “That’s adorable, Ambrose. You always this poetic when you’re horny?”

I press the rag harder into the floor.

Riven passes behind him carrying a broken table leg like it might still have one use left. As he walks by, he leans just close enough to whisper, “She’s not yours. Shewon’tbe. You get near her again, and I’ll see how many of your ribs I can crack before Lucien pulls me off.”

Theo glances back, smiling with a split lip. “Can’t wait, Riven. I’ve always wanted to feel your hands on me.”

Riven slams the table leg into the bin with a loud crack, enough to make Elias flinch.

“Fuckingfreak,” Elias mutters under his breath as he sweeps up glass beside the bar cart. “If I had a time machine, I’d go back and shove you back in whatever cursed ass Blackwell pulled you out of.”

“Aw,” Theo says without turning. “You’re so mean to me, Elias. I think it’s because you’ve imagined me naked and now you’re confused.”

Silas leans over the table from where he’s trying to get flour out of the cracks with a butter knife. “Okay, but if youdie, do you still leave a sexy corpse? Because I’m taking volunteers.”

“Boys,” Orin says softly from the kitchen entrance, where he’s reassembling a shattered serving platter with inhuman grace. His tone is calm, but ancient. Like a quiet shore before a tsunami. “Keep your voices down.”

Theo wipes more blood off the floor. “You afraid she’ll hear your threats, Orin?”

Orin finally looks up. And his stare is slow. Calculated. Bone-deep.

“No,” he says, like a law being written. “I’m afraid she won’t.”

Theo’s grin falters for just a second. Just enough. And then he laughs, tucking the cloth into the bucket.

“You’re all adorable,” he says, looking around the room at the seven deadly Sins who’d bury him in a heartbeat and fight each other over who gets to carve the epitaph. “Possessive. Threatening. Stupid in love. I bet it drives herinsane.”

I straighten. Step close. And smile wide enough to show teeth.

“Not as insane as what I’ll do to you,” I murmur, “when she’s not watching.”

Theo meets my eyes, and for the first time tonight. He doesn’t smile.

Orin

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