Page 28 of The Sin Binders Ascent

And we’ve already opened the door.

Luna

Betrayal wears the face of a god and drinks from my favorite fucking mug.

Theo lounges in one of the wrought-iron chairs on the east terrace, where the morning sun slides gold over the stone like honey. One leg slung casually over the other, back tilted just enough to suggest ease, but nothing about him is ever easy. He’s too calculated. Too still. Like a man waiting for the match to hit the fuse.

The mug in his hand? Pale ceramic. A faint chip on the rim, I never bothered to replace it because I liked the imperfection. The wordQueenetched in gold leaf across the front, a joke from Silas one drunken winter morning that stuck. No one touches that mug. No onedares.

Except Theo.

He sips like he owns the sunrise. Like he’s earned the right to watch the grounds stretch into bloom around him, roses tumbling down the stone wall behind him, the blue-lavender haze of hydrangeas in heavy summer crown, wild grasses swaying along the carved path Orin laid by hand decades ago.

This place is sacred. Thishome, built in rebellion and devotion, where every flower, every stone, every curve of iron and wood and glass was shaped by the seven men who becamemy world. Our sanctuary, carved out of war and longing and years of clawing toward something like peace.

And now the eighth is here, drinking from my mug and stealing the sun like it belongs to him.

He lifts his gaze when I stop at the top of the steps, and fuck, those eyes.

Vivid, electric blue, too sharp for this early in the morning, tooknowing. Like he’s already read the pages I haven’t written.

“Morning, sweetheart,” he drawls, voice slow and thick with syruped mockery. “I wasn’t sure how you took your coffee, so I drank it instead.”

I grip the railing harder than necessary. My nails bite into the wood.

“You’re in my seat. Drinking from my mug.”

“And yet,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the air, “the sun still rises, the birds still sing, and you’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Are youtryingto die today?” I ask flatly.

A smile curves at the corner of his mouth. Not wide. Not cocky. Just a hint. A promise.

“Depends,” he says. “Would you cry at my funeral, or spit in the grave?”

I take the steps one by one, careful, deliberate. I’ve fought gods. I’ve bled for kingdoms. I’ve pulled love out of ruin and stitched it into a life worth living. Butthis, this smug, lazy bastard sipping from the vessel of my peace, is more dangerous than all of that.

Because I don’t understand him.

Not fully. Not yet.

And I hate that he knows it.

Theo’s power hums beneath his skin like a prayer you don’t want to say out loud. It brushes through the air between us, subtle but invasive. The way a scent pulls a memory you forgotyou buried. The way a name you’ve never said aloud curls in your mouth like it belongs there.

Desire, they said. Not lust. Not temptation.Desire.The deep, unspeakable need. The ache you don’t admit even to yourself. And he sits there, sprawled in the bones of my home, wearing that need like a tailored suit.

I stopped two feet from him.

“If you don’t want your insides rearranged,” I say calmly, “get out of that chair and give me my mug.”

Theo sets it down slowly. Tilts his head to the side like he’s studying a painting. Or prey.

“You’ve got sharp edges, Luna,” he says, and his voice dips, just a shade, just enough to drag heat along my spine. “No wonder they all cut themselves trying to keep you.”

My fingers curl before I can stop them. I want to slap that look off his face. Or maybe kiss it away. And that right there, that impossibility, that split in my goddamnwill, is why he’s dangerous.

He rises, unfolding from the chair with deliberate grace. Every movement calculated to draw attention, to pull your eyes somewhere they shouldn’t be.

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