Page 31 of The Sin Binders Ascent

And that’s the part I hate most. Not his voice. Not his words. Not even the maddening way he keeps licking at boundaries like he wants me to snap.

It’s how he already knows what I’ll do. It’s the arrogance that he’ll be worth it.

That’s what makes me want to rip the smug right off his face.

But instead, I meet that wicked, knowing gaze, and I smile with every sharp thing inside me.

“Careful,” I whisper. “Curiosity’s how the last pretty little god got cursed.”

Theo hums low, lips twitching like he might kiss that threat and swallow it whole. And I realize, no matter how many of us threaten to break him, burn him, bury him, he’s not just enjoying it.

He’s counting on it.

Theo straightens. Not dramatically, not in that chest-puffing way lesser men do when they want to look powerful. He just rises to his full height, spine drawn taut like a bowstring that’s been too still for too long. The smirk fades, not completely, but enough for the weight beneath it to bleed through. His eyes, sharp and saturated blue, don’t flicker with amusement now. They burn.

“Do you even know what it’s like,” he says quietly, each word dragging out like it costs him something, “to be sealed away in the dark and told you deserved it?”

Caspian bristles beside me, a step forward like instinct, but Theo ignores him. His gaze is locked on mine, and for once… It’s not laced with mockery.

“You think I’m arrogant?” he continues, voice low but no longer playful. “You think I’m some smug, power-hungry bastard who likes to stir the pot just to watch it boil over? Maybe I am. But do you know what that darkness does to someone like me?”

Caspian tenses again, but doesn’t move, because this, this is no longer a threat. It’s a confession.

Theo’s jaw flexes once, like he’s biting down on a scream.

“I was made to feel. To amplify. To echo every craving, every hunger, every goddamn ache the world doesn’t want to admit. And they,” his hand jerks toward Caspian now, “they locked me in that void and made me feel every second of it. Alone. For eternity.”

My breath catches. Not from sympathy. Not yet. But from the raw, brutal sincerity slipping through the cracks in his armor.

Theo’s eyes don’t waver. “Have you ever been betrayed by the people you thought were your family? Have you ever looked into the faces of the only ones who’ve ever known you and watched them turn away, because you scared them? Because you made them feel too much?”

He laughs then, bitter and bone-deep. “I loved them. Thought they were my fucking brothers. Caspian, Orin, Lucien, all of them. And they didn’t just abandon me. They erased me.”

Beside me, Caspian is stone. No rebuttal. No defense. Only that relentless pressure of restrained guilt coiling off him like smoke from a slow-burning fire.

“I begged,” Theo says, voice softer now. More dangerous for it. “I begged them not to do it. And they said it was for balance. For order.”

His lip curls. “What they meant was, I made them uncomfortable. They couldn’t handle what I brought out in them. And now here I am, invited back like a fucking ghost to haunt the house I helped build.”

I don’t move. I can’t. Because I feel it. The truth of it. The rot beneath his smirk. The cracked bone beneath the swagger. And I hate him for making me see it.

He shifts his gaze back to me, voice suddenly cutting.

“Tell me something, Luna.” He steps forward again, just enough to make the space tremble. Have you ever been turned on by someone you couldn’t stand, and hated yourself for it? Ever ached for someone you couldn’t have because you knew it would destroy everything if you gave in? That’s what I am. That’s what they were too fucking scared of.”

Caspian flinches then. Flinches. And for the first time since Theo arrived, there’s a fracture in his armor.

Theo catches it. Of course he does. He watches Caspian like he’s bleeding.

“Say it,” Theo whispers. “Say you didn’t want what I showed you. That you didn’t feel it.”

Caspian’s voice is a razor. “I killed it.”

“No,” Theo murmurs, shaking his head slowly. “You buried it. And you buried me with it.”

The silence after that cuts too close to the bone. The garden, once wild and golden and alive with the breath of summer, now feels like it’s holding its breath. Watching. Waiting.

Theo straightens again. Cold now. Guarded. A mask slammed back into place over something that should’ve stayed buried.

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