Page 49 of The Sin Binders Ascent

I wrench away from him. “He’s got a cuff on her. He’s fuckingattachedto her, Orin. You think I’m going to wait around and see whatelsehe plans?”

Theo raises a hand,mocking peace. “I didn’tplanthis.”

“Bullshit,” Elias says from the back, dragging his soaked hoodie sleeves up his arms like he’s prepping for a brawl he didn’tmeanto join but now absolutely will.

Lucien hasn’t moved. He stands statue-still, but the look on his face could curdle blood. His power coils around the edges of us all, not unleashed butfelt, like gravity waiting to collapse.

“You seriously think I orchestrated some magical meet-cute cuffing spell?” Theo asks, voice low and maddeningly casual. “I’m good. But notthatgood.”

“Oh, you’rethatgood,” Caspian mutters.

Ambrose steps forward. “So if it wasn’t you… who the fuckwasit?”

Theo shrugs again, that infuriating roll of his shoulders like nothing in the world weighs on him. “I don’t know. Maybe a curse. Maybe Blackwell decided to cut out the middleman and skip all that pesky consent.”

Luna moves beside me,quiet but furious. I feel the heat off her skin, the rigid line of her spine. She’s shaking, not from cold.

“Take it off,” I snarl.

“I can’t.”

“Take it off.”

“Ican’t,Riven,” Theo says again, eyes going dark. Not smug. Not flirty. Just sharp. “Do you think I’d be here, walking through the damn woods, getting punched in the face, if I had any fucking say in this?”

“You think we’re going to believe,”

“Iwasn’t supposed to exist!” he explodes, and it cuts through all of us. “You locked me away. Youerasedme. And now I’m back and I’mstillthe villain in a story I never even got to write a line of.”

I feel Luna flinch behind me.

The gold cuff gleams between them. Still connected.

Still binding.

I look at Theo. And for the first time… he doesn’t look like the asshole from town. He looks like a loaded gun someone else just fired. And the bullet’s already in her chest.

Lucien moves slowly, methodically. His steps slice across the soaked ground as if the world is something he owns and simply chooses not to burn. His eyes,cold, crystalline command,cut straight to the golden cuff on Luna’s wrist. It glints in the gray light, too bright, too real. Like it’s mocking him. Mockingus.

I step back to let him through. Not out of deference. Out of rage contained with difficulty. I want to see him destroy it. To seesomethingbreak under his Dominion. Preferably Theo’s neck, but I’ll take the cuff if that’s what he wants to start with.

“Fix this,” I growl. “Now.”

Lucien’s eyes flick to me, unreadable. Then lower, assessing the thin band of gold wound like a fucking brand around her skin.

He raises a hand. Power coils around his fingers,Domination incarnate. No flash. No theatrics. Just pressure, old and terrible, coalescing like gravity grown sentient.

The wind stills.

The birds, even in the distant woods, go silent.

His palm hovers a breath above the metal, and then,

Nothing.

No crack. No shiver. No give. Lucien frowns, barely. A hairline fracture of confusion. Then he tries again, this time the air around us ripples, a wave of compulsion that makes my skin crawl. Makes the others shift behind me. It rolls over Theo, too, who shudders once like his spine just got crushed beneath the weight of it.

Still.

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