Page 96 of The Sin Binders Ascent

I feel it too. The pull. It’s not directional. It’s not logical. But it’s there. Low and insistent, buried deep in the bones of the world. Something took her. And it left a scar in its wake.

Moss crawls up the bark in heavy sheets, not green but a bruised violet, and when Riven brushes it aside to clear the path, it retracts as if breathing.

The deeper we go, the quieter it gets, not the kind of quiet that implies peace, but something stranger. No rustle of animals. No breeze. The kind of stillness that waits. Not for us, specifically. Just forsomethingto happen. Like the woods have been holding their breath since she disappeared.

Ahead of me, Orin stops. His head tilts, his gaze catching on something unseen. “This isn’t natural,” he murmurs. “Even for Theo.”

Caspian crouches near a cluster of flattened leaves, each the size of a wolf’s pelt, their veins glowing pale blue. “No physical trail,” he says. “Whatever moved through here didn’t disturb the ground.”

“It wouldn’t,” Ambrose answers from behind him, brushing a fallen branch out of his way. “He’s not brute force. He’s precision. Need. Craving. You don’t track desire by footprints.”

“He’s got every reason to take her,” Elias says, a little too easily, but I catch the way he keeps glancing at the treetops like he expects something to fall. “We locked him out of reality for how long? Spent years keeping her away from him? If I were him, I’d be putting her in a glass box and feeding her poetry until she went mad.”

Riven snorts. “He’s not sentimental.”

“Doesn’t need to be,” Silas cuts in, stepping between two twisted trees that bend slightly as he passes, almost like they’re reacting to his presence. “He’s obsessed. He doesn’twanther to love him. He wants her to need him. Same way a drug wants your bloodstream.”

“He wouldn’t hurt her,” Orin says, calmly but with a finality that makes me look at him twice. “Not her. Not directly.”

“He wouldn’t have to.” Ambrose moves to my side, his coat brushing the low branches. “Desire doesn’t crush you. It corrodes. It wears down what you are until the only thing left is what you want.”

I know what Theo is capable of. What it felt like to stand in the same room with him before we locked him away. His presence didn’t flare like mine, didn’t announce itself like Riven’s or Orin’s. Itsank in.Unnoticeable at first. And then suddenly, your skin itched from the inside. You’d find yourself reaching for something you didn’t know you needed. Not because he made you want it. But because he showed you what you were already starving for.

And Luna…

She’s always wanted to be free. She’s always craved her own choices, even while she let herself be bound to us. Even when she said she belonged to all of us. That kind of desire, in Theo’s hands, isn’t sacred. It’s dangerous.

“If he’s touching her,” I say, voice low, deliberate, “I’ll end him.”

Elias doesn’t look at me when he replies, just flicks another broken twig out of the way. “You might have to stand in line.”

“I’m not interested in retribution,” Orin adds, still scanning the trees, eyes distant. “I want to know why. Why now. Why her. If this were a revenge play, he would’ve come for one of us.”

“Hedid,” Ambrose says. “He just made sure we felt it in the place that would hurt the most.”

“How would he evengetto her?” Elias asks, annoyed now. “She’s not exactly the most accessible immortal. She’s surrounded. Constantly.”

“He didn’t go through her,” Orin says, his voice sharper now, more focused. “He went through us.”

Silas stops walking. His posture shifts, spine straighter, eyes clearer. “Oh.”

Elias makes a face. “What?”

“If he’s echoing us,” Silas murmurs, unusually quiet, “if hepulledour wants, our cravings for her, and bent them into something that looked like permission...”

Ambrose’s expression darkens. “She’d follow that.”

“Especially if she thought it was coming from us,” Riven mutters, jaw clenched. “She wouldrun to it.”

My stomach turns cold. If he twisted even one of our intentions, if he carved open her desire using something she thought was ours, she wouldn’t resist. Not because she was weak, but because she trusted us more than herself.

She wouldfall into it.

And Theo would let her.

Not by force. By need. By showing her what she already longed for and making himself the only thing that could give it.

Ambrose exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If he’s already embedded in her mind, we can’t just pull her out. We’ll snap her in the process.”

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