Orin
It’s beautiful, the way the two of them hold her. Not in the way people think beauty looks. There’s no poetry to it, no staged reverence. Just Elias, crouched low with one hand still on her wrist, two fingers pressed to the pulse point like he’s afraid it might vanish if he lets go. And Silas, sitting cross-legged at her side, his grin long since faded, rubbing lazy circles into the back of her hand like he doesn’t know he’s doing it.
They’re quiet now.
Which means it’s bad.
Luna’s lying on a patch of half-cleared stone, the ruins humming around her like they’ve drawn breath for the first time in centuries and can’t decide whether to exhale or scream. Her skin is flushed, her body still. Whatever the Academy woke in her, it hit deep. It’s clinging to her now. Feeding off something old and buried that none of us fully understand—not even me.
And that should terrify me.
But I’m too busy watching her sleep.
Elias put her under with a whisper and a glyph carved into the air with his thumb. He doesn’t always take things seriously, but when he does, it’s always for her. He won’t say it out loud—none of us will—but there’s something sacred about the way he moved when she started to fall. No hesitation. Just instinct. He reached for her like it was the only thing that’s ever mattered.
And now here we are.
Sitting in a broken circle of stone, five feet from where magic swallowed her whole.
Lucien stands off to the side, arms folded, posture rigid, but he hasn’t moved since Elias said she was stable. I know what he’s thinking. I know what it costs him to look at her like this—peaceful, quiet, vulnerable. It isn’t rage in him right now. It’s something worse. Regret.
I move closer, careful not to cast a shadow over her. The pulse of energy in this place has settled, but not died. The stones are watching. The magic’s listening. Luna stirred something, and it’s not finished with her. Not by a long stretch.
“She’s still connected,”
I murmur, mostly to myself.
Silas glances up. “To what?”
I hesitate.
Then lie.
“The Academy.”
Because the truth is heavier than they’re ready for. Because I saw the way her eyes glazed before she dropped. Saw the flicker of black ink crawl across her palm and vanish before Elias reached her. It wasn’t the Academy that touched her. It wasn’t Branwen, either.
It was something beneath all of this. Something that remembers who Luna is becoming—and wants to claim her first.
Lucien moves finally, stepping closer.
“Is she safe now?”
I look at her again. At the curve of her mouth, the faint twitch in her fingers. And the ache in my chest blooms sharp, selfish, and unrelenting.
“She’s quiet,” I say.
But safe?
No.
Because she’s never been safe.
Not from the magic.
Not from us.
I look at us—really look—and wonder if the others see it. The shape we’ve taken. The silent arrangement of our bodies, like a ritual we didn’t plan but all obey anyway. We’ve circled her. Not in fear. Not in reverence. But in something older than either.
A shield.
A perimeter.
A confession.
They don’t realize what it means, not yet. They think it’s instinct. Habit. Duty. But I see it for what it is—gravity. She’s not in the center because she fell. She’s there because we did.
When Luna first arrived at the academy—months ago, though it feels like lifetimes—I wouldn’t have stood within ten paces of her. None of us would. Lucien wouldn’t look at her for longer than a moment. Elias only poked her to get a reaction. Silas threw his charm like knives, hoping she’d flinch. Riven growled. Caspian watched from a distance, fascinated and distant like a man watching the spark before the fire.
And me?
I stayed far away. Because I knew better. Because I always know better.
And now?
Now I can’t stand to be more than a few feet from her. None of us can. Even Lucien—godsdamned Lucien—hasn’t moved more than a few steps away since she collapsed, and he’s pretending it’s caution. Strategy. But I see the war in him. The way his gaze drags back to her like a man trying to forget a prayer he never meant to whisper.
We’re ruined.
Each of us in our own way. She’s still so convinced she’s surviving us. Still thinks the danger lives in our teeth, our curses, our pasts. But the real danger is in what she’s made us need. Not just her body, or her bond, or the way she bleeds magic into the air like it belongs to her.
It’s the way she makes us feel like we belong.
And we don’t.
We never did.
Not to this world. Not to her. Not to anything that soft and human and good.
And still, we stay. Still, we stand here like shadows around a sleeping flame. Because even if it burns us—We’ve already decided she’s worth the ruin.
And here is the crux of it all—the thing none of them will say out loud.
We are not good. We never were. We are not misunderstood, or broken, or cursed into these forms. We are Sin—raw, ancient, elemental—and this skin we wear is a shell built to contain something far more deviant than blood and bone.
Humanity is the lie.
Sin is the truth.
Sin, bottled up and dressed in human shape, carved from the detritus of gods and men and left to rot in the shadow of both.
They sealed us into these bodies not because we were dangerous—but because they couldn’t stand to look at the mirror we held to them.
Because Sin is what they deny.
What they repress. What they are when no one’s watching.
Silas is envy.
It bleeds from him like rot from beneath a smile.
Not the petty jealousy mortals whine about, but the deep, consuming ache that carves hollows into your ribs and poisons every good thing before you ever taste it.
Silas wants.
Not things.
Not power.
Everything.
Every moment, every glance, every scrap of attention that isn’t his twists something inside him. And he turns it into humor, into chaos, because if he doesn’t laugh, he’ll devour the world just to prove it should’ve been his.
Lucien is pride.
Not confidence.
Not arrogance.
Pride, in its truest, ugliest form.
The kind that builds kingdoms just to burn them down if he can’t rule over the ashes.
He believes he was made to lead—and maybe he was—but the rot of pride is that he’ll never follow, never bend, never need.
Except he does, and it kills him.
Pride is the refusal to admit hunger, even as it devours you from within. And Lucien? He’s starving.
Riven is wrath.
Pure, undiluted rage.
The kind that comes from betrayal so old it calcified into instinct.
He doesn’t just feel anger.
He is it.
A living storm, always one breath from thunder.
Wrath doesn’t need a reason—it waits, coiled, until the smallest crack lets it in.
Riven tries to leash it. Pretends it’s control. But I’ve seen the truth. When Luna touched him, when she bound him, she didn’t calm the rage. She gave it purpose.
And Elias… Elias is sloth.
Not laziness.
Not indifference.
The ancient sin of withdrawal.
Of choosing numbness over pain, avoidance over truth.
Sloth is the cowardice of the soul—the decision to look away even as the world burns.
Elias jokes because he’s always half a second from collapse.
He refuses to feel too deeply because the moment he does, he’ll drown in it. He’s not weak. He’s terrified of what he’d become if he ever let go.
And me?
I am gluttony.
Not hunger for food.
That would be merciful.
Mine is the hunger for more.
More knowledge.
More experience.
More of what should never belong to me.
I consume and consume—books, magic, meaning—until there is nothing left but ash.
Gluttony is the sickness of never being full.
Of knowing that what I take will ruin the very thing I love most, and taking it anyway.
That’s why I keep my distance. That’s why I let the others touch her, joke with her, burn for her.
We are not men.
We are the things men bury.
We are the rot at the base of the holy tree.
And she—Luna—she’s the light they forgot to extinguish.
Which means, eventually, we will destroy her.
Or she will redeem us. And can Sin be redeemed? That’s the question gnawing at the base of all this. Not spoken aloud—not yet—but it hangs in the air every time she breathes too deeply, every time one of them looks at her like they’ve seen the shape of their damnation and would still drag their tongue across it just to taste her name.
Can Sin be saved?
If that’s all that lives inside you?
I don’t know.
But I know what I’ve seen.
I’ve watched women reach for power before.
Some with noble intent.
Some with hunger buried so deep they thought it looked like hope.
And each time, they crumbled. Not in some grand spectacle, but piece by piece. Their softness went first. Their logic next. And eventually, the thing that made them them.
Because power never just fills you.
It hollows you out.
And Sin—our kind of power—it’s not just a force.
It’s a parasite.
One that whispers your name while it redefines it.
One that convinces you what you’re becoming is beautiful, until you’re standing in the ruin of everything you loved with blood on your hands and no memory of how it got there.
And Luna?
She’s already changing.
Three bound to her now.
Riven, Silas, Elias.
Each of them pulled into her orbit, each of them marking her with something she may never understand.
Not because they forced it—because she let it happen. Because something in her wants to be claimed. To feel all of it. Even if it means being devoured by what we are.
Her power is shifting.
I can feel it in the stones, in the way the ruins themselves respond to her like a queen returning to a throne that should never have been built.
The Hollow no longer fights her.
The Academy no longer rejects her. They recognize her.
But they don’t recognize Luna.
They recognize something else.
And maybe that’s what she’s becoming.
Not a binder.
Not a savior.
But something new. Something born from all of us. And gods help us if she survives it.
Because none of us will. Not unchanged.
Silas tucks his coat under her head with the kind of care that makes something ancient in me flinch.
A monster made flesh, kneeling before a girl who shouldn't matter this much, trying—failing—to give her comfort in a world that was never meant for it. There’s no jest in him now. No smirk or quip to deflect the severity of what’s happening. Just hands that shake slightly as he lifts her head, his palms cradling the back of her skull like she’s something sacred. Breakable.
He places her back down gently. As if the stones might bruise her. As if he knows they would, if given half the chance. His eyes stay fixed on her face, watching the flickers beneath her lashes. Not fear. Not lust. Something worse.
Hope.
And it nearly unravels me.
Because I remember what Silas used to be. What he is. The grinning serpent in the rafters. The trickster who never stayed still long enough to be pinned down. He was chaos for the sake of survival. Every joke a shield. Every prank a way to push the world away before it hurt him again. But Luna pulled him down from that heightless spiral, wrapped her hands in his hair and looked him in the eye like he was someone worth staying for.
And now he kneels.
And I watch.
The stones beneath us, those cursed bones of a school that never wanted to die, they seem to still around us. Listening. Breathing. The architecture here isn’t dead—it’s watching her. It knows who she is. It knew before we did. That’s what unsettles me most. The world itself is bending around her shape, and I don’t think she’s aware she’s the one doing the bending.
“She’s still not waking,”
Silas mutters from behind me, trying for flippant but not quite making it. His voice cracks halfway through, and when I glance back at him, he’s pacing. One hand rakes through his hair, the other clutches his jacket like it’s armor.
“Maybe if I whispered something inappropriate, her subconscious would rise up and slap me.”
“Don’t,”
Elias says softly, not looking away from her.
“Just… don’t.”
Slias stops. Blinks like he wasn’t expecting to be answered seriously.
And then nods once, silent. Because even he feels it now. The wrongness of it all. The beauty. The break.
Luna, asleep in the center of ruins that remember her better than we do. The Sins, kneeling, pacing, watching like the devout. And me— Vale—still standing on the edge of it all, knowing that the moment she opens her eyes, something old will look through them.
She shifts.
It’s the smallest thing—barely a flicker of motion as her head turns slightly toward the sound of Silas’ voice, her lashes twitching like something’s trying to pull her back into herself. But it’s enough.
Relief cracks through me before I can stop it.
I exhale.
And with it, the illusion I could stay another moment.
Lucien and I exchange a glance. He doesn’t nod. Doesn’t move. But I know what’s expected. What’s necessary. We’ve lingered too long, and if her voice finds us while she’s waking, Branwen will feel it. She’ll seize the thread that ties us to her like a hook in the marrow, and she’ll pull.
Harder than before.
She’s already restless.
Already clawing at the bond buried deep in the hollows of my ribs, whispering promises laced in rot and hunger. She wants to hear Luna speak. Wants to know why the Academy stirs. Why the Sins have circled a girl like she’s a prophet returned to her ruined temple.
I rise, slow and deliberate, brushing dirt from my knees like it matters. It doesn’t.
Nothing in me wants to walk away. But I do. Because staying is worse. Because if she speaks my name, and Branwen hears it echo down the line—She’ll bury it in blood.
Lucien doesn’t follow.
I pause, turning just enough to see him still rooted to the spot, his eyes locked on Luna like he’s measuring her breaths. There’s something tight in his jaw. Not anger. Not pain. Conflict. And that’s dangerous. Lucien doesn’t hesitate. He acts, calculates, commands. But now he stands there like he’s forgotten how to leave, like some part of him is waiting for her to wake.
“Lucien,”
I murmur, voice low but edged. “Now.”
His eyes flick to mine—blue, furious, lost.
Then back to her.
Only when she exhales again, soft and stirring, does he finally step away. One foot, then another. Each motion too slow, too reluctant. And I know—gods, I know—he wants her to say something.
Anything.
Wants to hear her voice before Branwen tears it out of him again.
But he walks. Not because he chooses to. Because he has to. Because the second she says his name, Branwen will rip it from his throat like a war cry.
And none of us are ready for that yet. So we leave. And behind us, the girl who ruined gods stirs in her sleep, and none of us dare admit how close we are to falling.
Lucien moves to sit across from me, his shoulders rigid despite the fire’s warmth, his gaze locked on the flames like they might offer absolution. They won’t. He knows that. We both do.
But we watch them anyway.
It’s safer than watching each other.
The fire throws shadows long and low across the ruined stone circle we’ve claimed for the night. Not quite shelter, not quite ruin—something in between. Like us. Half-formed things waiting to be finished, or destroyed.
Lucien hasn’t spoken in twenty-three minutes. I know because I’ve been counting. Not out of impatience, but necessity. When it gets to thirty, he usually breaks. Not with anything useful. Nothing close to truth. But he’ll mutter about formations, or the density of the air, or the way the ruins seem to shift slightly when no one’s looking.
Safe things.
Dead things.
Things Branwen can’t use.
Because that’s the thing about sharing a bond with a monster.
You learn how to speak around her teeth.
I sip from the metal cup between my hands—lukewarm, bitter, but passable—and tilt my head toward the fire.
“Wind’s shifting. Might be rain.”
Lucien’s mouth twitches. It isn’t a smile. Just muscle memory. A ghost of civility.
“You always say that.”
“Because it always might.”
“Predicting the weather now, ?”
His tone is dry, almost amused, but I hear the strain beneath it. The pull. The way her hooks twitch when he dares to feel anything too sharp.
“You prefer I speculate on our odds of surviving the week?”
His silence answers for him.
We lapse again into the hum of crackling wood and night creatures just beyond the trees. The ruins breathe around us—slow, ancient, untrusting. Even here, in what remains of Daemon’s earliest bones, nothing is still. The world itself shifts in her presence, and while Luna sleeps under Elias’ ward, Lucien and I sit apart from it.
Because we have to.
Because we can’t afford to feel what they feel. Can’t afford to hope, or ache, or let her name slip past our teeth like a secret.
I’ve sealed my bond to her so tightly it aches in my bones, a vice of silence and steel. For now, it holds. She leaves me alone, obsessed with the first thing she ever owned—the piece of Lucien she never stopped craving.
So we speak of nothing.
Of old training grounds we once razed. Of books half-remembered from lifetimes past. Of ash and frost, and the way the world used to feel when it wasn’t watching our every breath.
He looks at me suddenly, sharply. Not the commander now—just the man buried under it.
“She’s not going to stop,”
he says, voice low and hard.
“No,”
I agree.
“She isn’t.”
Lucien shifts, and for one heartbeat, I think he’ll say her name. Luna.
But he doesn’t. Because if he does? We’ll both bleed for it.
Caspian
If I took a thousand showers, scrubbed myself raw until the skin peeled from my bones, I still wouldn’t feel clean.
Branwen doesn’t just touch flesh—she imprints. Marks. Claims. Every inch of me sings with it, like her fingers are still there, ghosting across my skin with the kind of reverence you’d give to something you built to destroy. I used to think I could shake it off. Fuck it out. Drown it in someone else's heat. But the bond didn’t fade.
It just got smarter.
And now, I’m the one on the floor, limbs too heavy to move, spine pressed to cold stone that remembers me better than I do. The ruins whisper my name the way she does—like I’m a secret meant to be tasted. And maybe I am.
Because I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay again.
I don’t know if I ever was.
Branwen broke me the first time when she offered herself like a gift, all soft eyes and sacrificial sweetness. A goddamn lie wrapped in skin. And when we escaped her—when I felt that tether slacken—I thought that meant I was free.
But I wasn’t.
Because the moment she got her claws back in, she didn’t have to take me.
I went.
That’s the worst part.
I followed her.
And now I’m here—soiled, ruined, whatever word you want to stitch across my chest like a fucking brand—and I can’t even pretend otherwise. Not when Ambrose stands over me, not saying anything, just watching. Like he’s trying to figure out where the man ends and the whore begins.
“You can stop looking at me like that,”
I mutter, voice thick, scraped raw.
“Your pity smells like rot.”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move. Just tilts his head slightly, unreadable in that way only Ambrose can manage.
“I’m not pitying you,”
he says at last.
“I’m wondering what you’ll do next.”
I huff a humorless laugh.
“What do you think? Crawl back to her? Let her tie a pretty bow around my throat and tell me I was born for it?”
Ambrose crouches beside me, sharp-suited and unbothered by the filth. “No,”
he says, quiet.
“I think you’re waiting.”
“For what?”
His gaze flicks to the far wall, to nothing, to everything.
“For someone to ask you to stay.”
The words land like a blow I didn’t see coming. And maybe that’s his power—not some magic like mine, not Lust humming through the bones of every room—but truth, wielded like a scalpel. A slow slice to show you your own insides.
“I don’t want—”
“You do,”
he says.
“But not from her.”
I close my eyes. Not to shut him out.
To shut everything out.
Because he’s right.
I don’t want to be saved. Not unless it’s her voice saying the words. And gods help me—if Luna ever asks, I’ll kneel. Not because she makes me. Because she wouldn’t have to.
Ambrose tells me it’s not my fault. He says it like it’s a balm, like the sound of his voice will soothe the filth under my skin. He’s wrong. It is my fault, because no matter what Branwen does with the bond—no matter how deep she threads her commands into the muscle and marrow—I follow. I give in. I go to her when she calls.
And then I come back like this.
Fucked raw from the inside out. Every nerve burnt down to ash. Every inch of me humming with power that doesn’t belong to me anymore.
Ambrose watches me, his expression unreadable, but his gaze too sharp, too still. He's free to move around in this godforsaken gilded prison, unbound and untouched, though Branwen keeps him locked in the west wing like an artifact she doesn’t know how to use yet. She doesn’t want to break him. Not yet. She wants to understand him first.
Me? She already knows what to do with me.
I’m built to kneel.
“Say something,”
I rasp, slumped against the far wall, sweat still drying against my chest, my hands twisted in the ruined silk of Branwen’s sheets.
“Or don’t. But don’t fucking stare at me like I can be saved.”
Ambrose doesn't blink.
“I’m not trying to save you.”
“Then why are you here?”
He walks slowly toward me, his steps deliberate. Measured. That same fucking calm that drives me insane. Ambrose always makes you feel like you’re the unpredictable one. Like he’s already seen how this ends, and he’s just waiting for you to catch up.
“You want me to say you’re broken?”
he asks, voice low.
“That Branwen’s ruined you so completely there’s nothing left worth crawling back for?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
“I don’t deal in pity, Caspian. You know that.”
I close my eyes. Press my head back against the cold stone.
“Then leave.”
“I would,”
he says, kneeling in front of me.
“But we both know that if she walked in right now and told you to slit my throat, you’d do it with a kiss.”
He says it without cruelty.
That’s what cuts deepest.
Because it’s true.
I could swear to resist her. I could look him in the eye and say I’m stronger than the bond. But the leash is inside me, buried in the part of me that doesn’t ask permission, that doesn’t need logic or loyalty. She can make me kill him. She can make me worship her while I do it.
And I would.
“I think I’d like it better if you hated me,”
I whisper.
Ambrose’s eyes narrow, and for a heartbeat, I think he does. But then his gaze drops to my mouth, and something flashes there—cold and curious and unforgivable.
“I don’t hate you, Caspian,”
he says.
“I just haven’t decided if I’ll let you live.”
If he could kill me, I’d let him. I’d walk straight into the blade. Press my chest to the hilt and thank him for the favor. At least then, there’d be an end to it. No more bond. No more leash. No more being her favorite toy.
But Ambrose doesn’t move. He just kneels in front of me like I’m something worth retrieving. Like he hasn’t already counted the ways this ends badly.
“They’ll come for us,”
he says, voice low. Certain. Like he believes in them. Like I’m supposed to believe too.
I let out a laugh so hollow it makes the walls flinch.
“You say that like it means something.”
Ambrose’s head tilts, unreadable as ever, but his gaze never leaves mine. That unnerving, surgical focus. He sees too much. Always has.
“It does mean something.”
“Even if they come,”
I say, voice cracked but steady.
“even if they tear down every wall and burn this place to the ground—what then? What am I to her, Ambrose? What will I be to Luna?”
He doesn’t answer.
Because he knows.
“I fucked another woman,”
I hiss, and there’s no seduction in it now. Just venom. Just the rot I can’t scrub out.
“Not because I wanted to. Not because I chose to. But because Branwen commanded it. Because the bond twisted me inside out until the only thing I could think about was how to please her. And I did. Over and over and over.”
My voice breaks.
I don’t care.
I meet his eyes with everything I have left, every jagged shard.
“How does Luna forgive that?”
Ambrose exhales slowly, almost like he’s considering the weight of it—like he’s tasting the edges of my ruin. Then, finally, he speaks.
“She won’t forgive you because you were weak,”
he says.
“She’ll forgive you because she’s already seen what strength does to the rest of us.”
It’s not comfort. It’s a death sentence. Because I know what he means. The others—all strength, all fury, all conviction—they’re shattering in front of her. Riven’s unraveling. Lucien’s barely keeping himself from cutting the bond with his own soul. And me? I was supposed to be the easy one. The flirt. The tease. The fun.
Now I’m just what’s left after Lust gets stripped of its spark.
“I don’t want her to look at me and see it,”
I whisper.
“She already does,”
Ambrose replies.
“And she still chooses you.”
My laugh this time is quieter. More dangerous.
Because that?
That might be worse than her walking away.
There’s a rule. Carved deeper than magic, older than even ’s fabled patience. A commandment we never spoke aloud, not even in the blood-soaked corridors of the first sanctum. It lived in us like instinct. Like hunger. When there’s a Sin Binder among us—we don’t fuck around.
And I broke it.
I broke it in the worst fucking way.
It doesn’t matter that Branwen owns my body. Doesn’t matter that the bond snaps its fingers and I move. That she moans my name like I’m some divine offering she’s owed. That her nails draw blood and her breath is fire and her pleasure is a leash that coils around my ribs and tightens.
None of that matters.
Because I knew.
And I still let it happen.
The rule doesn’t just exist to protect the Binder—it exists to protect us. We don’t touch, don’t taste, don’t let ourselves be used that way when a Binder is among us, because it fractures the bond. It weakens us. And that’s the part Branwen knew. That’s the part she exploited.
Because now I’m cracked down the middle. Half of me still pulsing for her against my will. The other half—The other half wants to crawl back to Luna and beg. But I don’t. I won’t.
Because Lust doesn’t beg.
And because I’ve already tainted everything between us with the stench of someone else.
I close my eyes. Press my palm flat to the stone, like I can steady the tilt of my soul with touch alone.
“She’s going to look at me and see her,” I murmur.
Ambrose doesn’t answer this time. He doesn’t need to. The silence agrees with me.
I let out a breath that feels like it’s been caged in my ribs for a century.
“I’ve betrayed Luna.”
It isn’t just guilt.
It’s prophecy.
Because Lust was never meant to be split in two. And if I can’t be hers—fully, fiercely, without Branwen’s stain—I’m nothing but a weapon waiting to be used again.
He tells me to stop feeling sorry for myself.
And maybe under any other circumstance, I’d let it go. Maybe I’d swallow it down like everything else, let his voice roll over me like cold water, numbing the burn.
But not now.
Not when I’m still crawling out of Branwen’s bed, her touch seared into my skin like acid that won’t fade. Not when my own hands feel like strangers—traitors. Not when my mouth still tastes like the lie I was forced to feed her.
I shove myself upright so fast my vision whites out. The weight of Ambrose’s stare is steady, impassive. It only makes me angrier.
“You have no fucking idea what it’s like outside this room,”
I spit, every word razored by something raw and festering.
“You stand there like some holy specter, like you’re above all of it—but you haven’t been touched by her. Not like I have.”
He doesn’t blink. Which infuriates me more.
“You don’t get it,”
I grind out.
“You didn’t feel her crawl inside your skin, into your fucking head. Didn’t feel her make you want something that revolts you. I didn’t just fuck her—I wanted to. For a second. Just one. And that’s all it takes, Ambrose. One second, and suddenly I’m not sure where I end and where she begins.”
He moves then. Just a breath forward. Not threatening. Not comforting. Just enough to make me feel cornered.
“I know exactly what Branwen is,”
he says quietly. His voice is a blade sheathed in silk.
“I know what she makes of us. What she undoes in us. But if you think you’re the only one she’s ever twisted, then you’re even more self-centered than I thought.”
I flinch, because I am.
But I’m also destroyed.
“I didn’t have a choice,”
I whisper, and it’s the worst kind of truth.
“And it still doesn’t matter. You think Luna will care that I was a puppet? That I didn’t want it? That I told Branwen to stop? She’ll still look at me and see the sin. And she’ll be right.”
Ambrose studies me like he’s deciding whether or not to push. He doesn’t. Which somehow feels worse.
“Then don’t let it be for nothing,”
he says finally.
“Don’t drown in shame and call it penance.”
I laugh, low and empty.
“I am shame,”
I say.
“I’m Lust. Shame is the currency I deal in.”
And even as I say it, I know what’s happening. This is what Branwen wanted. For me to turn on myself. To rot from the inside out. To break before Luna ever gets the chance to look me in the eye again.
But she doesn’t get that.
Not yet.
I drag myself to my feet, every joint screaming. Ambrose watches me but says nothing. We’re past comfort. Past forgiveness.
But maybe not past survival.
And if Luna ever does find me—
If she calls me back—
I want to be something other than this.
Something more than Branwen’s last laugh.