Elias
Being stuck in the body of a twenty-five-year-old has its challenges. Existential dread, immortal ennui, having to explain TikTok to Orin. But it also has its perks.
Namely: I’m hot.
I catch my reflection in the cracked mirror above the bathroom sink. The lighting’s terrible, flickering like the gods are playing with the wiring again, but it still hits just right over my chest. I flex—because of course I do—and tilt my chin, taking in the sharp line of my jaw, the ink sprawling across my torso in jagged black script, runes from a language no one living speaks. Six abs. Well defined. Centerfold worthy. Maybe eight, depending on the light and how I stand.
Gods, I’m beautiful. It's honestly unfair.
I turn a little, studying the angle.
“Still got it,”
I mutter to myself, running a hand through my silver hair. It falls just right. Of course it does.
The door creaks open without a knock, because boundaries died a long time ago in this house, and Silas pokes his head in. His green eyes gleam with chaotic delight the moment he sees me.
“Oh,”
he says, grinning wide.
“Are we flexing now? Is this a scheduled ego boost or a spontaneous stroke of narcissism?”
I don’t even flinch.
“Daily check-in. It’s self-care, Silas. Look it up.”
He steps in, kicks the door closed with his heel, and strips his shirt off in one smooth motion. His tattoos are less runic and more chaotic—dripping ink, curling vines, a constellation that’s definitely not from this world inked over his shoulder. He stands next to me in front of the mirror like it’s perfectly normal. Like we’re not two immortal disasters having a pose-off while the house slowly rebuilds around us.
“We’re gorgeous,”
he says with deep conviction, flexing both arms.
“We should be illegal. Actually—wait. I think we were, in three kingdoms and a province.”
I scoff.
“Only because you started that cult.”
“Hey, they started it,”
he says, grinning like he wasn’t absolutely the reason half of them shaved their heads and tattooed his name on their thighs.
“I just showed up.”
He elbows me lightly.
“You know Luna’s gonna walk in and think we’re insane.”
“She already knows we are.”
“Yeah, but this’ll confirm it.”
We go quiet for a moment. A soft breeze pushes through the cracked window, stirring dust motes in the air. And for all the flexing and joking and shirtless posturing, I catch the shift in his eyes. That flicker of worry neither of us wants to say out loud.
We lost Lucien and Orin. Again.
And we got Ambrose back—but he’s different. Haunted. Cold in a way that even I can’t joke around.
I drop my arms.
“Do you think we’ll get them back?”
I ask, voice low.
Silas doesn’t answer right away. Just meets my eyes in the mirror.
“We have to,”
he says, quietly.
“Luna’s already lost too much.”
The truth hits harder than I expect.
I think about her—curled up on what’s left of the couch, pretending not to feel everything through our bond. Pretending she’s not holding it all together so we don’t fall apart.
And gods, I miss her already. Even when she’s right downstairs.
Silas claps me on the back with a grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Now put your shirt back on before I start writing odes to your nipple symmetry.”
“You’ve already written them,” I mutter.
“Page five is a masterpiece.”
We laugh. It’s not enough to fix anything, but for a second, it’s enough to breathe.
There’s a knock.
Soft. Innocent.
Deadly.
And then her voice—Luna’s voice—threads through the wood like sin itself. “?”
Fuck me sideways.
Panic flares. I whip around the bathroom like it’s a crime scene and the evidence is my missing shirt. I check the counter, the hook, under the damn sink. Nowhere. The traitorous bastard has vanished like it knew Luna was coming.
“I’ve got this,”
Silas says heroically, like we’re storming a battlefield instead of answering a door half-naked.
And he does. He opens it. Shirtless. Smirking. Flexing.
Asshole.
I’m still standing in front of the mirror, shirtless myself, but now with the added disadvantage of looking like I’ve been caught mid-strut in a Calvin Klein ad. So I do the only logical thing left.
I flex too.
Not casual-flex. No, no. I commit. Biceps out. Abs tight. Jawline locked. If I’m going down, I’m going down as a fucking Greek statue.
And then she steps inside.
Slow, like she’s walking into a trap she already owns. Her head tilts, that wicked little smirk blooming in the corner of her mouth. She doesn’t speak, not right away. Just looks at us—between us—like she’s not sure whether to laugh or light us both on fire.
“You two…”
she finally says, eyes narrowed.
“are absolute idiots.”
She’s not wrong.
Silas grins wider.
“I call this one ‘Sunset Over Sinful Peaks.’”
He flexes again—harder. Abs of vengeance.
“Oh yeah?”
I counter, shifting slightly to give her my side angle.
“This one’s ‘Tragic Orphan With a Six Pack.’"
Luna snorts.
It’s adorable. And unfair. And it hits me right in the solar plexus.
Because she’s not just beautiful. She’s the kind of dangerous that sneaks up on you. Soft voice, sharp mind, magic curled under her skin like sleeping snakes—and when she looks at me, really looks, like she’s doing now… gods, it unmoors something in me.
“I came to see if either of you were hungry,”
she says, voice carefully neutral.
“but clearly, you’re full. Of yourselves.”
Silas gasps, wounded.
“Luna. That was savage. I'm almost proud.”
I should say something. Something clever. Instead, I blurt.
“You look good.”
Silence.
She blinks at me. Her lips twitch.
“I haven’t even brushed my hair.”
“I know,”
I say, before my brain catches up.
“I mean—not like I’m stalking you, or watching you sleep, or—okay. I’ll just. Shut up.”
Silas makes a noise like a dying dolphin.
Luna steps closer.
“You watch me sleep?”
Fuck.
Abort mission.
“I watch everyone sleep,”
I say too quickly.
“It’s a… surveillance tactic. Military-grade. Very official.”
“Mm-hmm,”
she hums. But there’s that glint in her eye now. Like she knows. Like she always knows.
“Well, soldier, try not to pull anything while you’re flexing for surveillance.”
Then she walks away.
And I’m left staring at the door, heart pounding, face warm, still shirtless, still flexing.
Silas pats my shoulder solemnly.
“Next time, lead with the abs. Not the confession.”
Shit.
“How bad was it?”
I ask without looking at him, still patting down every surface like I’m defusing a bomb with my bare hands. My shirt has clearly sprouted legs and joined the resistance. Coward.
Silas doesn't even pretend to lie.
“Well… you did insinuate stalker vibes.”
I groan.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did.”
He tosses something at me. My shirt. Traitor.
“Fuck.”
I yank it on. Backward. Realize it. Rip it off. Flip it. Try again. My arms don’t work.
“I panicked.”
“No, you flirted,”
Silas says, leaning against the doorframe with the kind of insufferable ease that only a chaos demon and borderline sex god could pull off.
“You just do it like a cursed spreadsheet with trauma.”
“She messes with my brain,” I mutter.
“That’s the point,”
he says, eyes narrowed, smile lazy.
“You want her to.”
He’s not wrong.
She short-circuits everything I know about myself. About how I’m supposed to be. With Luna, I’m either entirely composed or completely wrecked—no in between. And when she smiled at me just now, like I wasn’t embarrassing myself by flexing harder than Silas, it cracked something open. Something soft and unbearable.
“Do we follow her?”
I ask, adjusting the hem of my shirt like it’s going to give me answers.
“We should, right? I mean—not stalker-style. But, like…casually.”
“Yes,”
Silas says. No hesitation. No irony.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
“You sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,”
he says, clapping me on the shoulder.
“Now come on, Captain Stalker. Let’s go casually loiter around the hallway like we have zero ulterior motives.”
We move.
And I hate how fast I do.
The house is still in pieces. Furniture wrecked. Walls cracked. The echo of too many disasters still vibrating in the bones of it. But she’s somewhere out there—softening the edges just by existing. Maybe she’s in the library. Maybe the hallway. Maybe talking to Riven and pretending she’s not glaring at Ambrose when he isn’t looking.
Whatever it is, I need to see her.
Need her to know I’m still here. That I’m not afraid of loving her out loud—even if I’m an idiot about it.
The kitchen’s the only place in the house that doesn’t look like it lost a war. It smells like bread and something sweet, like someone tried to make the place livable again. Probably her.
We find her standing at the counter—barefoot, hair wild, stealing a bite from a sandwich that looks entirely too gourmet for someone who claimed to b.
“just throwing something together.”
She glances up. And she smiles.
Not the kind that’s meant for everyone. It’s the soft one. The one that hits like a sucker punch to the ribs because it’s quiet and meant and real.
And my dumbass heart skips.
“Thought you two were going to sneak off and start a shirtless flex cult,”
she says, licking a smear of something pink from her thumb, utterly oblivious to how my blood pressure spikes.
Silas moves first, slipping past me to open the fridge.
“We were. But then we smelled food. And our love for carbs outweighs our narcissism.”
“Debatable,”
I mutter, grabbing a slice of bread and throwing it down next to hers.
“He flexed so hard I thought he was gonna rupture a pec.”
She bites back a laugh and turns to me.
“You could’ve just asked for a sandwich. I would’ve made you one.”
“We’re ancient, remember?”
I say, smirking.
“Thousands of years old. Practically fossils. We can build temples, start wars, manipulate dimensions—but god forbid we make a decent sandwich.”
“Women power,”
Silas chimes in, shoving a slice of cheese into his mouth.
“And all that shit.”
She rolls her eyes, but the smile lingers.
And it hits me—right there in that fucking kitchen with the busted drawer and broken clock still blinking 3:33. This is what I want. Her, barefoot, smiling like she doesn’t have the world on her shoulders. Silas being an idiot. Me trying not to say something stupid and still saying something stupid.
She leans on the counter, her sandwich forgotten, watching us like we’re some chaotic exhibit.
“You guys are the weirdest gods I’ve ever met.”
I raise a brow.
“You’ve met other gods?”
She shrugs.
“You’re still the weirdest.”
And I want to kiss her for that. For still teasing us after everything. For still making this ruined house feel like home.
Silas leans closer, eyes glinting.
“So… does the weirdest god get the rest of your sandwich or—”
She smacks his hand away before he can snatch it.
“Make your own, thief.”
I laugh. And it feels good.
Normal.
But I can still feel the ache under it. The pull of what we lost. Who’s still missing. What we might still have to give up.
Still, for now—for this stupid, sacred moment—we’re just us.
She asks the question like it costs her something.
Like she’s afraid we’ll say no.
Like she hasn’t already turned herself inside out for us a hundred times over.
“Can you train me?”
she asks, quiet but certain, sandwich forgotten, fingers resting lightly on the counter.
“With your abilities. With what’s inside me.”
Silas, mid-bite, pauses dramatically—because of course he does—and raises an eyebrow.
“You want a tutorial on Sloth? Gonna teach you how to nap like a professional.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s already smiling, and gods help me I want to memorize every expression she makes like it’s a language I’ll never get to fully speak.
I glance at her, more serious than I want to be.
“You already channel wrath. That’s Riven’s specialty. But you want sloth and envy too?”
“I want to be able to protect you,”
she says, simply. And that’s what guts me. Not her need. Not her desperation. Her love.
Because that’s what it is. This girl—this force—keeps trying to hold together a war she didn’t start, with gods who don’t deserve her, and power that doesn’t play fair.
Silas leans back against the counter, chewing thoughtfully.
“Envy’s gonna be a bitch. Not ‘cause I don’t want you to have it—just ‘cause, you know, it’s my whole thing. It doesn’t like to share.”
“Neither do you,” I mutter.
“Exactly.”
He winks at her, the ass.
Luna’s eyes flick to mine.
“But you’ll help me?”
I run a hand through my hair.
“Sloth isn’t just naps and shrugging. It’s a different kind of power. Slow, quiet, consuming. It’ll whisper to you that you’ve done enough, that nothing matters. That it’s easier to stop trying.”
Her brow furrows.
“And that helps me… how?”
I step closer, just enough to watch the subtle shift in her breath, the way her body reacts before she can stop it.
“Because if you can master that,”
I say, low.
“you can control the lull. You can shut down someone’s will to fight. You can quiet the hunger, the noise, the fear. You’ll make gods kneel by making them forget why they ever stood.”
She swallows, hard.
“So... when do we start?”
I reach for her hand—because I need to touch her, need to feel that bond pulse between us—and lift it to my lips, brushing her knuckles like a sinner giving thanks at an altar.
“Right now.”
Silas groans dramatically.
“Ugh, you’re both disgusting.”
“You’re shirtless,”
Luna replies without looking at him.
He shrugs.
“Exactly. You’re welcome.”
I smirk and lead her toward the door, the weight of what she’s asking not lost on me. Teaching her to wield sloth means showing her the parts of me I don’t talk about. The darkness that numbs. The stillness that drowns.
But I’ll do it. Because she asked.
And because I’d rather burn out every last shard of what I am than see her fight this war unarmed.
We don’t walk so much as drift.
The courtyard is still rubble in places—chunks of broken stone, scorch marks from things none of us talk about anymore, the ghosts of the last war not quite dead—but she walks through it like she’s already remaking it. Like she doesn’t notice how the ground hums under her feet when I’m this close.
“You already know what I can do,”
I say, hands shoved into my pockets like I’m not nervous. Like her looking at me doesn’t short-circuit something behind my ribs.
“Sloth’s not about sleep. It’s not about stillness. It’s about… distortion. Disengagement. I don't stop time, Luna. I make it yield.”
Her eyes flick up to mine, sharp, curious. Always too curious.
“And that’s what I’m supposed to do?”
“You already are.”
I glance at her, then away.
“When you pulled me out of the Hollow, time cracked. You slowed it down without even knowing you’d done it. I felt it. Everyone did. You dragged us into a space where nothing could touch you, not even the rules.”
She’s quiet for a beat too long. I hate that I can’t read her like I used to. The bond complicates everything—it heightens, amplifies, echoes—but it also shields. What she doesn’t want me to feel, she tucks away behind soft, golden silence.
“Show me,”
she says finally.
“Teach me how to pull it on purpose.”
Gods. She makes it sound so simple.
“You’ll hate it,”
I tell her.
“Everyone does.”
She tilts her head.
“Even you?”
Especially me.
I don’t say it aloud.
Instead, I reach for her wrist, fingers wrapping gently around that delicate spot where pulse lives.
“Time’s a liar,”
I say.
“It whispers comfort when it wants you to rot. Sloth weaponizes that. It makes you think you’re safe. That you don’t need to move. And then—”
I exhale, slow, willing the hum of that latent power between us to spar.
“—you’re already too late.”
Her breath stutters as it hits her. My power flickers into her like ink in water. Everything slows—not stops, not quite—but drags. The sound of wind in the courtyard becomes syrup-thick. Her hair lifts as though underwater. She gasps, lips parting, and I know she feels it. Me inside her.
The bond crackles.
“Don’t fight it,”
I say, voice rougher now.
“Let it pull. Let it drown.”
She closes her eyes, lashes trembling, and her shoulders slacken. I watch the moment she tips into it fully—her pulse syncing to mine, her mind expanding to wrap around the edges of what I’ve always known.
Time is a construct.
Luna is not.
When she opens her eyes again, they’re shining with something new. Understanding. Hunger. Power.
And gods help me, I want to kiss her so badly it hurts.
But I don’t.
Because I need her to master this first.
“You’ll feel tired after,”
I warn, pulling back from her slowly, like peeling off a second skin.
“The first time always leaves a mark.”
She smiles—barely—but it’s there. That wicked, secret thing she only gives to me when she’s proud.
“So that’s what you feel like in my head?”
I blink, caught off guard.
“Excuse me?”
“I thought it’d be colder,”
she says, turning from me like she didn’t just brand me alive with that sentence.
“But it’s… warm. Slow. Addictive.”
She walks ahead of me, already stronger, already different.
And I’m the one stuck standing still—because she just described me like a fucking drug.
Silas calls from the hallway something about sandwiches or shirtless combat or whatever chaos he’s invented this time.
But I stay still a moment longer, letting her pull me with her even when she doesn’t mean to.
Even gods don’t move unless she wants them to.
I feel it—before she says a word. That tug on the bond.
It’s not a call. Not a plea. It’s curiosity, wrapped in golden thread and laced with something dangerously close to awe. I follow it instinctively, barefoot across broken stone and half-rebuilt marble, like a moth to the one flame that doesn’t burn me—just scorches everything else.
She’s in the courtyard still, barefoot too, dress wrinkled from hours of movement, a smear of dust down her thigh that she hasn’t noticed. The power in her shimmers just under the surface, static and golden and too damn new. Her back is to me, but I know she knows I’m here.
“I felt something,”
she says without turning.
“Just now. Like something cracked open.”
I step closer, slow enough not to spook her, but close enough that the bond pulls taut between us again—like gravity but more intentional.
“It was me,”
I say.
“Or more accurately… it was you catching what spilled out of me.”
She turns then, brows drawn.
“That’s not how you said it worked.”
I almost smile.
“Because you’re thinking about it like a siphon. Like you’re pulling from us. But that’s not what the bond is, Luna. Not really.”
Her eyes narrow, focused. The way she looks at me sometimes—like I’m a puzzle she wants to be complicated.
I exhale, rolling my neck before I keep going.
“You’re not a thief. You’re a vessel. A cage. A storm cellar.”
“That doesn’t sound flattering.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.”
I step in front of her now, hands sliding into my pockets because if I touch her while I say this, I won’t finish it.
“You’re not supposed to take our powers. You’re meant to contain them. When we’re unbalanced. When it spills.”
I glance down at my hands. They’re steady now. Too steady.
“Sloth isn’t dormant. It’s corrosive. You think it just slows me down? Try living inside a loop of time where every second drags like a blade. Try wanting to stop the world so badly you accidentally do.”
She flinches. Not from fear. From understanding.
“And that’s what I’m catching?”
“Not all of it. Not unless you want it. But the excess? The overflow?”
I nod, stepping closer, just enough that she has to tilt her head to keep my gaze.
“It would unravel reality if it had nowhere to go. But you—”
I pause.
“You take it. Hold it. Ground it.”
She swallows, throat working around the weight of what I’m saying. Her voice is soft.
“So I’m a prison.”
“No.”
I say it too quickly. Too forcefully. I drop my gaze.
“You’re a sanctuary.”
The words come before I can stop them. Honest. Unguarded.
Fuck.
Luna steps closer. Her hand grazes my chest, right over the ink that marks my ribs. The bond sings between us now—soft, steady, anchored.
“I don’t want to be your sanctuary if it means watching you drown,”
she says.
“I want to swim with you.”
I choke on a laugh that’s half a groan.
“Luna, gods, don’t say things like that.”
“Why?”
Her hand drifts lower, fingers tracing the line of ink that disappears under my shirt.
“Because you’ll start thinking I actually like you?”
“No.”
I meet her gaze again.
“Because I’ll believe you.”
We stay like that—too close, the air between us humming with all the things we haven’t said yet—until a door slams in the distance and Silas yells something about pants being optional during training.
I don’t move.
Neither does she.
Eventually, she leans in and presses her forehead to mine.
“So if I am a sanctuary,”
she whispers.
“what happens if I break?”
And I don’t have an answer.
Because that’s what keeps me up at night too.
Her fingers twitch, just slightly, as I speak—but it’s enough to make my skin crawl in response. That’s the thing with us, with this bond. It doesn’t just tie us together. It syncs us. One pulse, one twitch, one stuttered breath—and we feel it echo like aftershocks in a system already fractured.
The edges of the broken stone still shimmer faintly with whatever old magic once tried to hold us in. Not us specifically. But Sins like us. Versions of us, too dangerous to be let loose.
And now she stands in the middle of it.
A girl.
A goddess.
A vessel holding all of us—and leaking.
“I need you to listen,”
I say, quieter now. No jokes. No grin. Just me, stripped down to the marrow of what I am.
“This place—it didn’t just hold magic. It contained us. The pillar, the stone, the fucking air—it was all designed to suppress what we are. Because without suppression… we leak.”
She frowns, stepping closer.
“You keep saying that. Like I’m a sponge.”
“You’re not. You’re a dam.”
I meet her gaze, willing her to feel the gravity in my words.
“And when a dam cracks, it doesn’t just spill. It devours.”
She exhales through her nose.
“So you think I’m cracked?”
“I know you are.”
There’s no cruelty in it. No accusation. Just fact.
“Wrath slipped out of you three nights ago. Burned a girl’s dress off just because she looked at me.”
“That wasn’t wrath,”
she mutters.
“That was a bad attitude.”
I arch a brow.
“You set her hem on fire.”
Her lips twitch, almost a smile.
“She got too close.”
Gods. She’s adorable when she’s feral.
I shake it off.
“You leaked envy the week before that. Silas couldn’t move for two hours. Said he felt like someone had sucked all the good things out of him. Even his abs.”
“Blasphemy.”
“Exactly. But you see what I mean?”
I step into her space now, until there’s barely a breath between us.
“You’re not just bonded to us, Luna. You’re housing us. And housing a Sin means sometimes… the walls bleed.”
She tilts her chin, stubborn and curious and far too brave.
“What happened the last time you weren’t housed?”
I let the smile fade. I let her see the truth in my eyes.
“I walked through a city.”
Silence stretches long between us. Even the wind holds its breath.
“I didn’t try to hurt anyone. Wasn’t angry. Wasn’t chasing anything. I was just there. But I’m not human. I’m Sin. I corrupt. That’s my nature. To make people choose wrong when they think they’re choosing right. To make stillness into apathy. Passion into obsession. Love into possession. And that city… it broke.”
She sways slightly on her feet, processing.
“I watched fathers leave their families,”
I murmur.
“Watched lovers cheat on each other just to feel something. Watched a mother drown her child because her thoughts slowed just enough for the darkness to catch her.”
“…”
“It was a Tuesday,”
I add, voice barely above a whisper.
“The sun was out. There was music playing in a square. And by nightfall, that city was ash and memory.”
She steps closer, her fingers brushing my wrist.
“That’s not who you are.”
“That’s exactly who I am.”
“But you chose not to hurt them.”
“Did I?”
I meet her gaze.
“Or did I just not stop it? There’s a difference.”
She doesn't flinch. Doesn’t pull away. Instead, she lifts my hand and places it over her chest.
“You’re here now. You are choosing. And maybe I don’t know how to contain all of it yet… but I’ll learn. I’ll train. I’ll build stronger walls if I have to.”
I exhale slowly, the bond pulling taut between us, vibrating with something I don’t have words for.
“You shouldn’t want to hold this,”
I whisper.
She grins.
“Then stop making it so tempting.”
Gods.
I’m so fucking screwed.
Lucien
The house breathes. It isn’t alive, not in the way humans are, not in the way Luna is. But it breathes—deep and slow, like a predator that doesn’t need to chase its prey to catch it.
Every stone in this place has been carved with intention, layered with spells so old they pulse under my skin. The corridors are too narrow and too wide at the same time. Light filters through the stained glass windows in fractured, jewel-toned shards that seem to move when you’re not looking. The furniture is grand—gilded, baroque, cruelly ornate. Designed to impress, and to intimidate.
And yet, it’s not the house I loathe.
It’s her.
Branwen sits at the head of a long obsidian table, her legs crossed, one hand curled loosely around a wine glass that she hasn’t touched. She doesn’t need to drink. The illusion is enough. Her dress is dark red silk that clings to her like blood. Her hair, ink-black and braided with gold threads, coils over one shoulder. She is breathtaking, if you don’t know what she is. If you haven’t watched her twist a man’s desires into nooses and hang him with them.
And I know.
I know.
Still, I bow.
Because I’m bound.
Her smile sharpens when I straighten. “Lucien,”
she purrs, and her voice slides into my ears like poison wrapped in velvet.
“You’ve been restless.”
“I’m always restless,”
I reply, tone clipped.
“You made sure of that.”
She tilts her head, feigning innocence.
“Now, now. I gave you everything. Power. Purpose. A place at my side. And in return, you gave me…”
Her smile stretches wider, crueler.
“Everything else.”
I want to tear her apart.
But I can’t.
The bond—hers, not Luna’s—is a cage made of my own bones. It doesn’t whisper; it commands. It doesn’t seduce; it owns. I feel it in my spine, in the marrow, in the breath I have to count out slow to avoid falling too far into her gravity.
“I didn’t come here to play word games.”
“No,”
she says, standing, her movements too fluid, too serpentine.
“You came here because I let you. You breathe because I allow it. And you dream of her”—she steps closer, her finger dragging along the edge of the table—“because I haven’t ripped her from your thoughts. Yet.”
I flinch. Not visibly. Not in a way most would catch.
“I see what she does to you,”
Branwen whispers, circling me now. Her voice curls around my neck.
“That hesitation in your orders. That pulse that skips when her name is spoken. You think she’s different. Better. Yours.”
“She’s not mine,”
I grind out.
“No,”
Branwen agrees softly, leaning in so her breath ghosts my jaw.
“She’s everyone’s. That’s her magic, Lucien. Her curse. The Sin Binder.”
She grins, and it’s too white. Too hungry.
“And that makes her mine.”
My fists clench at my sides. I don’t respond. I can’t afford to.
The air thickens with her power. Dominion, twisted and turned back on me. My own gift mirrored in mockery. The irony isn’t lost.
Branwen stops in front of me, eyes gleaming with something darker than desire.
“I could tell you to kill her,”
she muses.
“Right now. And you would try.”
My jaw locks.
“But I won’t. Not yet. Because you hate me. And that hate is useful. That hate binds you more than love ever could.”
She steps back, turning away like I’m already dismissed.
“You’ll go to her soon,”
she says.
“Tell her some story. Pretend you’re still on her side. And maybe part of you even believes it. That’s the delicious part, isn’t it?”
She glances over her shoulder, and I know—I know—that whatever comes next, I’ll have to play along.
Until I can tear the bond out of me piece by piece.
The bond jerks tight—like a leash snapped around my ribs—and I stumble forward a step before I catch myself.
She doesn’t look back.
Branwen walks ahead of me, barefoot on the polished stone, like she owns every shadow. Like the world bends to her weight. Her voice drips like poisoned honey, smooth and slow and just a little too pleased with itself.
“You hate this,”
she says without turning.
“Being dragged behind me like some broken beast.”
I bare my teeth.
“You’re not wrong.”
That earns me a soft laugh.
“Oh, Lucien. I know everything that makes you ache.”
She finally pauses, fingers brushing the wall beside her, and the stone shivers beneath her touch like it’s alive.
“Including her.”
I want to lunge. I want to sink my hand into her spine and rip out whatever rotten root keeps her standing.
Instead, I hold myself still. Because that’s all I have left. Stillness. Calculation. And the last frayed threads of my will.
She spins on her heel, eyes glittering.
“You’re wondering why I’m still here.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“Ah,”
she breathes, stepping close again. Too close.
“But I am.”
Her palm presses to my chest—not to soothe. To brand.
“I didn’t die. I can’t die.”
“You should’ve,” I snarl.
She only smiles wider.
“Because of this.”
She turns, sweeping her arm out to the blackened archway behind her.
It’s not just a room. It’s a sanctum. A vault carved into the marrow of this cursed place. And at the center of it—rising from cracked obsidian—is a pillar. The same shape as the one in our world, but wrong. Twisted. The runes carved into its base pulse with sluggish crimson light, like a dying heartbeat that never actually stops.
“The original,”
Branwen whispers, reverent now.
“The first tether. The one that holds everything together. Your world. Mine. The Hollow. The Veil. The Binder.”
She lifts her chin. “Me.”
I step forward, and the bond tightens again, yanking like a collar choking me into stillness.
She doesn’t miss it.
“You feel it, don’t you?”
Her voice lowers, intimate now.
“This pillar contains you. All of you. The sins you were. The gods you once were. It seals you into your domains. Into your limits. As long as it stands, I remain alive.”
My voice scrapes out of me.
“Then I’ll tear it down.”
Branwen’s laugh is a melody of madness.
“Oh, Lucien,”
she says, leaning in until her lips nearly brush my jaw.
“You can’t. No one can. It was made from me. My essence. My power. My blood is in its stone. I am the pillar. I am the place. And you are mine.”
The bond coils. My body reacts before my mind can stop it. One knee to the floor, palm braced, jaw locked against the instinct to obey her.
She kneels with me, amusement gleaming like oil in her eyes.
“You’ll go back to them soon,”
she whispers.
“You’ll smile. You’ll lie. You’ll lead. But you’ll still be mine. And you’ll remember”—her hand presses to my throat, not choking, just claiming—“you’ll remember every second that you didn’t stop me.”
Then she’s gone.
The bond releases. My body trembles, every muscle still screaming to move, to fight, to destroy.
I don’t stand right away. I stare at the pillar. At the slow, endless pulse beneath the stone. And I realize something colder than hate. She didn’t make that thing just to bind us. She made it to outlast us.
I haven’t seen Caspian since we got here.
Not since Branwen ripped the map out of our hands, pulled us across planes, and spat us out inside her corrupted little kingdom of rot and whispers. Not since Orin and I let ourselves be dragged into this place like knives sheathed in bone, all for a gamble we haven’t seen a return on.
Ambrose is gone—hopefully gone. She said she let him go, but Branwen’s lips are carved out of lies, and I wouldn’t put it past her to keep him close just to gut me with it later.
But Caspian—
He steps out of the far hall, slow and deliberate, like each footfall has to remember how to land. For a heartbeat I think it isn’t him. The posture’s wrong. The confidence is gutted. Shoulders bowed, skin too pale, like something crawled under it and hollowed him out from the inside. His eyes—those pretty fucking eyes that used to flirt with everyone just to watch them squirm—are flat. Like he’s still not sure if what he’s seeing is real.
He looks like shit.
My heart does something traitorous in my chest.
He blinks at me, then at Orin behind me, and then his gaze drops to the floor.
“You made it,”
he says, voice rasped like he’s been screaming or swallowing glass.
I close the distance between us in four strides and stop just short of grabbing him.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
My voice cuts the air between us.
His laugh isn’t a laugh. It’s just a sound. Bitter. Fractured.
“Where haven’t I been?”
he answers.
He lifts a hand, and I see it tremble before he hides it behind his back. There’s blood crusted under his fingernails. Faint bruising around his jaw. And worse, a still-glowing thread of magic snaking along his wrist like a leash that never quite releases.
“Branwen?”
I ask, though it’s not a question. It's a diagnosis.
He nods once.
“Did she hurt you?”
I grind out.
He lifts his eyes.
“Not the way you mean.”
That’s worse.
He doesn’t flinch under it, but he doesn’t meet my eyes either. Whatever she did, it wasn’t just physical.
“Where’s Ambrose?” I ask.
He opens his mouth. Closes it.
“Caspian.”
“I don’t know,”
he finally says.
“She made me watch her try. Whatever she wanted from him, he wouldn’t give it. Wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t scream. Wouldn’t even move. Just stared at her like she didn’t matter.”
That sounds like Ambrose.
“And then he was gone.”
“You saw her take him?”
“I saw her fail to break him.”
He looks up, and there’s a flicker of the old Caspian buried beneath the wreckage.
“And you know what that does to her.”
I do. She unravels.
And when she unravels, we bleed.
I step in closer and press a hand to Caspian’s shoulder, grounding him even if it burns me to do it. He’s shaking. Slight, but constant. I can feel it beneath my palm. I don’t say anything about it.
“We’re not staying,”
I tell him.
He nods again.
“Good. Because I don’t think I can.”
I want to tell him he doesn’t have to. That I’ll get him out. That we’ll find Ambrose, tear this place down, bury Branwen in her own bones.
But I can’t promise any of that. Not here.
So instead, I say the one thing I know he’ll understand.
“We’re getting her back.”
His jaw twitches.
“All of her?”
I stare into the distance, where the pillar still pulses like a second heartbeat I can’t outrun.
“All of her,”
I say. Even if it costs us everything.
He smiles. Not the Caspian-smirk we’re used to, the one that undoes buttons and rules in equal measure. No—this one’s quieter. Sad. A weight at the corner of his mouth that doesn’t lift.
“I don’t think you understand what I’ve done,”
he says, voice low, threadbare.
“She’ll never forgive me.”
I do understand.
I’ve spent decades pretending I didn’t.
Caspian is Lust. Desire incarnate. The one Branwen always called her favorite, like that wasn’t a curse in itself. The one she used to get under our skin, between our thoughts, behind our eyes. None of us were safe when she turned her obsession toward him. She’d wind her fingers in his hair, whisper devotions against his throat, then make him kneel before her as punishment. She wanted to break him because he made her feel too much—and that’s the one thing Branwen can’t stand.
And she will use him again. Of course she will.
But this time it doesn’t matter.
Because we have Luna.
And Branwen doesn’t.
I should tell him that. Should reach for the steel inside him and help him find the pieces she didn’t manage to fracture. But I’m not built for comfort. I’m not Orin. I don’t hold things. I order them into place.
Still… I feel something tighten in my chest when I look at him.
He hasn’t met my gaze once since he said her name.
“You think she’ll hate you,”
I say, not a question.
“You think Luna will see what Branwen did to you and think it was your choice.”
His jaw ticks. He doesn’t argue.
“She won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,”
I say flatly.
“Because she’s not Branwen.”
He flinches.
Because we both know Branwen would’ve already buried the knife. Not in his back—no, she prefers the places it hurts more. The ribs. The stomach. Where you can feel it coming out and know exactly what it’s taking with it.
“You survived her,”
I say.
“That’s all Luna will see.”
“And the rest of you?”
he asks, voice rough.
“You all gonna be that generous?”
I stare at him.
“You were taken. We all know what that means here.”
A long silence unfurls between us. The room smells like smoke and lavender and old magic—like Branwen left her breath in the walls and it’s still whispering.
He nods, eventually. But there’s no conviction in it. Just the act of going through the motion. So I don’t push. I don’t need him to believe it yet.
He will. When Luna touches him again. When he sees what it looks like to be wanted without being owned.
“We need to find Orin,”
I say, turning toward the door.
“If Branwen’s started bleeding into the outer paths again, we won’t have long.”
Caspian doesn’t ask how I know that.
He just follows, quiet, still frayed at the edges. But there’s something steadier in his gait now. Like even if he hasn’t stitched himself back together, he knows he’s not alone in the ruin.
I don’t look back.
But I feel him walking behind me.
Alive.
Still Lust.
Still ours.
“I’ll keep her from you,”
Caspian says, and his voice is quiet. Like he doesn’t need me to hear it.
But I do.
And I stop walking.
I don’t turn around. Can’t. Because if I look him in the eyes right now, I might lose the last inch of distance I’ve carved between who I was and who I had to become to survive this place.
He shouldn’t have to do that.
I am the immovable will. The command. The one who breaks others before I bend. And yet—right now—I’m standing here, hands shaking at my sides, more relieved than I have any right to be.
Because I know what he’s offering.
He’s offering himself.
And I don’t think I’d survive it the way he has.
If Branwen touches me—really touches me, not just through the bond or her voice like a dagger slipping under my skin—but claims me the way she’s done to him... I’ll shatter. And it won’t be a clean break. It’ll be every jagged thing I’ve ever buried ripping free from the inside out.
Caspian’s already been through it. Still pale. Still too thin. Still not whole. But he’s standing.
I turn slowly, because I have to. Because pretending I’m unaffected has always been my role in this cursed drama. And when I face him, I ask the only question I don’t already know the answer to.
“Why?”
My voice comes out like gravel.
“Why the fuck would you offer that?”
He doesn’t flinch. He tilts his head slightly, and there’s something ancient in his gaze now. Older than Lust. Older than Daemon. Like he remembers what it meant to love something enough to damn yourself for it.
“You wouldn’t survive it,”
he says simply.
No dramatics. No martyr’s grin. Just truth.
“And you would?”
I snap.
“Because it looks like you’re doing fucking great, Caspian.”
He shrugs, a humorless gesture.
“I don’t need to survive it. I just need to last long enough to give you time.”
The silence between us stretches razor-thin. That kind of devotion, it’s not about heroics. It’s about sacrifice. Willing, deliberate, soul-deep sacrifice. And it’s the only kind that Branwen doesn’t know how to break.
I look away first.
Not out of shame.
Out of respect.
Because I would’ve never done that for anyone.
And he just offered it for me.
“I’m not thanking you,”
I say tightly.
“Gods forbid,”
he mutters, voice dry, eyes suddenly too bright.
“You might pull a muscle.”
I glance up. And for a moment, we’re just two Sins in a house built by the woman who weaponized every weakness we ever tried to bury.
And we’re still standing.
“For the record,”
I say slowly.
“if she ever tries it with you again—I’ll tear this fucking place apart to stop her.”
He doesn’t smile. But he nods once.
We walk toward the hall together, the silence between us no longer weighted, just understood. We still don’t know where Orin is.
But we know this—whatever Branwen is planning, she doesn’t get to choose which one of us burns.
We’ll decide that for ourselves.