Page 24 of The Sin Binders Ascent

I find her in the garden. She’s sitting on the low stone wall that rings the fountain, shoulders hunched, sleeves tugged down past her palms like she’s trying to disappear inside the fabric. She’s biting her nail, gaze fixed somewhere between the stars and the ruined flowerbed. Silas swan-dove into last week while pretending to be Cupid.

The moon lies on her like devotion, silver caught in the hollow of her throat, the sweep of her cheek, those fierce, furious eyes that have always seen more than they’re meant to.

Luna.

My first sin. My last salvation.

I cross the stone path she asked me to build summers ago, warm weather coaxing tiny white blossoms through every crack. Flowers she enchanted to grow with wild abandon. Wild like her. Untamable. Beautiful. Dangerous.

She doesn’t look up when I sit beside her. Her fingers twist the fabric at her wrist. I wait. I’ve waited through centuries. I can wait for this.

“I didn’t know there was an eighth,” she says finally, voice rough at the edges.

The breeze lifts a curl from her shoulder. I want to tuck it back, but I don’t.

“There was,” I say. “Thereis.”

She turns to me then. There’s no softness in her stare. Just betrayal in the shape of silence.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

My breath moves slowly, steadily. Always steady.

“Because we made a decision long before you were part of us. Before we wereus.” I lean forward, bracing my forearms on my knees, watching the wind bend the tall grass just beyond the stone wall. “Blackwell didn’t just create seven Sins. He created eight. But Desire… Desire wasn’t just a mistake. He was a rupture.”

She says nothing, but I feel her bracing.

“He made usneed.Not want.Need.And not just him, we began to needeverything.Power, pleasure, pain. We were no longer holding balance, we wereconsumed.”

Luna swallows hard. Her knuckles are white.

“We tried to contain it. Tried to containhim.But Theo doesn’t take. Hestrips.He found what we buried, and when we looked in his eyes, we saw every ugly thing we ever wanted to pretend didn’t exist.”

Her breath shudders out. “And so you erased him.”

“No,” I murmur. “We buried him. There’s a difference.”

She turns to me, finally. Fully. “And now I’m supposed to bond with him like I did with you? Like he belongs at my table, in my home,”

“In your heart,” I finish softly.

Her jaw tightens. Her anger isn’t loud. It never is. It’s cold. Methodical. She unthreads her fury like silk from bone, and gods, it terrifies me more than any rage.

“I love you,” she says. “All of you. I chose this. I built a life with you. And now I find out there’s a man you left out because he made you look too close at yourselves?”

I nod once. No lies. Not now.

“Yes.”

She stands, breath ragged, walking two steps toward the overgrown wisteria. The night makes a temple of her silhouette.

“Did he ever hurt you?” she asks, still not facing me.

“Not with fists,” I answer. “But withwant.He made us ache. For things we weren’t supposed to. And when the ache got too loud… we chose silence.”

She exhales slowly, head bowed. I rise, move to her side, and let my fingers brush the inside of her wrist. She doesn’t pull away.

“We were wrong not to tell you. But it wasn’t because we didn’t trust you.” My voice softens as I shift to meet her gaze. “It’s because we feared what you’d do with the truth.”