Page 209

“No,” Orin says, quietly but firmly. “It was always hers.”
His words cut deeper than he knows.
Because Branwen was the first. The original. The one who bound us long before Luna ever touched our names.
And now she’s back. Using the very prison she built for us to take the ones we haven’t bound yet.
Caspian. Ambrose.
Gone. Not because she’s stronger. Because she still has access to the threads we’ve spent years trying to sever.
“She built this place like a goddamn key,” I growl, stepping back up to the pillar. “And now she’s opening doors we never knew existed.”
Orin’s fingers trail down the grooves of the stone, his expression unreadable. “The architecture of entrapment. Created by the one meant to free us.”
I glare at him. “She never meant to free us.”
“No,” he agrees. “She meant to own us.”
The glow fades from his crest. The pillar goes quiet again.
But I know better now.
It’s not asleep.
It’s waiting.
“How do we get to her?” I ask, staring at the pillar like it might finally give me something useful. “How do we get them back?”
He moves closer to the pillar, fingers trailing the faint, ancient grooves of its runes like he’s searching for something that isn’t carved in stone but embedded in memory. He doesn’t look at me when he says, “You know the risks if we approach her.”
“I know,” I reply, voice clipped. “But we can’t leave them with her.”
Orin exhales through his nose, slow and heavy, like I’ve just confirmed the thing he didn’t want to be true. “She won’t kill them.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s exactly the point,” he says, finally turning to face me. “She doesn’t want to kill them. She wants to use them. And if we walk into whatever web she’s spinning right now, we could give her more than just two Sins. We could give her the whole pantheon.”
I clench my jaw, grinding back the instinct to lash out. He’s not wrong. That’s what pisses me off the most.
“She was always ten steps ahead,” Orin adds quietly.
My stomach knots, and I don’t let myself show it.
Instead, I change the subject.
“Have you thought about where Blackwell went?”
Orin’s brow lifts, amused. “Now that’s a sharp pivot.”
“Answer the question.”
He considers me, then turns back to the pillar. “Why?”
“Do you think he had something to do with this?”
“I think it’s curious,” he says, slow and thoughtful, “that the Academy schoolmaster disappears with the students, during the collapse. We assumed they scattered, fled, maybe died.”