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But then she took another.
And another.
She said it was for balance. Said one Sin couldn’t anchor her alone, not when the world around us was shifting, hungry, divine.
It was when she took Riven that the cracks started to show. He hated her. Fought her from the moment she touched him. But the bond warped even his fury, turned it into a kind of toxic loyalty. He’d spit venom one minute and defend her the next, snarling at anyone who questioned her decisions.
Then she turned that manipulation on Silas, used his craving for chaos, his need to belong. Twisted it into something obedient. Reckless. Obsessive.
She made us compete for her attention. Fed on the fractures. Let jealousy fester, let doubt rot through whatever connection we had left.
The more of us she bound, the more she changed. Her eyes stopped looking at us. They looked through us. Every bond made her stronger and more detached. Less woman, more weapon. She didn’t want unity. She wanted dominion. Absolute.
And then she went after Ambrose.
He refused.
Even as she whispered to him, even when she bled for him, begged him to see her, to need her, he denied her. Said it wasn’t the way. Said no binder should hold that much. That to be chosen must be a choice freely made.
And when he said no… she snapped.
She tried to force it anyway. But the bond didn’t take. It couldn’t. Because you can’t bind someone who doesn’t want you.
That was the first time I saw fear in her eyes. Not because Ambrose rejected her, but because it meant something. It meant she could be denied. That there were limits to her power.
So she did the only thing she knew how to do. She destroyed him. Bit by bit. Piece by piece.
Until we turned on her. Not all at once. But enough. Enough to fracture what she thought was unbreakable.
And now she’s back.
Not for reconciliation.
Not for redemption.
She’s back for reclamation.
Of what she thinks is still hers.
And I wonder, if Luna’s the opposite of Branwen… or just another variation of the same pattern, hiding behind different eyes.
The worst of it wasn’t how she twisted Riven’s rage into loyalty. It wasn’t how she softened Silas’s chaos just enough to slide her fingers around his throat and call it devotion.
It was Caspian.
She obsessed over him.
From the beginning, Branwen wanted his Lust, not just as a power, but as a weapon. She used it like a scalpel. Precise. Devastating. She seduced him with reverence, with the promise of pleasure so consuming it could unmake everything he hated about himself. And Caspian, Caspian, who had always been the most careful of us when it came to bindings, let her in.
He bound to her.
He swore it was a mistake. That he was drunk on her pull, not in love. That he didn’t choose her, not really. But the bond doesn’t care about choice the way we do. It cares about openness, about submission, about that one moment when your defenses drop and the magic rushes in.
And Branwen took everything in that moment.
She used their bond like a leash, and not just on him.
Sex with Caspian wasn’t just carnal. It was ritual. It fed her, amplified her. Every time she touched him, it sent ripplesthrough the rest of us, small shocks, magnetic. Lust feeding Lust. It disoriented us. Distorted us. Until we couldn’t tell if we hated her or wanted her or both.