Page 125
Story: The Sin Binder's Destiny
But long enough.
And then the air changes. Not visibly. Not with sound. But I feel it, the way you feel a storm break behind your spine before the clouds ever shift. The women sense it too—their postures lengthen, soften, straighten. Their lips still mid-sentence. One woman steps back beneath the eave of a house, brushing damp hair off her brow as though something holy—or terrible—is about to cross the threshold.
And then she does.
Luna steps into the square like she’s always belonged in the center of every reckoning. There’s mud at the hem of her coat, damp curls clinging to the slope of her jaw, and her gaze moves like a blade across the space. She sees them. Every one. She sees the way their mouths curl. The way they don’t look at her, but at us. Like we’re the secret, and she’s the consequence.
She doesn’t stop walking. Every man standing near her carries something suddenly exposed, raw in a way we didn’t want her to see.
And then, of course—Silas.
He stumbles into the square half-soaked, his coat askew, and his grin twisted in something too bright to be sincere. The moment his eyes land on the women, he freezes mid-step like he’s walked into a room he forgot he burned down.
His voice cuts through the heavy quiet, too loud, too casual, fraying at the edges like a man already preparing his apology.
“Oh no. Nope. Absolutely not. I know this vibe. This is ex-village energy. I’m allergic. Someone check my pulse—I think I just flatlined from recognition trauma.”
One of the women laughs softly from beneath a porch awning, her fingers curled around a chipped ceramic mug. “Silas.”
He takes a step backward, then forward, then sideways like he might dodge fate by waltzing. “Hi,” he says with a pitiful sort of charm, offering a lopsided smile. “You look great. You all look great. Is it, uh, hot here? Just me? No? Cool, cool.”
Another woman leans out of a second-story window, her voice far too amused. “You cried when I left.”
“I had a sinus infection,” he fires back, the words too fast, too desperate. “I was very congested. There was weeping involved. From myface holes.”
Lucien mutters something under his breath, likely unprintable. Riven snorts. Luna doesn't smile. But she doesn’t look away either.
Silas, unable to stop himself, beelines toward her like she’s the only port in a storm made of his worst decisions.
“Okay,” he says in a low, urgent voice, reaching for her hand and tugging her toward the well. “New plan. We don’t sleep here. We don’tblinkhere. We find a nice abandoned cathedral full of snakes and curse sigils and death traps—anythingbut thishellmouth of horny regrets. Come on, sugar, we can still make a clean escape.”
Luna stares straight ahead, her fingers slipping from his like she’s already made her decision.
“You know them?” she asks, voice quiet but not soft.
“Know is a strong word,” Silas hedges, already backpedaling. “More like… acquainted. Briefly. Romantically. Biblically. Emotionally. We exchanged fluids and mistakes. But listen, that was a long time ago, and I have grown so much since then. Like emotionally. Spiritually. Sexually.”
She doesn’t blink.
“You’re not helping your case.”
Another voice from behind her cuts in, syrup-smooth and dangerous. “Still wearing the necklace I gave you?”
Silas turns as if struck. “I thought that thing was cursed! I threw it into a river!”
The woman smiles. “I know. I pulled it out.”
Silas groans like a man being dragged to his execution. “Oh, come on. That’s not fair. Youalwaysknew how to make a dramatic entrance. Why are you like this?”
Luna watches all of it. She doesn’t ask for details. She doesn’t demand explanation. She’s already understood the only thing that matters. The men she loves were made from other women’s wreckage. And now she’s standing in the village they built out of it.
The square distorts around her before anyone speaks her name. Not with sound. Not with magic. Just the kind of quiet that exists when something once buried rises and everyone remembers too late that they never dug deep enough.
Maeve doesn’t walk—she arrives. Fluid and effortless, like the village unfurls to make space for her. The women drift back as she moves through them, not out of fear, but reverence. Not one of them looks surprised to see her. As if she’s always belongedhere and simply decided, today, to step out of whatever quiet corner of afterlife she made hers.
Her coat is pale—cream and gold thread, the kind you don’t wear unless you never expect it to stain. Her boots are clean. Her eyes are softer than I remember. That’s what makes this worse.
Lucien sees her and stops breathing. Riven doesn’t blink. Caspian looks like a man watching a ghost he might hug if no one was watching.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125 (Reading here)
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 186
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 191
- Page 192
- Page 193
- Page 194
- Page 195
- Page 196
- Page 197
- Page 198
- Page 199
- Page 200
- Page 201
- Page 202
- Page 203
- Page 204
- Page 205
- Page 206
- Page 207
- Page 208
- Page 209
- Page 210
- Page 211
- Page 212
- Page 213
- Page 214
- Page 215
- Page 216
- Page 217
- Page 218
- Page 219
- Page 220
- Page 221
- Page 222
- Page 223
- Page 224
- Page 225
- Page 226
- Page 227
- Page 228
- Page 229
- Page 230
- Page 231
- Page 232
- Page 233
- Page 234
- Page 235
- Page 236
- Page 237
- Page 238
- Page 239
- Page 240
- Page 241
- Page 242
- Page 243
- Page 244
- Page 245
- Page 246
- Page 247
- Page 248
- Page 249
- Page 250
- Page 251
- Page 252
- Page 253
- Page 254
- Page 255
- Page 256
- Page 257
- Page 258
- Page 259
- Page 260
- Page 261
- Page 262
- Page 263
- Page 264
- Page 265
- Page 266
- Page 267
- Page 268