Page 222
Story: The Sin Binder's Destiny
I follow her into the soft hush of morning, my fingers twitching with restraint, the knife a weight in my pocket and her name a curse behind my teeth. I could ruin her with one word. One command. One whisper of my power.
But I don’t.
I walk beside her instead. Silent. Starving. Irrevocably hers.
She talks like I’ve always been listening. Like we’ve done this before—just the two of us, on a walk through overgrown gardens and shadow-stained stone, like I didn’t try for months to make her hate me. Like I didn’t spend half her life at the Academy acting like her existence was an inconvenience to my power, my position, my goddamn sanity.
And maybe it was. But now I’m the one watching her lips, the curve of them when she smiles as she talks about Mr. Bean—how he climbed into the laundry basket and fell asleep on her uniform skirt, and how Silas claimed the kitten tried to hypnotize him into stealing jerky from the pantry.
“And he did it,” she says, grinning wide, eyes shining. “He actually snuck out in the middle of the night and came back with like eight kinds of jerky and insisted they were ‘gifts for our new overlord.’”
I raise a brow. “Our new overlord?”
She nods solemnly, though the corners of her mouth twitch. “Mr. Bean.”
Of course. Of coursethatridiculous name would belong to the little hellbeast I handed her with the stupidest part of myself still clinging to the gesture like a fool with hope in his teeth.
I should be irritated. Instead, I ask, “And what are his demands, this tyrant feline?”
She bites her lip like she’s trying not to laugh. Fails. “Fresh fish. Clean sheets. Unlimited attention. And the blood of his enemies. Specifically Elias, who tried to dress him in a waistcoat yesterday.”
I snort before I can stop myself. “A waistcoat.”
“Velvet. Maroon. With gold buttons. It had a little tie.” She blinks at me, all mock innocence and dimples I didn’t know she had. “He looked very dashing. Until he vomited on Elias’s pillow.”
I shake my head slowly. “That sounds accurate.”
She hums, clearly pleased she’s amused me. “He’s very discerning.”
“He has taste,” I say, and when she glances at me sideways, her eyes gleaming, I can’t hold back the smallest grin. It’s involuntary, unguarded. A lapse. And yet, I don’t retreat from it.
Instead, I commit.
“So,” I ask, feigning gravity, “what punishment did Silas receive for betraying the pantry?”
She grins, wide and wicked. “Laundry duty. For a month. No powers.”
I let out a low whistle. “Cruel.”
“Justice,” she says with mock-regality, tilting her chin. “Mr. Bean rules with an iron paw.”
She’sglowing. Not with magic. Not with power. Just life. Just the kind of light I thought I’d bled out of the world with every cruel decision I ever made. And she’s choosing to give it to me—here, now, unprompted. It guts me more than it should.
I find myself responding more. Asking the kind of stupid, mundane questions I used to scorn. I ask how the cat sleeps, and she tells me curled between her ankles like a cursed little comma. I ask what else she missed about the Academy, and shestarts talking about the creaky fourth step in the library, and how Elias used to charm it to moan like a ghost just to freak out the first years.
She’slaughing. And I don’t even fucking care if it’s at me or with me or at the world—we’re sharing it. The sound. The moment. The kind of weightless thing I didn’t think I could carry anymore, but here it is, in my hands like something fragile and real.
I should walk away. I should get this out of my system before I fuck it up again. But then she bumps her shoulder into mine—light, careless, like gravity means nothing around her—and I know I won’t. Ican’t. I'm already in too deep.
So I just say, low and stupid and entirely unguarded, “Tell me another one.”
And she does.
Elias
I don’t say anything at first—just press my face harder against the cold glass pane like it’ll somehow decode the impossible image outside. Lucien.Lucien. Walking with Luna like he didn’t spend the last however-many months making her life hell and acting like he’d rather peel off his own skin than be in a ten-foot radius of her heartbeat.
“Is that,” I say slowly, voice low with something close to dread, “a walk?”
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
- 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 (Reading here)
- 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