Page 33

“Still,” I say, leaning a little closer, my voice sinking behind her ear, “there’s something kind of hot about you standing there like that, lit up by the gods, drowning in possibility. If you asked me to kneel in front of one of these pillars, I’d probably do it just for the view.”

Her breath stutters. It’s small. Barely audible. But I feel it. She turns her head slightly toward me, and I catch the flicker in her eyes—the flush beneath her skin, not from magic this time, but from me.

“You’re not helping,” she says, and her voice isn’t stern. It’s strained. Heated.

I smile, slow and dangerous.

“I’m not trying to help, Luna,” I murmur. “I’m trying to make you forget where we are for one second. Just long enough to remember what you do to me.”

Her gaze drops—just for a breath—to my mouth. And I know I’ve won. Not because she smiles. Not because she leans in. But because she doesn’t pull away.

Still, her voice is calm when it comes, even though it shakes under the surface.

“I’ll remember, Caspian. When we get out of here.”

I don’t tell her what I’m thinking. That if we don’t get out of here, I’ll still remember. Every time I touch the gold on my skin. Every time I think about the altar of her, the way her mouth opens on my name like it costs her something.

But she turns away before I can answer.

And the pillars keep glowing. All of them.

Like they haven’t made up their mind either.

There’s a kind of quiet that doesn’t calm you. It stares. It waits. This room has that kind of silence. We’re surrounded. Not by enemies, not by ghosts—but by a hundred glowing monoliths that hum with a frequency that lodges somewhere behind the teeth and deep in the chest. It’s not just magic. It’s memory. Possibility. Devotion. One wrong move, and I’m sure the walls will close, the pillars will fracture, and we’ll be swallowed by this place for good.

We don’t belong here. Not anymore.

But this room disagrees.

And it’s clear none of us know what the fuck to do next.

Luna stands at the center, shoulders square, gaze sweeping the space like she’s trying to make sense of the impossible. Her magic is pulled taut beneath her skin, visible in the way her fingers twitch, the way her breath comes slow and steady—but not deep. Like even her lungs are trying not to make the wrong sound.

I watch her from the side, and every instinct in me itches to take this burden off her. To choose for her. To shield her from the weight of all of it. But I don’t move. Because I know what she’s thinking.

This isn’t just about escape.

This is a decision with consequence.

And all of us feel it.

“The one on the far end,” Riven says, breaking the quiet first. “It’s older. The stone is weathered. That could mean it was part of the original design, before Branwen rewrote the Hollow around herself.”

“That could also mean it hasn’t been touched in centuries because it’s a literal death trap,” Elias mutters, arms crossed, leaning against one of the darker columns. He raises a brow. “I’m just saying, if this was a video game, that would be the one that kills you instantly for being too curious.”

“You assume Luna’s the player,” Ambrose murmurs from behind him, tone like a scalpel. “But what if she’s the prize?”

Elias winces. “Thanks, that wasn’t unsettling at all. Want to go ahead and say something about sacrifice while you’re at it?”

has wandered halfway down the third row, trailing fingers along the glowing runes of each pillar with a reverence I don’t like. His magic is quiet, but his thoughts aren’t. I can feel them radiating off him in waves—curiosity, hunger, that low hum of envy that never really sleeps.

“You notice how they’re singing?” he says suddenly, too brightly. “Not like voices. But like... resonance. Each one’s tuned slightly different. Which means they’re... individualized.”

“Individualized for who?” Lucien asks, sharp, arms rigid at his sides.

“For her, obviously,” grins, gesturing toward Luna without looking at her. “The universe is obsessed. I can’t even blame it.”

Luna doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond. She’s watching a pillar closest to her—one carved in layered bands of onyx and copper, pulsing slow and deep, like a heartbeat underwater.

“What if they’re not doors,” she says finally, voice low and deliberate, “but reflections? What if each pillar is a future?”

“That would mean the ‘wrong’ one doesn’t kill us,” Orin says from the edge of the chamber, his voice a calm, collected echo, “it simply locks us into something we weren’t meant for.”

“And what would that mean?” I ask. “We end up somewhere we shouldn’t be? In a version of our world that doesn’t know us? Or doesn’t want us?”

“We need a test,” Lucien says, too sharp, too fast. “Something to anchor our understanding. If each pillar represents a path—”

“There’s no way to test it without committing,” Riven interrupts, shaking his head. “These aren’t dials. They’re choices.”

“Which means,” Elias chimes in, “we have to do that thing we’re famously bad at.”

“What?” asks.

“Trust,” Elias says with a sigh. “We have to trust that Luna will know.”.

She doesn't flinch beneath the pressure. She was made for this kind of burden. But that doesn't mean it doesn't cut. I move closer—not because I think I can help, but because I need her to know she doesn’t have to shoulder it alone.

“Do you feel anything?” I ask her quietly. “Pulls? Heat? Anything that makes you lean one way or another?”

“I feel all of them,” she says, and it’s not a complaint—it’s almost reverent. “It’s like… they all want me. Each one feels like it knows me in a different way.”

She turns toward me then, and when our eyes meet, the full weight of it hits me. She’s not overwhelmed. She’s chosen by all of them. The problem is that we only need one.

“So then we take the one that knows you best,” I say. “Not the version of you the Hollow remembers. Not the one Branwen feared. The one that’s ours.”

Her throat works as she swallows. “And if I don’t know who that is anymore?”

I reach out. Let my fingers brush her wrist—barely there. Enough to make her feel it.

“Then we stay,” I say. “Until you do.”

She steps forward again. The pillars hum louder. The air thickens with magic, charged like a sky before a storm. The light stains her skin in bronze and blood-gold, her eyes catching every fractured reflection the columns throw back at her, as if they can’t agree on which version of her is real.

They’re not guiding her.

They’re courting her.

And that’s the problem.

We don’t need a hundred futures, a hundred promises. We need one door. One escape. One way out that doesn’t split us apart or send us spiraling into realms that never knew us. But none of these pillars are labeled, and no one’s brave—or reckless—enough to try one blind.

“We’re running out of space to breathe.”

They all turn toward me. Not sharply. Not like they didn’t already know. But it pulls them back. Grounds them. Because we’ve been pretending we were safe here. We’re not.

“We’ve bought time,” I say, gaze on the edge of the cavern where shadow flickers too long in the corners. “A few days at most. But they’re close.”

Elias groans dramatically, slouching back against a pillar like the weight of reality just flattened him. “Gods, I forgot we were still on the vengeful exes tour.”

perks up like a child told his least favorite aunt is arriving. “Do you think Devena’s with them? Or—wait—Talia. Remember how she used to scream my name during spells?”

“I remember how she screamed when you blew up her garden,” Elias mutters.

“That was her fault,” insists, grinning. “She told me I couldn’t summon envy through orgiastic ritual and I proved her wrong.”

“I can’t believe we ever slept with anyone before Luna,” I mutter, half to myself, half to the damned pillars. “Gods, what the fuck were we thinking?”

“Trauma,” Elias offers.

“Delusion,” Riven says.

“Desperation,” sighs. “Also, I had a concussion for most of the Academy years, so I don’t think mine count.”

But none of us laugh.

Because this isn’t new.

The other Sin Binders—the women who came before—have been circling us since the second Luna lit the Hollow’s magic like a goddamn match. They weren’t saints. Most of them weren’t even people, not really, not by the end. They were power made obsessive, shaped by magic they never should’ve carried, bound to us because we were too young, too stupid, too addicted to the wrong kind of pain.

We didn’t choose them. Not like we chose Luna. And now they’re hunting her.

We’ve seen the shadows moving on the edges of whatever realm Branwen left behind. Heard the laughter that doesn’t belong to any of us. The way this place warps when Luna gets too close to something real, something not born from the Hollow’s design. The other binders don’t want her escaping. They want her claimed. Or gone.

“It's not about power anymore,” I say. “They want her removed.”

Lucien nods once. Sharp. Certain. “They see her as the end of them.”

“She is the end of them,” Riven says.

Luna turns then, gaze sweeping all of us—anchoring on me last, like she knows the question I’m about to ask and hates it just as much.

“How much time do we have?” she asks.

Orin steps forward finally, quiet but never hesitant. “If they’ve found the chamber, not much.”

“You can’t pick yet,” I say, moving to her side again. “Not until you’re sure. Not when this realm is still shifting beneath our feet.”

“You think it’ll shift more?” Elias asks. “What, like, grow teeth? Spit fire? Throw in a musical number?”

“Probably just hurl our worst regrets back at us,” I say. “That seems to be its theme.”

“I regret sleeping with Talia,” says.

“You don’t regret that,” Elias mutters.

grins. “No. I regret letting her live.”

Luna doesn’t smile. But her shoulder brushes mine—on purpose. A touch that says thank you and don’t leave in the same breath. I won’t let her face these dead things alone. Not the pillars. Not the sins we left behind in the bodies of women who should’ve never carried our names. I’ll burn every one of them down before I let them touch her.

I drift from the others, not because I’m avoiding them—though gods know, I’m used to that by now—but because something in the light is shifting. The closer I get to the nearest pillar, the more it feels like the world’s narrowing. Like the rest of the room is just a whisper and this—this is the part that was waiting for me.

The pillar is taller than me, carved from something I can’t name. Obsidian threaded with a crimson so deep it almost looks black. It glows in slow pulses, not like breath, but like blood pushed through old veins. I don’t reach for it. I don’t need to.

Because right there, near the base, just above the line where the stone vanishes into the floor—there it is.

My crest.

Or at least, it’s supposed to be.

I crouch, let my eyes adjust to the pulsing light, and study it.

It's my emblem, the one branded into the base of every ritual we ever cast, burned into Academy scrolls and sheets, stitched into tunics I’ve long since torn apart. Lust. Mine. The whips curling in elegant arcs. The sigil flanked by obsidian thorns. The empty ring in the center that was always meant to be broken. Except...

Except it’s wrong.

The thorns—there are too many. And the curling ends of the whips? They’re laced through with something that doesn’t belong. Branches. Delicate, almost beautiful. Veins of life where there should be pain.

“No,” I murmur, and I move on.

The next pillar is made of something clearer, crystalline, almost fragile in the way it reflects every other glow in the chamber. I find my crest again. Another mistake. The whips are reversed. Curled inward instead of out. Submissive. Soft. They were never meant to be soft.

I rise, heart starting to hammer with something that feels like realization—but heavier.

I turn toward the others, voice sharp. “The crests,” I call out. “They’re on the pillars.”

Orin’s head lifts instantly. Elias stops whatever commentary he was mid-ramble. Even Luna’s gaze snaps to me, brows narrowing.

“I’m serious,” I say, stepping back from the flawed stone. “Each pillar has our mark on it. Ours. The crests. From the original bonding rites. Branwen used them. Maybe when she built this, maybe after, I don’t know. But they’re all here.”

skips past two glowing pillars before doubling back. “Wait, you mean like our personalized magical death signatures? That thing we weren’t supposed to tattoo into furniture but I definitely did?”

“Yes,” I snap, sharper than intended. “But listen. They’re not right. Mine—there’s something off. Subtle, but there. The shape is wrong. A single branch added. The whips coiled inward instead of out.”

“Maybe it’s a glitch,” Elias offers, wandering to the closest column. “Like... old magic with a bad memory. Or Branwen took some liberties with the aesthetics. She always did love dramatics.”

“No,” Orin says before I can. His voice is quiet, but not soft. It never is when he’s right. “She didn’t forget. Branwen was obsessed with accuracy. She wouldn’t have risked any variance in the ritual architecture. Not if this chamber was designed to anchor a path out.”

I nod once, the dread curling cold behind my ribs. “Which means the incorrect crests aren’t a flaw. They’re a filter.”

Lucien straightens, eyes narrowing. “She created decoys.”

“Or something worse,” I say, and the words feel sour in my mouth. “Each wrong crest might not just lead to nowhere. It could be tailored to fracture us. Split us. Trap us in versions of ourselves we can’t survive.”

Elias lets out a low whistle, then shifts his stance in front of the nearest pillar. “Well that’s sufficiently horrifying. Alright. Who wants to play Match the Sigil before the vengeful exes arrive and claw our faces off?”

Luna doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even smile. She just moves to the next pillar, eyes scanning with focus so intense it sharpens the air around her. Riven trails after her like a shadow, hands loose but ready. He doesn’t speak, but his presence anchors her. It always has.

One by one, the others spread out. Orin slower, more deliberate, dragging a fingertip down the face of each pillar like he’s communing with the dead. flits between columns with too much excitement, muttering to himself, then letting out occasional frustrated sighs when he finds something wrong—an angle, a fracture, a line missing from his sigil that shouldn’t be.

This chamber was never about offering freedom.

It was built to test recognition.

To see if we remember who we were before all this.

And maybe to punish us if we don’t.

The third tried to trick me. It almost had it—had the shape, the weight, the whip ends curling like they were alive—but the thorns were wrong. Too symmetrical. Too polished. Lust isn’t clean. It’s chaotic. It claws. It bleeds. It takes.

Branwen designed these to fail us, that much is clear now. Not just to confuse us, but to disorient us. To make us question what we remember, what was ever real. Because if we can’t recognize ourselves in our own crests, what the fuck hope do we have of finding a way out?

I move to the next one, and as I’m crouching, tracing the edge of a sigil that looks like it might belong to Riven—razor-sharp, carved in red-black stone with fury etched between every line—I hear behind me.

Too close.

Too pleased.

Too .

“I have an idea,” he says, his voice too loud in the kind of place built for whispers. “If we’re checking for crest accuracy, I feel like Luna should take her shirt off.”

Dead silence.

And then Elias, groaning like he’s aged five years in one second, mutters, “Oh my gods, .”

“No, I’m being helpful,” insists, raising both hands like that makes anything better. “We all know she’s got the full crest set tattooed on her chest. Centered. Symmetrical. Perfect.” He turns toward her like he's making the world’s most logical offer. “Let me look. Just a quick check. For accuracy.”

Luna doesn’t even blink.

But Riven’s jaw flexes.

Lucien exhales like he’s considering murder as a viable solution to every problem.

“I know what my crest looks like,” continues, undeterred, “but the Hollow likes to fuck with memory, right? I might be wrong. I could be misremembering a stroke. A loop. A line. I’m just saying—if you show me the version inked into your skin, Luna, we can cross-reference.”

“You want me to take off my shirt in front of the pillar of death so you can cross-reference my tits?” Luna asks, tone flat but dangerous.

grins like she just offered him a crown and a sword.

“I mean, when you say it like that—yes. Exactly. For science.”

Elias makes a strangled noise and turns around, facing the wrong direction, muttering under his breath, “I swear to fuck, I will slap him with my boot if I hear one more word.”

“You’d have to catch me first,” sings.

“You’re not wrong about the magic,” Orin interjects, calm as ever, like he’s teaching a philosophy class and not intervening in the prelude to a very specific homicide. “The tattoos are stabilizers. Fixed points. They can’t be altered by this realm. If Luna’s marks are unchanged, they might be the only versions untouched by Branwen’s distortions.”

I feel Luna exhale next to me, the sound more resigned than angry, and my chest pulls tight. She doesn’t like this attention—not this kind, not now. Not when everything about this place is already built to pull her apart. But she also knows the truth.

Orin isn’t wrong. is mostly wrong. But not entirely.

“Fine,” Luna says at last, and her voice cuts through the space like the blade we’ve all been dancing around. “But only the top. You get one look. And if you say something stupid, I’m binding your mouth shut with your own magic.”

’s grin widens, and I catch the shimmer of arousal in his magic, the way it licks at the edge of mine, chaotic and irreverent, wild as ever.

“I’d thank you for it,” he purrs, “but I’m trying to be good.”

He’s not. He never is. But Luna still lifts her shirt. Not all the way. Just high enough for the intricate network of tattoos to be seen—each sigil inked in ink that pulses faintly against her skin. Lust. Wrath. Greed. Sloth. Envy.

steps close. Too close. He leans in like a man about to drink from a forbidden altar. And then, for once, he shuts up. Because the crests are perfect. They pulse in time with her heart, steady and defiant. Pure. Untouched. The real versions of us, etched into the one person none of us can seem to survive without.

“They’re right,” says quietly. “All of them.”

He looks up at her—less cocky now, more reverent. That rare moment of clarity sliding through the madness.

And then he ruins it.

His grin returns.

“But for accuracy’s sake,” he says, voice low and sultry, “you might want to let me double-check the ones on your thighs, too.”

Riven grabs him by the collar.

Lucien starts unsheathing his sword.

Elias sighs. “Gods, I hope the exes get here soon. I need a reason to throw something sharp.”

But Luna?

She just lets her shirt fall, smooth and slow, the movement more commanding than anything could’ve begged for.

“Find your crest,” she tells him. “Or I’ll find it for you.”

And fuck, I love her.