Page 43

Lucien says nothing, but his eyes—his eyes are lit with something dangerous and vast.

Hope. And maybe, beneath it, something darker. The knowledge that we didn’t just survive this legacy.

We rewrote it.

Blackwell steps closer. His power pulses in a rhythm I feel in my ribs, in my spine, in my magic.

“Be ready,” he says, and this time his voice is almost gentle. “Your lineage begins now. And the world… will try to tear it down.”

Before anyone can speak, before any of the guys can ruin it with jokes or panic or an ill-timed innuendo from Silas—Blackwell disappears.

No smoke. No flash. Just gone.

And I’m left with seven Sins staring at me like I’ve become the center of their universe.

Because I have.

And for the first time, I’m not afraid of what’s coming next.

I’m starving for it.

“Go get her pregnant already,” Silas says to Riven, mouth full of popcorn, eyes on the TV like he didn’t just launch a verbal nuke across the room.

Riven doesn’t look at him. The smile that curls on his mouth is slow, ancient, dangerous. It’s the kind of smile that doesn’t ask permission. It just happens. Like gravity. Or fate. Or falling in love with your executioner.

I bury my face in my hands, muffling a groan. “That’s not how it works.”

Silas tosses a kernel in the air and misses his mouth entirely. “I’m just saying, if he accidentally knocks you up tonight, I get to go next. Call dibs. Fast pass. Skip the line.”

“There’s nine months between each of you,” I snap, lifting my head just enough to glare at him. “That means you get to wait almost a year and a half, minimum. Til your kids pop out.”

Silas gasps. Actually gasps. “A year and a half? Do you have any idea how long that is in Silas time?”

“You’re unbearable in normal time.”

“Exactly! You want this baby chaos factory to run smooth or not?”

Caspian chokes on his cider.

Elias, from the corner of the couch, deadpans, “Can we not refer to her uterus as a chaos factory? Just once.”

“It’s a compliment!” Silas protests. “She's a miracle machine! She's gonna build our legacy with her incredible internal craftsmanship.”

“Dear gods,” Orin mutters beside me, rubbing his brow with two fingers, his eyes flicking toward me in a way that says I’m too old for this and you’re glowing again and yes, I noticed, and yes, I’m thinking about it.

And I am glowing. Literally. My body is still humming from whatever Blackwell did. The moment his magic surged through the room, it left something behind inside me—a thrumming heat that pulses like promise, like beginnings. Like Riven is already calling to it with the dark thing in his blood.

“It’s only fair,” Elias adds lazily, eyes not leaving the screen. “Silas got twins. That’s basically a buy-one-get-one-free situation. The rest of us are stuck with one.”

“One?” Silas scoffs. “You’re lucky I don’t get all seven. I’ve been here since the start. I was first love, okay? That’s mythic shit.”

Riven finally turns his head toward him. “You screamed when Blackwell appeared.”

Silas raises his hand proudly. “A well-timed defense mechanism.”

Lucien, just sits with that permanent shadow in his eyes, like he’s still trying to calculate the end before the beginning finishes happening. He’s looking at me, but also past me. Like he sees the years ahead. The blood. The lineage. The future monsters we’ll raise.

“I’m going to be pregnant,” I mutter. “For the next seven years.”

Ambrose—tilts his head, watching me the way he always does. Like I’m something that could fall apart any second and he still wouldn’t look away.

“You won’t be alone,” he says, soft and razor-sharp.

I nod once.

Because I won’t.

This is the price of rewriting prophecy. This is what happens when you bind sin to a single thread and hold it tight enough to turn chaos into something holy. The world won't understand it. The Council will probably try to crucify us. Keira is going to throw a fit. And Layla—gods, Layla is going to have to survive something worse.

But me?

I look around the room at my monsters. The ones who tried to destroy me and ended up loving me instead.

This is our beginning.

And I am going to birth a goddamn dynasty.

End of Epilogue – Book Five “The Seven Sins Academy”

Author's Note – Thank You, You Unhinged, Brilliant Reader

If you’ve made it here—through Lust and Pride, through Silas’s chaos and Lucien’s emotional constipation, through me stringing you along with longing, violence, snark, and way too many sinful men—then you are the real MVP.

Thank you for devouring this dark little monster of a story with me. Thank you for loving these disasters with god-complexes and zero impulse control. Thank you for not throwing your Kindle across the room (or if you did, thank you for coming back to finish anyway). You’re unhinged. I like that about you.

I wrote this book on caffeine, late-night playlists, and the sheer power of “what if just did that?”—and you stayed. You rooted for her. You fell in love with all seven flavors of beautifully broken.

And now? Now we’ve got immortal babies coming, Lucien smiling (voluntarily), Silas probably building a onesie cannon, and Elias pretending not to care about any of it. You helped me bring this entire messy, magical, gloriously sinful world to life.

From the bottom of my very corrupted heart: thank you. You’re everything.

Stay wild. Stay wicked. Stay mine.

Love,

L. Ford

(The conductor of this morally gray train with no brakes)

House of Sin and Shadow Preview

Severin

The man reeks of parchment and desperation, and yet here he stands in the parlor of our decaying palace like he belongs. As if the walls of the Void haven’t already begun to eat at the marrow of his bones.

I recline on the obsidian chaise, legs crossed, fingers threading lazily through the stem of a half-full glass. The liquid inside it isn’t wine—it’s something far older, stolen from the alchemist ruins buried beneath what used to be Carnith’s Spine. Bitter, copper-laced, laced with illusions. Fitting.

Headmaster Blackwell’s spine is iron-rod straight, though his eyes betray the tremor he tries to hide. I could call it courage. I won’t. It’s calculation, and he’s overplayed already by stepping foot here alone.

He clears his throat again. “As I said, Lord Severin—”

“Don’t call me that,” I cut in smoothly, voice a blade wrapped in velvet. “You’re not in a court. You’re in a tomb. Speak plainly, or I’ll bury your lungs before you finish the sentence.”

A twitch of his jaw. A flicker of fear, though he swallows it well.

“You know what the world was, Severin. You remember the balance.”

Ah. So this is to be a sermon. How dull.

“You speak of balance as though it was ever real.” I lean forward slightly, watching the illusion of comfort dissolve from his features. “The Council served the powerful. The powerful feared us. And so we were locked away. They didn’t want balance. They wanted containment.”

“They wanted safety,” he replies, almost too quickly.

“Safety is a myth the weak tell themselves to sleep at night.” I smile, slow and without warmth. “But do go on. You’ve piqued my interest. For now.”

He reaches into his coat, slowly, the way mortals do when they know how close they are to losing their arms. I let him. He withdraws a scroll bound in sigil-waxed silver—real magic, not cheap illusion. Old wards. Council script. My fingers twitch, not for the scroll, but for the memory that hums beneath its seal.

He offers it to me.

I don’t move.

“I’m not your messenger boy,” I say. “Read it.”

There’s a pause—hesitation. Then he does. Voice low, practiced, as if afraid the Void will chew the words before they leave his tongue.

“To the seven scions of deviation—sons of sin, architects of the Void—we extend our invitation. The prison thins. The Balance tilts. The Council offers freedom, conditional and finite. We seek reintroduction. Observation. Reintegration. You will be granted presence among the mortal dominions for no longer than—”

“How long?” I interrupt, bored already.

Blackwell glances up, reluctant. “Thirty days. Supervised.”

Laughter slips from my mouth, sharp and echoing. “You think you can collar a wolf for a moon and expect it not to bite?”

He doesn’t answer. Smart. But I can see it in his eyes—the way he thinks this could work. That if he feeds us enough scraps, we'll beg for more.

“And who,” I murmur, rising at last, silk and menace moving as one, “will be our shepherd?”

Blackwell's voice is quieter now. “The Binder.”

Ah.

The word is a hook behind my ribs. Sharp. Too deliberate.

“She’s not yours to offer.” I stalk toward him, slowly, every footstep precise, deliberate. “You parade in here with parchment and promises, and you think to buy our chains with her?”

He doesn’t back down. Foolish, again.

“She volunteered. She offered herself to the Void.”

My smile turns cruel. “They always offer something. But they never understand the price.”

He flinches, just a ripple, but I see it. There. The crack.

“And what do you know of the price, Blackwell?” I circle him now. “Did you study us through stained glass and prophecy? Did you write lectures about our monstrosity while sucking your lover’s soul through your teeth to keep yourself young? Don’t look so shocked. That mark on your throat—it’s been taken, not given.”

Silence. Then, stiffly: “The Council wants peace.”

“No,” I say softly, voice pressed to his spine like a blade. “They want the illusion of it.”

And that—that is my domain.

“Freedom for what?” I murmur, stepping into his line of sight again. “To walk among mortals and pretend we aren’t starving? To bury the Void beneath marble and politics?”

“Freedom to become something else,” Blackwell replies, and to his credit, his voice doesn’t shake.

But I see it now—the outline of the Council’s plan. They think if they can put us on a leash, wrap us in civility, force us back into their fractured world, that we’ll forget the taste of what we truly are.

They want to study us.

Tame us.

Use us.

The Council isn’t giving us a chance. They’re giving us a cage with prettier bars.

And they think Layla is the key to keeping us docile.

I grin, slow and dangerous, and reach out to brush Blackwell’s collar straight. His skin prickles under my touch.

“I’ll deliver your message,” I say. “But know this—if your council thinks we’ve forgotten the taste of ruin, they’re more lost than we are.”

I turn without another word. The parlor melts behind me, the Void humming low and greedy. My fingers are already twitching with the next illusion I’ll need to spin—because when I tell the others what the Council is offering, I’ll have to dress it carefully.

They hate being played as much as I do.

But there's one thing none of them can resist.

Not Vaelrik. Not Soren. Not even cold-blooded Malachi.

The scent of war dressed as freedom.

And they’ve given us thirty-one days to make the world remember who we are.

Let’s see what we can do with that.

The west wing always smells like something spoiled. Theron’s rooms spill over with strange sweet rot—candied ash, fermented fruit, and whatever foul concoction he’s bottled for fun and forgotten to cap. Dorian adds sourness, sharp and alchemical, the stench of burned coin and arcane ink. It wafts into the corridor like a warning, but I step through it anyway. Of course I do.

They’re not quiet about it.

I hear them before I see them—voices raised, clashing like a cracked orchestra: Theron’s manic, high with amusement; Dorian’s sharper, clipped and derisive.

“I told you not to touch it,” Dorian snarls, something crashing against the far wall.

“Oh, you told me? Gods forbid anyone else with taste rearranges your tragic little shrine of self-pity.” Theron’s voice is sing-song now, teasing like a lover, cruel like a knife. “You hoard corpses and secrets and still think anyone wants to steal from you?”

I step through the arched threshold without announcement. Let them see me. Let them feel me.

The room is cluttered as expected—part workshop, part sanctum, all disaster. Arcane tomes cracked open on the floor. Old blades hanging crooked above a fireplace that hasn’t been lit in years. A decapitated statue of some forgotten deity lies at the foot of an overturned chaise. Dorian stands over it, a tangle of black and rust-red silk, his coat discarded and shirt half-unbuttoned like he forgot how clothing works halfway through an argument. Theron lounges upside down in a ruined armchair, long legs hooked over one armrest, a bowl of something neon and steaming balanced on his chest.

I sweep into the room with all the practiced poise of a man used to being obeyed, admired, or envied—preferably all three.

“Do you two wake up each morning and plan how best to rot my nerves, or is it just your natural state?”

Dorian doesn’t flinch, though his hands clench at his sides. “He touched my things.”

Theron snorts. “I moved one mirror. The room wept in gratitude.”

“It was a scrying glass tuned to the Binder’s bloodline. Do you even know what that means?”

Theron blinks, then shrugs, unconcerned. “No, but I liked the way it reflected my thighs.”

Gods save me.

I cross to the stone table in the center of the room, brush aside a cracked vial with two fingers, and plant the Council’s scroll down with quiet finality. The wax gleams under the warped lantern light.

That shuts them up.

Dorian’s eyes narrow. Theron rights himself slowly, curiosity rippling over him like a cat scenting something interesting.

“What is it?” Theron asks, feigning boredom poorly. His gaze tracks every movement like he might eat it whole if I don’t speak fast enough.

“A gift,” I say, letting the word drip in sarcasm. “Wrapped in centuries of cowardice and tied with a bow of desperation.”

Dorian steps closer, eyeing the silvered seal. “Council?”

I nod once. “They want us to play nice. Return to the mortal realm. Thirty-one days, supervised. Observed. Assessed.”

Dorian scoffs. “They want a parade.”

“No,” I correct smoothly. “They want a show trial. They’re sending Layla.”

Theron lets out a slow, lilting whistle, low and obscene. “The Binder and the Void. How poetic. Will she wear a collar? Can I pick it?”

“You will not touch her,” I snap.

Too fast.

Both of them catch it.

Dorian’s lips twitch like he wants to say something clever. He doesn’t. Not yet. He studies me instead, gaze sharp, thoughtful, like he’s weighing the cost of loyalty against the thrill of mischief.

“I thought she was a sacrifice,” he murmurs. “A trade for .”

“She was,” I say. “Now she’s bait.”

Theron is already halfway to the liquor shelf, uncorking something that shouldn’t exist anymore. “Do we get to leave the Void or just pretend we’re free inside the cage?”

“Thirty-one days,” I repeat. “We leave. We return. We perform.”

Dorian sneers. “You think they’ll ever really let us out? After what we did? After what we are?”

“No.” I smile thin and mean. “But we’ll let them think we believe it. That’s the game.”

Theron cackles. “You’re going to lie to the Council? Again? Gods, I love when you get reckless.”

“It’s not reckless,” I say. “It’s calculated.”

Dorian crosses his arms. “What happens when she realizes we’re lying?”

“She already knows.”

That stills them both.

And there it is—that shift. That slow, seeping gravity she brings with her even when she’s not in the room. The Binder, the girl with the storm-glass eyes and the mouth made for defiance. She’s not even here and she tilts the world on its axis.

Dorian moves first, stepping back toward his ruined scrying glass. He mutters something about recalibrating it. He’s lying. He just doesn’t want to ask me the question aloud.

Theron stays exactly where he is, nursing his drink and watching me with a grin that’s a little too wide, a little too sharp.

“Has she come out?”

Dorian flicks his wrist, carving something cruel into the stone. “No.”

I stare at him.

He doesn’t elaborate.

Theron stretches a little, lazy and feline, eyes darting toward me like he's gauging how close I am to snapping. “She’s nesting,” he offers, tone far too pleased. “Or sulking. Or summoning vengeance from beneath the floorboards. Hard to say. But no, she hasn’t stepped beyond that room.”

“And none of you thought to tell me?”

Dorian arches a brow, slow and deliberate. “You told us not to go near her. Your exact words were, and I quote, ‘Let her rot if she wants to.’”

“I say a lot of things I don’t mean,” I grind out.

“Then perhaps stop pretending your word is gospel,” he mutters, and I let it slide because I’m too busy recalibrating the fire now chewing through my spine.

Two weeks.

Two weeks of her shut behind those velvet doors like a secret I haven’t been allowed to unwrap. No sounds of movement. No spells. No footsteps. Alistair, and only Alistair, has been permitted to breach that threshold. He brings her food. Brings her books. Brings her nothing I can use.

Theron’s smirking again. “You could always knock, Severin. Like a mortal. Like a beggar.”

I look at him the way one looks at a splinter before pulling it out with something sharp. “If I wanted her door open, it would already be open.”

“Then why isn’t it?” he sings, tilting his glass back and draining the rest.

Because that room is older than she is. Because Alistair’s Wards are rooted deep. Because I gave a command in front of the others, and if I shatter it now—if I shatter myself now—they’ll see it. They’ll know.

The Void shifts beneath us. I feel it.

A corridor elongates behind me, stretching too far to belong. The light flickers. A window opens where there was none—narrow, slit-thin, pointed like the blade of a spear—and beyond it, a glimpse of something that shouldn’t be sky.

“She’s stirring something,” Dorian says quietly. “It’s leaking into the house.”

“The house listens to her now?” I ask, soft with disbelief.

“No,” he says, meeting my eyes, unblinking. “The house wants her.”

The weight of that sinks deeper than I allow them to see.

Because so do I.

She was supposed to scream. Scratch. Fight.

Instead, she disappeared into silence.

The kind of silence that feels like strategy.

The kind of silence I don’t trust.

I step back, slow and calculating. The corridor stabilizes behind me. My reflection in the mirror to my right flickers—not quite matching. Not quite off. Just enough to remind me what I am.

False Dominion. Glass Throne. A king made of stories.

And she hasn’t read a single one.

“Where’s Alistair?”

“Void garden,” Dorian replies, flicking another coin up into the air. “Meditating. Or staring into the abyss. Same difference.”

Of course. The one who feels nothing is the one she trusts. The only one she’s let in.

I adjust my cuffs, smooth the glamour around my shoulders until it sits like command again.

“Tell him I want an update,” I say. “What she eats. What she reads. What she burns. I want everything.”

Theron snorts. “You want everything and you’re getting nothing. Gods, Severin, she’s not even trying to seduce you. Isn’t that delicious?”

It is.

And it isn’t.

Because the more she resists, the more the Void bends for her. The more we do.

She’s not surrendering.

She’s conquering.

I turn sharply and stalk toward the eastern stair, where the house has begun growing windows again—windows that look out on nothing, framed in bone and dust. The halls twist slower here, but the pulse of something ancient—something volatile—builds beneath the stones.

A storm is coming.

And she’s not hiding from it.

She is it.

The war room is a skeleton of purpose. Once, it held maps soaked in blood and bone-dust, scrawled with divine languages meant to last through centuries. Now it’s a fractured cathedral of strategy, everything carved from obsidian and cracked memory. The hearth glows with greenish flame that eats warmth instead of offering it. High ceilings. Tall windows that show nothing but static black. It smells like metal and old ambition.

Malachi stands at the central table, his silhouette rigid, a knife of precision. His fingers trace across one of the Voidbound renderings etched into the surface—charcoal lines twisting with symbols no mortal hand could write. His coat, dark as regret, gleams faintly under the dull witchlight. Strategist. Silent observer. The weight behind our sharper edges.

Vaelrik is leaning against a broken pillar, half-shadowed, arms crossed, his storm-gray gaze flicking with that ever-present predator flicker. He speaks low and fast, voice like thunder sheathed in fur.

“They’re getting smarter,” he’s saying. “The wyrms have started circling the northern rim. Not burrowing. Hovering.”

“Hovering?” I echo, stepping in, voice smooth as ever. “They don’t have wings.”

Vaelrik doesn’t look surprised to see me, but he doesn’t hide his distaste either. He’s never bothered with illusions, not even for me. “They shouldn’t. But the Void’s shifting. Something’s making them… evolve.”

“More like mutate,” Malachi murmurs without looking up. “They’re not meant to hold structure that long. If they’re resisting entropy, that suggests something’s stabilizing them.”

The silence that follows hangs on her name, though no one says it. Not yet.

“I assume you’ve both heard,” I say casually, letting my words curl like smoke. “The Council wants to reintroduce us. Temporary release. Layla is their offering.”

Vaelrik growls, low and humorless. “What the fuck do they think we are, leashed pets waiting for our turn in the sun?”

“They’re baiting us,” Malachi replies evenly. “Let us into their world, let the mortals see if we’ve changed. A show of mercy. A stage for execution.”

“And yet,” I say, circling the table, trailing fingers along the etched grooves, “we’re considering it.”

Vaelrik turns to me fully, jaw tight. “You are.”

“I speak for all of us.”

“Only when it serves you,” he snaps.

A pause.

We stare at each other over the decaying spine of this war room, and the Void seems to lean in. He’s always been the blade I couldn’t bend. But even he knows—this realm has rules, and I’m the one who rewrites them.

Malachi breaks the silence.

“How much has she eaten?”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“She’s been here fourteen days,” he says coolly. “Alistair’s brought meals. But how much is she actually consuming? What kind of nourishment is she accepting from the Void?”

I exhale slowly. “You think she’s feeding it back.”

“She’s a Binder. That power doesn’t rest. If she’s channeling or containing something, and it’s influencing the wyrms’ behavior—”

“Then the northern rim is just the beginning,” Vaelrik finishes, rubbing a hand down his jaw, suddenly not looking like he wants to punch something. “Shit.”

“She hasn’t stepped outside her room,” I remind them, but even I can feel the hollowness in the words. “She’s not doing anything.”

Malachi lifts his gaze, dark and incisive. “That’s exactly what worries me.”

And then—like it was summoned, like the Void itself is listening to every word we say—there’s a sound.

Distant.

But hers.

A hum.

Not musical. Not even intentional. More like the sound of breath moving through the old language. A chord struck without strings. The walls ripple. Not visibly. But I feel it in the pit of my teeth, behind my eyes.

Malachi straightens.

Vaelrik is already moving toward the door.

“No,” I snap. “Let me.”

They pause, watching me with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity.

I offer them the smile I wear for war.

“Don’t worry,” I say softly, already turning away. “If she’s decided to step into the Void, I’ll be the one to greet her.”

Layla

I think the Void is inside me now. It’s not just the dark. It’s this dark—dense, muffled, always watching. Every surface feels damp with something not quite alive. The walls breathe in shallow gasps when I sleep, if I sleep. Which I haven’t. Not really. Not in a way that matters.

Fourteen days of shadows, sour rot, and Severin’s voice leaking through the cracks in my spine like a spell I didn’t mean to learn.

I didn’t come here for him. Not for any of them.

I came because made the mistake of trusting a monster. And I made the bigger one—trading myself to Severin to spare her. Him, and his fucking brothers. One for seven. Fair deal, right?

Now I’m in this mansion made of nightmares and temptation, rotting in velvet. And I know exactly what they want from me. I’m not na?ve. They think if they wait long enough, if they circle just wide enough, I’ll break down and crawl toward whichever one looks at me like he already owns my mouth.

They’re wrong.

So I’ve stayed here. Inside this room stitched from haunted furniture and wilting glamour. The bed’s too soft. The windows show nothing. Sometimes they show things—flickers of people I’ve never met, places that don’t exist. The mirror won’t reflect unless I’m angry. I think the walls whisper about me when I sleep.

Fine.

Let them.

Alistair brings food. Quiet. Efficient. He doesn’t try to charm me. Doesn’t ask questions. He places the tray, nods like a ghost in mourning, and waits. That’s it.

He’s the only one I tolerate. The others—I can hear them beyond the hall sometimes. Dorian’s smart mouth. Theron’s manic laughter. Vaelrik snarling like he wants to tear flesh from bone. Soren, when he came to the door, looked like he wanted to tear something else. He leaned against the frame like the world belonged to him and smirked like sin had a voice.

“You’ll come out eventually, sweetheart,” he’d said, tongue practically in his voice. “The Void doesn’t let anything stay untouched.”

I slapped him before he could finish the thought.

He left laughing.

And then—nothing. Just Alistair. Just food. Just me.

Until today.

Today the mansion shifted. I felt it. The walls tightened around my lungs, a pulse beneath the floorboards, like something woke up. Something old. And then—his voice.

Severin.

Outside the door.

“You’ve made quite the impression,” he drawls. His voice is too smooth. Too deliberate. Like he knows the effect it has and is trying to pretend he doesn’t need it. “They’re all talking about you now. Dorian’s started dreaming in riddles. Theron keeps drawing you in his spellbooks. And Vaelrik’s halfway to biting someone just to cope.”

I stay seated on the floor, back against the wardrobe, knees drawn up. I could stand. I could scream. But I won’t give him that.

“I didn’t ask for attention,” I say flatly.

He hums low, amused. “You didn’t have to. That’s the beauty of it. You starved them better than I ever could.”

I bite the inside of my cheek.

He always speaks like he’s dancing, even when the music is cruel. And I hate how much of my breath I have to hold when he’s near.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“Because something’s changed. You felt it.”

Yes.

But I don’t admit it.

“The Council has offered us a… reprieve,” he continues. “Thirty-one days in the mortal world. A performance, of sorts.”

I laugh under my breath. “You performing? You mean lying.”

There’s a pause. Then:

“I never claimed to be honest, Layla. Just persuasive.”

His voice wraps around my name like it’s laced in honey and venom. I hate the way it makes my fingers twitch.

“You expect me to be your pretty little handler?” I ask, rising slowly to my feet. I move toward the door, not opening it, but close enough to hear him breathe.

“I expect you to come out,” he says. “I’m done feeding ghosts through a door.”

“And I’m done being bait.”

Silence. Then softer:

“You think you’re not already in the trap?”

The Void hums between us. My skin prickles.

“I don’t trust you,” I whisper.

“That’s a start,” he replies. “But I’m not asking for your trust. I’m offering you a key.”

I lean forward, forehead against the wood, voice low. “And what does your key unlock?”

A beat. Then:

“Whatever you’re brave enough to open.”

I open the door. And there he is. The very embodiment of arrogance—standing like he owns not just this mansion but the concept of thresholds themselves. One hand in the pocket of a tailored midnight suit, the other resting against the archway like it belongs to his body only when it’s performing for someone else. Every part of him is too precise, too curated—his charm sculpted, rehearsed, poisonous. The scent of expensive magic clings to him like the first sin ever committed: forbidden, intoxicating, addictive.

His eyes find me instantly. Deep-set, gold-flecked and glittering with a kind of intelligence that never asks—it assumes. They don’t just look at you. They measure you, cut you open, rearrange what you thought you were and dare you to look better in pieces.

He has the kind of face that belongs on a coin or a wanted poster—sharp jawline, mouth perpetually smirking at something unspoken, cheekbones carved like weapons. His skin is the color of sun-warmed bronze, golden and deliberate, like he hadn’t been trapped in the Void at all but had been kissed by stars while we all rotted in the dark.

His hair is cropped short and slicked back like he doesn’t know the word “disheveled.” His clothes—always immaculate—are woven with quiet glamours: shadows stitched into the seams, the faintest shimmer where the collar meets his throat, like every thread whispers lies.

But none of that is the problem.

The problem is the way he smiles at me.

Like I’ve already said yes.

“You took your time, Layla” he says, voice velvet-laced ruin.

“You threatened my sister,” I shoot back.

His grin sharpens.

“And here I thought we were starting fresh.”

“Fresh would require forgetting,” I say. “And I don’t forget, Severin.”

The way he says my name isn’t fair. He stretches the vowel, coats it in something too smooth to be clean. I feel it settle between my ribs, coiling low and unwanted.

He takes a step forward.

“You’re paler than when you arrived,” he says, voice low and casual, but his gaze drags over me like it’s taking inventory. “The Void is already inside you. Does it whisper yet? Has it kissed your blood awake?”

I want to slap him.

I want to drag him inside and ask what exactly he means by kissed.

“I’ve been inside worse places,” I say instead, voice flat.

His smile falters for the briefest beat. Then returns, wider, sharper.

“Gods,” he breathes. “You really are more fun up close.”

“You didn’t bring me here for fun.”

“No,” he says. “But you’re making me reconsider the purpose of your stay.”