Page 6 of The Sin Binder’s Destiny (The Seven Sins Academy #5)

The thing about this cursed village is that they love a festival. It doesn’t matter that the Hollow looms outside their crooked fences like a storm that never quite passes. Doesn’t matter that half the people in this town mutter old prayers under their breath every time they see me and my lot walking past. When the moons shift and the markets overflow with whatever scraps they’ve scrounged from the woods, these people throw a party like the world isn’t crumbling at the edges.

And me? I never say no to public drinking and badly tuned instruments. Especially when I’ve somehow become their patron saint of chaos.

I stroll through the cobbled streets like I own them, the cool morning already choked with banners and cheap wine, villagers shouting greetings in broken shouts. My head’s still pounding a little from last night—probably from watching Orin and Luna eye-fuck each other over a goddamn dance floor while pretending they weren’t—but I’m determined to start the day right. Which is to say: shamelessly.

A squat woman selling fried dough sees me first. She waves wildly, half the powdered sugar coating her apron.

"Good morning, Frog King!" she hollers.

I flash her my best grin and point two fingers at her like a weapon. "My queen of grease and sugar! Save me two of those—you know I can’t resist your culinary crimes."

I don’t remember her name.

I never do.

Everyone here has become a little caricature in my head—a defense mechanism, probably, because if I start actually knowing these people, it’ll get harder to leave them behind when the Hollow decides to swallow them whole.

I move on, ducking around children darting through the street, one of them shrieking when I ruffle his hair.

"Oi, Tiny Warlord!" I call after him. "Don’t let Old Man Knobbles catch you stealing pastries again."

I made up the name Old Man Knobbles last month. It stuck.

Another villager—big man, too many teeth, missing two more—claps me on the back hard enough to rattle my spine. "! You joining the drinking contest tonight?"

I grin up at him, mock-serious. "Only if you promise not to cry this time when I beat you."

He laughs, slaps my shoulder again, and ambles off, probably to lose more teeth.

It’s absurd, how easily they’ve made me theirs. Half of them don’t understand what we are, what kind of monsters share their streets. But they like me, because I make them laugh. Because I drink with them, dance with them, let their kids braid cursed flowers into my hair without blinking.

Because I make it look easy.

Like none of this is killing me slowly.

A woman selling carved trinkets waves me over next, thrusting something into my hand without ceremony—a frog, carved from Hollowbone wood, painted bright green.

"For your collection," she says, smiling sharp.

I blink at her. "You’re enabling me, Frog Mother. Dangerous precedent."

She winks. "You keep saving my son from tree demons. I’ll keep making frogs."

I tuck it into my coat pocket without argument.

By the time I reach the main square, half the villagers are waving, calling me things like "Lord of Mischief" and "Sir Slime," a nickname I will absolutely be keeping forever.

It’s ridiculous.

And it makes my chest ache in a way I don’t want to name. Because this is borrowed time.

This village, this festival, this paper-thin peace—they don’t know how temporary it is. But I do.

Which is why I drink when they offer me their mugs. Why I throw my arm around their shoulders and shout back twice as loud. Why I laugh like none of this will ever end.

Because it will.

And when it does, I’ll be the one dragging their bones out of the dirt.

But not today.

Today, I let them cheer for me.

And I let myself pretend it matters.

It’s too early in the godsdamn morning to be lusting after sugar, but here I am. Standing at the crooked stall halfway falling apart, staring at an array of baked sin laid out like it’s a religious experience. Flaky pastries stuffed with honeyed fruit, rolls dripping in something thick and sweet enough to rot my teeth, tarts dusted with sugar like a dusting of snow. The whole thing smells criminal. I should be arrested.

My stomach growls, and I almost lean in closer, forehead nearly pressed against the wood like a starving man.

And that’s when I hear it.

“?” A woman’s voice.

Not drunken and slurred like half the village calls after me. Not shouted across the square like I’m some feral local celebrity. Soft. Hesitant. Almost… familiar.

I blink, dragging my gaze away from the pastries and down—way down—to the woman who’s stopped in front of me.

She’s short. Barely reaches my chest, head tilted back to look at me like she’s never seen something quite like me before. Dark hair pulled back into a loose braid, dark chocolate eyes sharp beneath heavy lashes, and something about the way she’s looking at me makes my stomach pull tight—not because she’s pretty (she is), but because there’s recognition there.

Like she knows me. Like she’s not surprised to see me here but surprised I don’t recognize her.

And that’s unsettling as hell. Because I know every face in this village. Or at least, I’ve memorized their ridiculous nicknames. Crooked Tooth. Frog Mother. Tiny Warlord. Old Man Knobbles.

But her?

Nothing. I clear my throat, shift my weight onto one foot. Smile because that’s what I do when something feels off.

“Good morning,” I say lightly, polite even though I want to ask her how the hell she knows my name when half this village still thinks I’m called Frog King.

Her eyes flick over me, cautious but curious. "I wasn’t sure if it was you."

My grin sharpens automatically, practiced. “Oh, it’s me. In the flesh. Arguably too much flesh before noon.”

Her brow pinches like she doesn’t get the joke—or worse, she does and doesn’t think it’s funny.

There’s a weird hum under my skin now. Something that doesn’t feel quite right. Because most people here either treat me like a joke or like a threat. She’s doing neither. She’s just… looking.

And that look is crawling under my ribs in a way I don’t like.

I glance down at her again, deliberately casual. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say I should know who you are.”

She smiles faintly, soft and sad in a way I don’t know how to parse. “Maybe.”

That makes something in my stomach twist, sharp and wrong. I swallow it down, turn the full weight of my grin on her like armor.

“Well, mystery girl,” I say lightly, “I don’t talk to pretty girls before breakfast. Makes my stomach hurt.”

She laughs, soft and unsure, and my chest pulls tight. Because I know, without looking, without turning, that if Luna walked past right now and saw this—saw this woman smiling up at me like she knows something I don’t—she would absolutely start a riot.

I force another grin, bright and sharp. “You should introduce yourself before I start giving you a terrible nickname.”

Her mouth twitches like she wants to say something but stops herself. And I suddenly don’t like how cold the morning feels, how the sugar on the pastries doesn’t smell so sweet anymore.

"You don’t remember me?" she asks, voice syrup-sweet, batting her lashes like we’re in some kind of play I haven’t agreed to be in.

I blink at her, brain grinding in real time. My grin falters, slipping at the edges. The way she looks at me—like she’s already decided something about me, like she knows me better than I know myself—makes something crawl down my spine.

And I’ve lived long enough to know when something isn’t right.

I take a half step back, instinct pulling me out of reach without thought. “Should I?”

Her smile sharpens, eyes bright like she’s holding a secret she can’t wait to drop in my lap. "I’m Taliah."

She says it like it’s supposed to mean something. Like I should flinch. Like her name alone should open some door in my head that’s been locked.

But it doesn’t.

There’s nothing.

Just empty space.

Taliah steps toward me, fingers twitching at her side like she’s reaching for something—or someone—and I don’t like how that looks. I don’t like how familiar she’s acting, how soft her smile turns when her hand lifts, like she’s about to touch me. I move before she can. Shift sideways like it’s casual, like I’m just stretching my back, but really I’m putting air between us because whatever this is, I want no part of it.

Before she can speak again, before I can even think of something quippy to get her to back off, a hand hooks around my arm and yanks.

Hard.

I stumble, bark out half a protest before I realize who it is.

Elias.

Wide-eyed, silver-haired, wild like he’s just seen a ghost.

"Come with me," he mutters under his breath, dragging me away from the pastry stall like the ground’s about to give way beneath us.

I glance over my shoulder once—just once—long enough to see Taliah still standing there, watching, smile sharp enough to cut.

"What the hell, Eli—"

"Shut up," he hisses, pulling me into the alley between two stalls, the smell of roasted nuts and damp wood pressing in around us.

He rounds on me, hand still gripping my arm too tight. His face is pale, eyes darting like he’s trying to do the math and can’t.

"Do you know who that is?" he asks, voice low, almost frantic.

I frown, shaking my head. "No. That’s the whole problem."

Elias blows out a breath, glancing back toward the square before looking at me again like he’s not sure how to say what he’s about to say.

"That’s Taliah," he repeats. "The Sin Binder."

The words don’t land right at first. I blink at him, waiting for the joke.

He doesn’t laugh.

My stomach sinks. Because now I understand why she looked at me like that. My stomach sinks in that awful, slithering way that tells me the gods are laughing at me.

I stare at Elias like he’s speaking another language, like if I blink hard enough, he’ll say he’s joking, that this is another one of our pranks and the girl who just smiled at me like she owned me isn’t who he says she is.

"She’s what?" I ask flatly, voice hollow.

Elias leans in, lowering his voice even though no one’s around but us. "Taliah. Sin Binder. Eighty-two B.C."

My mouth goes dry.

Not because she’s supposed to be dead. But because now the name fits. Now I remember.

And oh, fuck me.

I drag a hand over my face, groaning deep in my chest like the weight of the world has dropped square on my shoulders. "No. No, no, no."

Elias watches me carefully, then narrows his eyes, seeing too much. "What?"

I shake my head, already regretting every decision I’ve ever made. "You don’t wanna know."

He crosses his arms, smirking like he’s about to dissect me for sport. "You’re sweating. Tell me."

I glance back toward the square, heart still pounding, like she’s going to appear behind me and finish whatever creepy little smile she’d been aiming my way.

I turn back to him, drop my head against the wall behind me, and mutter under my breath, "I lost my virginity to her."

Elias blinks.

Then, slow as sin, a grin curls over his face.

"No," he says, eyes lighting up.

"Yes," I groan, scrubbing both hands over my face. "It was—gods, it was bad. So bad."

Elias bursts out laughing, shoulders shaking, and I’m about two seconds from punching him when he doubles over, wheezing.

"She cried," I add, because I might as well die twice today. "Told me it was the best thing that’s ever happened to her."

That makes him laugh harder.

I glare at him. "It wasn’t. It was thirty seconds, tops."

He’s gasping now, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes like he can’t handle the sheer, devastating horror of it. "You’re telling me," he manages between snorts, "that the Binder girl—your Binder girl—cried over how good you were in bed?"

I level him with a dead stare. "She fell off a cliff."

Elias wheezes. "You fucked her and she fell off a cliff."

"It wasn’t—" I cut off, shaking my head like that’ll erase the memory. "I didn’t even want to—she was obsessed. Creepy obsessed."

Elias leans against the wall beside me, still grinning like a devil. "And now she’s back."

"Apparently."

He elbows me, still smug. "So what’s the plan, loverboy?"

I groan again, because there’s no plan.

There’s only one undeniable fact:

The girl I had the worst sex of my life with—the girl who cried and fell off a cliff and somehow turned that thirty-second mistake into a lifelong obsession—just showed up, alive, looking at me like she wants to finish what we started.

And I am absolutely, irrevocably fucked.

It happens in slow motion. I know it’s Elias fucking with time, because it feels stretched, warped, like the world is rubberbanding around me. The festival noise dulls to a low hum, the villagers blurring at the edges of my vision.

And there she is.

Luna.

Stepping straight through the crowd like a blade, slicing past drunk merchants and musicians, her gaze locked not on me—but on her.

On Taliah.

My worst nightmare, playing out in real-time. It’s almost funny. Almost. Like some cosmic joke where your new girl spots your creepy, unhinged ex across a festival and decides she wants to chat.

Except Taliah was never my ex. If thirty seconds of catastrophic, awkward virginity-losing counts as an ex, then sure, fine, maybe. But I barely remember her face, and now she’s standing there like a black hole ready to suck me back in.

I watch, unable to move, as Luna stops in front of her, expression unreadable. They exchange a few words—Taliah smiling like she’s already won, like she’s been waiting for this—and I can’t hear what they’re saying, because Elias is still fucking with time, making this moment crawl like molasses. And when Luna nods, turns, and starts walking toward me, my stomach falls straight through the cobblestones.

Elias, traitorous bastard that he is, takes one look at me, smirks like the devil, and slips into the crowd, vanishing like he wants absolutely nothing to do with whatever’s about to happen.

Coward.

Luna stops in front of me, arms folded, chin tipped up like she’s already decided I’m guilty of something. I open my mouth—no idea what I’m about to say—but she lifts a hand, silencing me before I can get a word out.

“You should really remember to close the bond,” she says sweetly, “if you want to keep secrets from me.”

I groan, dragging a hand down my face. “Luna—”

She cuts me off again, holding out her palm between us like she’s demanding tribute. “Gold.”

I blink. “What?”

“Gold,” she repeats, voice too sweet, too sharp. “Your creepy ex wants payment for her death.”

I stare at her.

Then glance past her, back at Taliah, who’s still standing in the square like she’s waiting for a bouquet and an apology.

“You’re joking.”

Her fingers wiggle. “Pay up, lover boy.”

I grumble under my breath, digging into my coat pockets, coming up with a fistful of gold coins I forgot I had. I slap one into her hand.

She lifts a brow.

Another coin.

Nothing.

A third.

Still nothing.

I sigh dramatically, digging deeper, pulling out more—stacking them one by one into her palm until she’s cradling a ridiculous little tower of glimmering coins like the goddess of bad decisions.

“There,” I mutter. “Blood money. Happy?”

Her mouth twitches, like she’s fighting a smile. “I’ll let you know once she’s paid.”

I shake my head, already regretting every decision I’ve ever made that led me here, watching the woman I love hold out her hand so I can pay off the girl I accidentally killed after the worst thirty seconds of my life.

This realm is cursed.

I’m cursed.

“How mad are you?” I ask carefully, running a hand through my hair like that’ll somehow fix the mess I’ve made—not my hair, the actual disaster that is my life. The tips of it are still green, courtesy of Ambrose, because apparently I can’t go one week without someone reminding me I’m a walking catastrophe. Fitting, really.

Luna doesn’t answer right away. She just looks at me, arms folded, expression flat in that way that’s never actually flat. It’s sharp, because she knows exactly how to gut me without a blade.

“If you had to scale it,” I try again, voice lighter, like maybe joking about it will make it easier to survive, “like, one to me-forgetting-your-birthday, or one to you-finding-out-I-once-slept-with-a-psycho-who-now-wants-blood-money?”

She snorts, rolling her eyes so hard I think they’re about to fall out of her head. “How could I possibly be mad?”

There’s a pause.

Then she adds, voice sweet as sin, “You lasted thirty seconds.”

I groan, dragging both hands down my face because I walked into that one. “You’re never gonna let me live this down, are you?”

“Not a chance.”

I peek through my fingers, catching the glint in her eyes—the way she’s smiling now, too sharp, too pleased with herself.

“You know,” she continues casually, “you could make it up to me.”

I lower my hands, suspicious. “How?”

She leans in, like she’s about to share a secret, voice dropping to that particular cadence that’s always dangerous when it comes from her. “Later,” she says, “when we’re back home… you can make me a clone.”

My brain stalls.

She grins wider, absolutely shameless. “You. And you.”

It takes me a second to recover. I grin slow, wicked, because that’s the thing about her—she knows exactly how to ruin me without trying.

“You’re lucky I’m a giver,” I mutter, voice rough now, leaning in like I’m about to bite. “I’ll even let you pick which one’s the real me.”

Her gaze flicks to my mouth and back. “Oh, I’ll know.”

“Will you?” I murmur, letting my fingers ghost over her wrist, because she loves when I play like this—like she’s the only person who could possibly handle me.

She hums low in her throat, smile all teeth. “One of you owes me gold. The other one’s going to owe me more than that.”

My pulse trips, stupid and messy in my chest, and gods, I love her.

“Tell me when,” I murmur. “I’ll split myself in two for you.”

She grins, wicked and bright, and walks away like she hasn’t just set me on fire.

And fuck, do I want to burn.

Lucien

The problem isn’t ’ stamina. Gods know, if that were the problem, we’d have solved it years ago—probably with a potion or an exorcism. No, the real problem is that the past won’t stay buried. And now it’s clawing its way back into our village, one ill-advised, regrettable decision at a time.

I pace the length of the decrepit sitting room—the one we’ve claimed as our makeshift war council, even though it’s held together with rusted nails and spit. The others are already seated, scattered around the room like a portrait of dysfunction: Orin leaned back, watching me like he’s already predicted this entire conversation; Elias slouched low in his chair, chewing on something he probably stole off a tavern tray; Riven standing in the corner, arms crossed, that permanent scowl carved deep into his face.

And .

Sitting cross-legged on the floor like a child in time-out, staring at the ceiling like he’s contemplating mortality. Or how many more of his ex-lovers are about to come crawling out of the grave.

“I can’t believe we’re having this meeting,” Elias mutters, voice dry. “You realize how insane this sounds, right?”

I cut him a look sharp enough to gut him. “You’re not the one whose past mistakes are resurrecting themselves.”

He snorts. “Speak for yourself.”

groans, flopping dramatically onto his back like he’s ready to die. “It was one time.”

Orin arches a brow. “It’s never one time with you.”

I stop pacing, plant my hands on the table, and glare at all of them. “The problem isn’t that has a sordid history. The problem is that history is showing up here. Now. In this realm.”

I glance at Riven, who hasn’t spoken yet. He meets my gaze, jaw tight, and nods once. He gets it.

We all do.

Because if Taliah can crawl out of whatever grave she fell into, who’s to say the others can’t?

And it’s not just .

None of us are clean.

Orin clears his throat, breaking the charged silence. “You’re assuming this is limited to .”

“It’s not,” I snap, straightening. “That’s why I called this meeting.”

Elias raises a brow, grinning like the disaster he is. “So what—you want us to make a list? ‘People We’ve Fucked Who Might Come Back to Kill Us’?”

groans again, dragging a hand over his face. “I don’t even remember half their names.”

I roll my eyes, fighting the urge to throttle him. “You’ll remember them if they show up at our door.”

Orin’s gaze sharpens. “This isn’t about sex.”

“It never is,” I agree. “It’s about who we were before Luna. What we did. And who might be coming to collect.”

That sobers them. Even Elias, who shifts in his seat, smile slipping.

We’re all thinking the same thing. We didn’t walk away from our pasts unscarred. And the Hollow doesn’t let anything stay buried.

I glance toward the door, where Luna’s absence feels like a shadow stretching across the room. She’s the reason I’m having this conversation without her. Because if she knew how deep the rot went—how many ghosts we left behind—she’d do what she always does.

She’d try to save us.

And I’m not sure there’s saving to be done.

clears his throat, still sprawled pathetically on the floor like a man awaiting execution. “You know,” he says, voice too light, “I have a solution.”

Riven glances at him like he’s already regretting existing in the same room.

I level with a flat stare. “Please. Enlighten us.”

grins, all teeth and trouble, like he’s about to deliver the Sermon of Madness. “We become hermits.”

Elias groans from his chair, throwing his head back. “Here we fucking go.”

“No, no,” presses, sitting up now, animated, the glint in his eye so stupid it’s almost impressive. “Hear me out. We abandon the house. The village. All of it. We find some cave, deep in the woods, off the maps. I’ll grow a beard. Orin can start reading prophecies by the fire. Riven can whittle sticks angrily. You—” He points at me. “You can finally live out your fantasy of being a terrifying, antisocial cryptid.”

I stare at him, unimpressed. “You want us to live like animals.”

“Better than being hunted down by emotionally unstable ex-lovers, Lucien!” throws his hands in the air. “This is survival.”

Riven mutters something under his breath that sounds distinctly like, "I’d rather eat glass."

Orin, to his credit, doesn’t even react. He merely lifts his mug and takes a slow sip, eyes trained on like he’s cataloging every word for a lecture later.

Elias leans forward, voice dry as desert bone. “And what about Luna? You plan to drag her into the woods too? Gonna build her a little shrine out of rocks and frogs?”

shrugs, unbothered. “She’d love it. She’s half-feral already.”

I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. “We’re not moving to the woods.”

“But—”

“No.”

slumps back dramatically, like I’ve just crushed his last dream. “Fine. But when the next Binder shows up with a vendetta and a tragic backstory, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I shoot him a look so sharp it could draw blood. “If that happens, we’ll handle it.”

The weight of those words settles heavy in the room, and for a moment, none of them speak.

Because we all know what’s coming.

This was never going to be simple. The moment stretches, sharp and brittle, the way it always does when we’re standing too close to the truth.

I drag my gaze across all of them once more, already planning how I’m going to tell Luna, how I’m going to spin this without making her look at us like we’ve failed her. Because we have.

But of course, Elias ruins the moment.

He clears his throat loudly, slouching lower in his chair like he’s about to drop something profound. “Okay, but are we really gonna sit here and pretend like the real issue isn’t that is a three-pump chump?”

groans so loudly it echoes off the stone walls. “For fuck’s sake.”

Orin closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose like he’s aged three hundred years in the last five minutes.

Riven exhales sharply, almost a laugh—but not quite.

I don’t flinch. I stare straight at Elias, deadpan. “This is your contribution?”

Elias shrugs, grinning like the absolute bastard he is. “I’m just saying. If she’s back from the dead, hell-bent on ruining his life, shouldn’t we at least acknowledge that it was probably the worst thirty seconds of her existence?”

makes a wounded noise, tipping his head back against the wall. “It was thirty seconds of panic and bad decisions, Elias. Not a spiritual awakening.”

Elias holds up two fingers, mock solemn. “Three pumps.”

“You weren’t there,” snaps.

“Didn’t have to be,” Elias shoots back. “You’re not exactly subtle.”

The corner of Orin’s mouth twitches, and I don’t miss it. Even he’s fighting a smile now, the old bastard.

I sigh, dragging a hand over my face. “Are we done?”

Elias spreads his arms, all fake innocence. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”

Riven mutters something under his breath about cutting Elias’ tongue out, and honestly, I might let him.

I straighten, letting the weight of my power bleed into the room, pulling them all back to me. “This isn’t about how bad is in bed.”

“Hey—”

I don’t even spare him a glance. “It’s about the fact that the Hollow doesn’t let anything stay buried. And if one Binder has found her way back, it won’t stop there.”

The smile slides right off Elias’ face.

Good. They need to understand that what’s coming for us isn’t something we can outdrink, outlaugh, or fuck our way around.

I glance at the door, already hearing Luna’s footsteps in my head, the inevitable way she’ll look at me when she finds out.

I’ll have to tell her. Because it won’t just be ’ sins coming back to collect.

It will be all of ours.

The room is too damn small for all of us. It always is when we’re forced to breathe the same air and face the consequences of the shit we left behind. The fire crackles in the corner like it’s listening, the low hum of something inevitable threading through the space as I lean back against the warped wooden table, arms crossed, gaze dragging over each of them.

Orin clears his throat, drawing out a piece of parchment and a thin quill from the inner pocket of his coat like he’s known this was coming. Because of course he did.

I sigh, scrubbing a hand down my face. “Let’s make the list.”

groans dramatically. “Gods, we’re really doing this.”

“Yes,” I bite out, voice sharp enough to slice. “We’re doing this because I refuse to be blindsided by another Binder crawling out of the shadows, and apparently, you idiots fucked half of them.”

Elias snorts. “Three-fourths.”

Riven mutters something murderous under his breath.

Orin dips the quill in ink without looking up. “Names and descriptions.”

I glance at first. “Start.”

slumps lower in his chair but rattles them off like he’s reciting a grocery list. “Taliah, obviously. Then there was Selene—black hair, big green eyes, very stabby. Uh… Circe—red hair, about my height, kleptomaniac tendencies.”

“Circe tried to drown me once,” Caspian mutters without lifting his gaze from the parchment.

“Good times,” replies.

Orin’s quill scratches across the page.

Elias leans back, lifting a hand like he’s in a classroom. “Sienna. You all remember Sienna.”

Riven groans. “She set the library on fire because you wouldn’t call her back.”

Elias grins. “What can I say? I’m unforgettable.”

“Name,” Orin prompts.

Elias rattles off three more. “Mirielle—blonde, sweet, probably plotting homicide. I think she tried to poison Ambrose once.”

“She did,” Ambrose confirms dryly.

“Amara,” Elias continues. “Brown hair, brown eyes, cried a lot after.”

Riven snorts darkly. “That narrows it down.”

Orin writes.

I flick my gaze to Caspian. “You.”

He doesn’t flinch. “Valeria. Blue eyes, liked knives. Had a collection bigger than Riven’s.”

“Lilith,” Riven adds from across the room, voice flat. “Gold hair. Mean as hell. Liked playing favorites.”

“She bonded to three of us, remember?” Elias grins, tapping the table. “She said it was efficiency.”

Caspian’s mouth tugs at the corner, but it doesn’t quite become a smile.

I rattle off my own, each name a weight I’ve carried without ever intending to. “Maris. Eira. Neris.”

Ambrose looks at me over the rim of his mug. “And Celine.”

My mouth tightens, but I nod.

Orin’s hand moves fast, the parchment filling with names, each one a mark against us. The numbers are climbing. Fast.

By the time we stop, there’s a list of forty-three names staring back at us, ink still wet, each one of them burned into all of us in ways we never wanted to admit.

And that’s not even half.

“That’s just the ones we can remember,” Ambrose says quietly, gaze fixed on the paper.

I nod once, throat tight. Because there are two hundred and twenty Sin Binders buried in this realm. And now we know—some of them aren’t buried at all.

“You remember when Selene tried to stab me because I brought the wrong flowers?” he says, voice almost casual, like he’s talking about the weather and not the fact that one of his ex-lovers tried to gut him over daisies.

Elias barks a laugh, shaking his head. “Wasn’t it because you brought her nightshade instead of roses?”

“She said she liked nightshade,” mutters, affronted. “I thought it was romantic.”

“She also liked arsenic,” Caspian adds dryly, tracing his finger along the edge of the table like he’s cataloging every terrible decision we’ve made.

Riven snorts, and it’s almost a laugh. Almost. “Mirielle used to sneak into my room at night,” he says without looking up. “Not to see me. To steal my weapons.”

“She said you slept like a corpse,” Elias adds helpfully, grinning wide when Riven flips him off.

Ambrose, who’s been silent this entire time, finally speaks, voice low, almost fond. “Neris once convinced an entire village I was a god.”

Orin arches a brow without lifting his quill. “You let her?”

Ambrose’s mouth tilts in a rare smile. “She did it before I noticed. By the time I realized, they’d built a shrine.”

Elias whistles, leaning back in his chair. “That’s impressive.”

Riven gestures loosely. “She set the shrine on fire a week later.”

I shake my head, unable to stop the small, sharp smile that cuts across my face despite myself. “Lilith used to read our journal entries when we weren’t looking. She said it made her feel closer to us.”

“She carved one of them into her arm,” Orin adds without glancing up. “Yours, specifically.”

groans, slumping dramatically over the table. “We are so fucked.”

“You forgot the best one,” Elias says, grinning like the bastard he is. “Amara used to bake those lemon cakes you liked, Lucien.”

I glance at him, brows lifting. “She did.”

“She laced them with an aphrodisiac,” Elias continues. “That’s why you couldn’t sleep for three days after.”

Orin’s quill stills. “That explains… several things.”

A long, heavy beat passes.

Then says, voice dry as bone, “This might be the worst intervention in history.”

The room falls quiet again, the weight of what we’ve compiled stretching between us like a noose.

Because it’s funny now.

Until they show up.

And they will.