I didn’t think. Didn’t warn Creed. Didn’t prepare. I just went for him.
That was my mistake.
His delirium—his Chaos—blinded me to the fact that we weren’t alone.
Sabelline caught me instantly, wrapping me in her power. Creed cut me free just as fast, but she retaliated, throwing him from the platform and summoning her subjects to capture the sons of Obliteration and Sevryn.
While they fought, she spiraled. Talking about hiding me from Kirabaddon, then gifting me to someone else like I was some precious freaking jewel.
Mellcom…arrived just in time.
He tackled her, and they vanished through a starshoot.
I didn’t dwell on it. I fought off the guards chasing him and went straight to freeing Riven.
Seeing him like that gutted me. Worse, I was terrified he’d feel my Chaos and understand what it meant.
Creed’s death sword sliced through his chains like butter, and one by one, the others made it back to the platform.
Eventually, Mellcom did too—beaten, barely standing, but alive.
Then Riven, in true fashion, threw vials into the air without warning.
Thank fuck my power responded to my call and I starshot home just before the building exploded.
Because it did explode. He finally destroyed it.
He wasn’t with us when we arrived, and panic spiked. Until I realized where he’d gone, and I convinced the others to let me go to the hot spring alone.
There…we had our moment.
Truths were spoken. Lines were drawn. From that point on—we were together.
Then he admitted he’d tampered with the Binding.
And just like that—everything shifted.
We had the Binding. The Goddess of Seduction had a torch lamp.
Nothing was the same after.
Yemi could barely look at Sevryn after Seductions forced her to throw herself at him. My men withdrew in the days that followed, shaken by being back in the Abandon.
Emotions tangled through the house like threads we couldn’t untie.
We did get those threads untangled, eventually. Starting with me finding Riven in my bathtub without me.
He needed to know the worst parts of me. I needed the same from him.
When he opened up about his role as the Empowerer, it shifted everything—pushing us exactly where we needed to be.
I took his virginity—didn’t know I was doing that, by the way—and sealed my soul to his.
It was perfect.
The next morning, I set out to break the suffocating silence hanging over the house. Instead, I found Kyzen on the edge of losing himself to the darkness he keeps buried.
That was when I truly understood how deeply the Abandon—and what his father forced him to do—still affects him.
