Page 143 of The Sin Binder's Chains

It blooms inside her and spills into me like it was always meant to live here. Like her love was built from the same madness I was made of. And fuck, it’s so raw. It scares me more than anything I’ve faced. Monsters I can fight. Death I can outwit. But this? This is the kind of power that could hollow me out with a smile.

Her eyes are on mine, watching me unravel.

And I do.

I stare at her like she’s rewritten my origin story and made it better.

“I…” My voice breaks around the truth. I can’t finish the sentence. I don’t deserve to finish it. So instead, I step forward and press my forehead to hers. It’s not a kiss. Not quite. But it’s something more dangerous.

Intimacy.

I want to say something clever. Something stupid and light and very me. But I don’t. I just breathe in the space between us, and I let myself feel it , the bond, the gravity, the unbearable rightness of her.

“You shouldn’t feel that way about me,” I whisper against her skin. “But gods, I’m so fucking glad you do.”

And I share mine back with her. It’s not intentional. I don’t crack open the bond and think yes, let’s spill the mess that is Silas Veyd all over her pretty mind. But the second she gives me hers , raw and aching and impossibly sincere , mine slips through in return like blood from an open wound.

She doesn’t flinch.

She takes it.

She lets it wrap around her.

My feelings aren’t neat or gentle. They’re sharp-edged, erratic, riddled with panic and longing. I’ve spent lifetimes turning everything I feel into a joke, burying it beneath a smirk or a stupid flirtation because it’s easier than this. Easier than letting someone know just how hard they live under my skin.

But now she knows.

She sees what I hide behind the bravado. The need that isn’t polite. The craving that goes deeper than sex or magic or proximity. The truth that when I look at her, I see the end of every escape route I’ve ever clung to.

And she still doesn’t look away.

I stare at her, helpless to stop the bond from bleeding into something too intimate, too dangerous.

I show her the way she colors every damn corner of my mind. How every joke I’ve made about loving her wasn’t a joke at all. How I’ve memorized the exact sound her laugh makes when she’s trying not to let it escape. How I count the seconds between her breaths when she sleeps beside me because it’s the only time I let myself be still.

I show her all the things I swore I’d never let her see.

And in the silence that follows, she reaches out and places her hand against my chest, right over where it aches the worst. The bond pulses. I pulse. And for once, I don’t try to spin it, don’t lace it with a quip or a smirk. I just breathe.

“You’re stuck with me now,” I murmur, the words barely more than a rasp. “And if you ever tell anyone I said anything even remotely romantic, I’ll deny it until I’m bones.”

But she smiles. That soft, knowing smile that undoes me every time. And in her eyes, I see something worse than love.

I see belonging.

And it ruins me.

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