Page 156 of The Sin Binder's Chains

Elias

Silas is gutted, utterly, catastrophically gutted, and I feel like an ass for how easy we all made that decision. Send the bonded one. Send the golden retriever. The one who’s too honest, too easy to forgive...except this time, she didn’t. Luna hasn’t said a word to him since, hasn’t even looked at him unless it was to burn him alive with her eyes. And gods, it’s not like he was wrong. It’s not like we had better options. But still, watching him unravel in the aftermath, I wonder if we fed him to her on purpose.

I find him outside camp, far from the others. He’s standing in the clearing like he’s part of the scenery, back tense, shoulders tight, the moonlight silvering his hair like a blade half-drawn. He’s been throwing rocks. Not skipping them, not tossing them. Hurling them into the darkness with this quiet, repetitive fury, as if he throws hard enough, maybe he can lob his guilt into another plane of existence.

I lean against a crooked tree, arms crossed, not bothering to make my presence gentle. “You’re gonna run out of rocks before you run out of guilt, you know.”

He doesn’t stop. Just picks up another one and wings it hard enough, I hear the snap of a tree branch in the distance. He exhales like he’s been holding his breath since she walked away from him. “She hates me.”

“Well,” I drawl, “technically, she hates all of us. You’re just the face of our collective betrayal. Congrats on the promotion.”

He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even flinch. That’s how I know he’s spiraling. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. But you did. And if you hadn’t, someone else would’ve. Probably me. And you know I would’ve made it worse.”

Silas finally turns toward me, eyes hollow, mouth drawn tight. “She trusted me.”

“Yeah,” I say, and that word hangs there for a beat. “She did. And she still will. Eventually.”

He scoffs, bitter. “You don’t know that.”

I push off the tree, walking toward him until we’re standing shoulder to shoulder. “I do. Because she doesn’t hate you, Silas. She hates that it was you. There’s a difference.”

Silas looks down at his hands like he’s still holding something sharp. “I thought being the one to tell her meant I could soften it. Make it hurt less.”

I let out a low whistle. “Sweetheart, you stood in front of a girl with wrath in her blood and told her we were considering sacrificing her sister. There’s no soft version of that.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just breathes. Just bleeds in silence.

I glance at him, then away again, too much in my chest to look him in the eye. “She’ll come around. But when she does… don’t expect it to be clean. You’ll have to earn her again.”

Silas nods, slow and heavy. Then his voice cuts through the dark, raw and stripped bare. “I don’t care how long it takes. I just want her to be okay.”

And for the first time in a long while, I don’t have a joke to cover the ache in my chest. So I just stand there with him. Let the night breathe around us. Let him break in peace.

Silas says it like it’s nothing. Like it’s inevitable. Like breathing.

“I love her.”

The words hang there, soft and reverent, but they cut like a dull blade dragged across the marrow of my bones. I laugh, low, bitter, forced because that’s the only way I know how to respond. If I don’t turn it into a joke, it’ll turn me inside out.

“Of course you do,” I mutter, shoving my hands deep into my coat pockets, kicking at the dirt like a petulant child. “Why wouldn’t you? She’s smart, terrifying, freakishly hot, and occasionally doesn’t stab you when you piss her off. What’s not to love?”

He doesn’t rise to it. Doesn’t even glance my way. He’s staring at the space where she disappeared into the trees, like the imprint of her is enough to keep him tethered. Like she’s some sacred thing carved out of divinity and danger, and all of us are just worshippers too afraid to touch the altar.

But not Silas. No, Silas is the golden boy, the bright flame she didn’t snuff out. The one she chose.

And for the first time in a very long time, I fucking hate him for it.

Not because he’s in love with her hell, who isn’t?, but because he used to be mine.

Not in the romantic sense, gods no. But he was mine. My constant. My favorite person to make miserable. The only one who laughed when I said something twisted instead of glaring was. The only one who would willingly crawl into the dark with me just because I asked. Silas was the one thing in this damned world I didn’t have to explain myself to.

Now he’s hers.

Now I watch him soften in ways he never did with me. Now he looks at her like he was made for her. And I hate that I miss him even while he’s still standing right next to me.

“I just…” I start, then stop, because I don’t know how to say it without sounding pathetic. I shake my head and try again.“You’ve never loved any of them. Not the other Sin-Binders. Not even the ones who tried. You said they were just placeholders. ‘Temporary magic batteries with tits,’ I believe was your phrase.”

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