Page 172 of The Sin Binder's Chains

Of course.

“I’m gonna be sick,” he calls, and I grin against Luna’s skin.

“Jealousy’s not a good look on you, Dain!” I shout back, still holding her like she’s oxygen.

Luna sighs into my neck. “You’re lucky I love you,” she mutters.

“I know,” I say, because I do. I know. And I’m never letting go.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she says, turning like it’s a command and not a suggestion. “So you can grovel more.”

I laugh, because that’s my fucking girl.

She doesn’t wait for me. She never does. She moves through the dark like she’s always belonged to it, hair wild, boots biting into the ashen dirt, spine straight and unforgiving. I follow a few steps behind, like the obedient disaster I am, admiring the view and praying she doesn’t catch me ogling her like I haven’t already had her half a dozen ways in the last week.

But she always catches me.

“You’re staring.”

“It’s not staring,” I say, catching up and bumping her shoulder. “It’s awe. Deep, primal awe. Also, maybe lust. Definitely lust.”

She rolls her eyes and keeps walking.

We cross the edge of camp, past the last embers of Elias’s failed attempt at a fire spell, which exploded, by the way. Not that he’ll admit it. The Void sprawls out in front of us, ink-black and ever shifting, whispering in tongues that claw at the edges of my thoughts. But here, with her, it doesn’t feel as loud.

“Do you forgive me?” I ask, slipping my hand into hers like I have every right.

She lets me. Her fingers don’t tighten, but she doesn’t pull away either.

“I already said I did,” she murmurs.

“Yeah, but I need to hear it like, I don’t know, ten more times. Maybe with some affection? A kiss? Or light groping? That would help my shame wounds heal.”

“You’re shameless.”

“I’m yours,” I counter, grinning like a fool. “Which is worse.”

She glances at me, and her expression slips for a fraction of a second. Just long enough to show me that this isn’t easy for her. That maybe, just maybe, she’s scared too. Not of me, not of us. But of losing something she’s never had before.

“I meant it,” I say, quieter this time. “About loving you. That wasn’t part of the pitch. That was real.”

Luna stops walking.

I nearly trip over my own boots trying to stop beside her. The Void groans somewhere in the distance, but she’s louder. Always louder.

She turns to face me. “You should hate me.”

“For what?” I ask. “Being right? Being stronger than the rest of us? For still believing you can save your sister, even when we’ve already started planning how to survive without her?”

She doesn’t answer. Her jaw tenses.

“I don’t hate you, Luna,” I say, “and I never could. But I’m fucking terrified of how far I’ll fall for you if you ever really let me in.”

Her eyes glint in the dark, and I swear the Void hushes for a breath, like it’s listening.

“I already did,” she says.

Then she yanks me toward her, and the kiss she gives me this time isn’t fury or forgiveness, it’s surrender. It’s hers. It’s mine.I press her back against the gnarled black bark of a tree that wasn’t there yesterday, hands sliding under her coat, into her hair, against her skin like I can anchor myself here in the curve of her mouth and never move again. But she pulls back too fast, smirking.

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