Page 181 of The Sin Binder's Chains

She doesn’t blink. “I’m not looking for safety.”

“No,” I murmur. “You’re looking for clarity.”

She doesn’t like that either.

“Do you think I’ve changed?” she asks suddenly. “That the binding… shifts something in me?”

“Not something,” I say. “Everything.”

Her breath stutters just once, then evens out.

“You don’t feel it all at once,” I continue. “That’s the trick. It creeps in. A thought that doesn’t feel like yours. A hunger thatnever used to be there. The way you flinch when you should strike. Or strike when you should stop. Silas taught you need. Riven taught you fury. And Elias…”

I trail off.

She swallows. “He’d teach me what?”

“Chaos,” I say simply. “He’d teach you how to shatter things that were never meant to be whole.”

She looks away, jaw clenched. “You make it sound like I’m not myself anymore.”

“No,” I say, softer now. “I think you’re more yourself than you’ve ever been.”

“But?”

“But if you bind with too many fragments before you’re ready, you won’t be able to tell which thoughts are yours anymore. And then you won’t be a Binder. You’ll be a reflection.”

She’s quiet. For a long time.

Then she says, “And you? What would I get if I bound with you?”

I feel her watching me. Measuring me. Not with fear. With fascination.

“You’d get stillness,” I say at last. “But it would come with a price.”

Her voice is barely audible. “Which is?”

“You’d crave it. Constantly. You’d ache for quiet even when the world is screaming. And that hunger would never leave you.”

She breathes out. “That doesn’t sound like a burden.”

“No,” I say. “It sounds like love.”

She turns away then, but only to steady herself. Behind us, Elias lets out a loud snore that’s fake.

I glance toward the ruins. Then back at her.

“You should rest,” I say.

She hesitates. Then nods. “You’ll wake me before dawn?”

“Always.”

She walks away without another word.

But I feel it.

The way she wants to ask.

The way she’s afraid of the answer.

She won’t bind with Elias. Not yet.

But he’s already under her skin.

Just like the rest of us.

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