Page 198 of The Sin Binder's Chains

“But Luna, if she calls to what’s still inside me… what was written there first, it won’t feel like possession. It’ll feel like memory.”

I stare at him.

And something inside me fractures. Just a little.

He presses a hand to the wall between us, like he’s offering a kind of anchor I didn’t ask for.

“You don’t take, Luna. That’s your strength. But it’s also your weakness.”

I want to argue. I don’t.

Because I know what he means.

“I’ve bound them with choice,” I say. “With consent.”

“And she’ll bind us with hunger.”

I look away, because I can already feel it, how seductive that kind of power could be. How easy it would be to pull instead of wait. To demand instead of offer.

“She’s not just coming for your bond,” Orin says. “She’s coming for the meaning of it.”

I sit in the silence a little longer.

And when I speak, it’s not a question.

It’s a promise.

“Then we make sure she regrets ever rising again.”

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