Page 67 of The Sin Binder's Chains

"You shouldn’t be here," I say instead. "You never could resist the smell of blood, but I doubt Severin lets his dogs off the leash for nothing."

His smirk returns, lazy. "You still talk like you’re the one in control."

I am in control. Even here. Even chained. Even bleeding.

His smirk sharpens. "You know why they let me come in?" He crouches, gripping the chains at my wrists, pulling just enough to make the cuffs bite deeper. "Because I asked."

A slow, steady pulse of energy surges into me, forcing my head back, forcing my spine to arch, dragging pain down my ribs like claws. But it isn’t the chains this time.

It’s him.

Vaelrik leans in, breath brushing against my jaw, his voice low and mocking. "I wanted to see it for myself. How far you’d fall. How long before you break."

I meet his gaze. Hold it. And smile.

"Keep waiting," I murmur. "You’ll die long before that happens."

Vaelrik has always been a sadist, but he’s never been creative about it.

He doesn’t waste breath on subtle cruelty. Doesn’t toy with emotions the way others might. No, his knives carve straight to the bone, blunt force trauma disguised as words.

And he knows exactly where to cut.

"You let it happen, didn’t you?" He leans in, eyes gleaming with something feral. "The great Riven Kain, chained. Not just here." His fingers graze my throat, pressing against the collar, biting into my skin. "But to her."

I don’t react. I don’t give him anything.

Because this is what he wants, to see it. The crack beneath the surface. The proof that Luna Evernight is a wound I can’t close.

He exhales, amused. "She got inside you. I can feel it."

Vaelrik was always more animal than man, his instincts honed sharper than even Lucien’s cold precision. He doesn’t need magic to sense weakness, he can smell it.

And this, the bond, the connection threading between my ribs like a blade that refuses to kill me, is blood in the water.

"I thought you were smarter than this." He circles me again, dragging his fingers along the chains stretched across my chest, watching them tighten on cue. "You, of all people, should know what happens when you let someone else in."

I do know.

I know it better than he ever could.

Because I’ve seen what happens when bonds fail.

I’ve seen what happens when something is bound too tightly, when power latches onto something fragile, something breakable, and ruins it from the inside out.

"You’re quiet." Vaelrik tilts his head, a smirk curling slowly at the edges of his mouth. "That’s unlike you. Normally, you’d be, " he lifts a hand, mimicking a mouth moving, "snarling, fighting, lashing out. But you’re just sitting here, licking your wounds, like a hound waiting for its master to come back."

I almost laugh. But because he thinks he understands.

"You want me angry," I murmur, tilting my head back against the cold stone wall. "That’s cute."

His grin widens. "No, brother."

The next thing I feel is fire.

Not real fire. Not flame or heat, but the sick, devouring burn of him.

The way his power sinks into the marrow of the world, feeding, pulling, swelling, drinking in whatever carnage was spilled outside this chamber.

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