Page 154 of The Sin Binder's Vow

Her fingers graze mine as she takes the helmet, and I don’t flinch, but my pulse betrays me. One graze, and everything I’ve spent days suppressing rears up—want, memory,regret.

She spins the helmet in her hands like she’s stalling. “You have a bike,” she says. “Even though you’ve been trapped on campus for centuries?”

I give her a look over my shoulder, already climbing onto the seat. “Our prison was bigger than the school. The perimeter didn’t end at the gates—it bent around the entire valley. Bound by wards older than most gods. But there were ways to stretch it. Rides we could take… if we didn’t stray too far.”

Her eyes narrow. “Why?”

I slide my key in, flick the ignition. The bike growls to life, low and hungry. It’s not enchanted. Not like the ones Lucien rideswhen he wants to impress someone. This one’s all machine—metal, power, and raw defiance.

I look at her as I say it. “Because you’re here.”

She doesn’t respond to that. Not with words.

But she puts on the helmet.

The glitter catches the daylight as she straddles the seat behind me, legs brushing mine. Her hands hover over my waist like she’s trying to decide how close is too close.

I reach back, take her wrists gently, and place them on my hips.

“Hold on,” I say. Not sweet. Not careful. Just fact.

She doesn’t pull away.

She tightens her grip.

And just like that, we’re gone—riding into a town that hasn’t seen us in lifetimes, the wind whipping past us like it’s trying to catch secrets that don’t belong to it.

The road winds beneath us, and Daemon vanishes behind.

But the thing clawing at my chest?

That comes with me. Every damn mile.

I haven’t stepped foot in a town in centuries. Not like this. Not with wind in my hair and a woman who undoes me sitting close enough to hear my heartbeat. Not with the thrum of life pressing in from every side.

Daemon gave us a version of the world. Simulated. Controlled. High-speed access to surveillance, reports, history, commerce. I’ve read more about the modern era than most people living in it. I know how to crash a stock market, corrupt a satellite, drain the accounts of half a continent and leave no trail.

But standing here?

In the middle of a cobbled street turned asphalt, slick with faint neon reflections and the remnants of old power lines coiled around sleek new architecture—

I feel… out of place.

I kill the engine and the bike purrs to a stop, the vibration cutting out like a lifeline pulled. Luna steps off behind me, stripping off the glitter helmet with a slow drag that should be nothing but isn’t. Her hair is a mess. Wind-tossed. Wild. And the sight of her next to a curb, bathed in electric signage and sunlight, should be ridiculous. It isn’t.

She stretches like she owns this place. Like the world simply rearranged itself to give her a stage.

I dismount slower.

And hesitate.

Shops line the street in garish, hungry color—nothing like what I remember. No dusty apothecaries or marble-front bookshops. No highborn fashion with corsets so tight you could mistake discomfort for elegance. This isn’t that world.

Everything’s sharper now. Meaner. Fluorescent. There’s a café across the street with signs written in three languages, two of which didn’t exist when I was last out here. Beside it, a tattoo parlor glows with blacklight ink symbols pulsing in time with a distorted bass I can feel in my spine. The smell of hot oil and ozone wafts from a food cart. The humans walk fast, faces buried in glowing rectangles, oblivious to the creature I’ve always been and the girl beside me who could raze a city if she wanted to.

Luna doesn’t speak.

She watches me.

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