Page 121 of The Sin Binders Ascent

I don’t say what I’m thinking, that this place doesn’t let go. That Brashir doesn’t make decisions that can be unraveled. That her family might not even know where to start.

Instead, I lie. Not because I want to, but because she needs me to.

“They’ll find you.”

She nods once, like she doesn’t believe it but wants to. And I sit there beside her, pretending the thorns around us aren’t slowly inching closer, and that the moon isn’t cracking wider with every passing hour, and that this whole place isn’t shaping itself around her like a god watching its favorite toy wobble on the edge of ruin.

Her gaze stays on the broken moon as if it might shift again, give her a reason to hope. I let her have the quiet for a moment longer, the illusion that we’re resting and not stranded in a place that feels more cursed than created.

Then I say it, soft and even, more admission than story.

“I wasn’t alone. Where they locked me up.”

She turns her head slowly, eyes narrowing, not with suspicion but with interest. The sharp kind. She doesn’t speak, just waits, and that makes it easier to keep going.

“They didn’t throw me in a pit and leave me to rot, if that’s what you’re imagining. It wasn’t a cell with bars. It was a place you entered and couldn’t leave. A space that changed itself around you. You could walk forever and never reach the same edge twice. It fed on time like a leech. Made it impossible to know how long you’d been there.” I pause, watching her closely. “It wasn’t lonely. Not at first.”

Luna frowns slightly. “Then what was it?”

“Crowded. Like someone built a god’s graveyard and forgot to bury the bones.”

I lean back on my hands, looking up at the canopy. The trees don’t block the sky so much as fracture it. Patches of that pale green light filter through, illuminating patches of moss that pulse like breathing skin.

“There were things there. Older than me. Things that couldn’t die, but weren’t alive. Some whispered. Some screamed. Some just watched. You learn to ignore it. You start counting thestillness between their movements like it’s sleep. But you never sleep. Not really.”

Her voice is quiet when she asks, “Did the others know what they were doing to you?”

“Oh, they knew.” I glance at her, mouth curving, but it’s not a smile. “They didn’t put me there for fun. They put me there because I was dangerous.”

She doesn’t ask what I did. She’s too smart for that.

“What did it feel like?” she asks instead.

I take a breath that tastes like dirt and ash.

“Like desire without relief. That’s what the place was made to do. It let you want everything, and gave you nothing. I remember once, I saw a door. Just… a door. Standing in the middle of a salt flat, light bleeding around the frame. I ran toward it for days. No sleep. No food. Just this need in my chest, growing hotter, tighter, like if I touched that handle I’d finally feel something that wasn’t hunger.” I pause, jaw flexing. “The door wasn’t real. Neither was the salt. My hands were raw from clawing at stone.”

Her brow furrows. Her voice softens again, like it might splinter if she lets it rise too high. “And the others? Were they like you?”

“No. Worse.”

She goes still.

“Want is pure when it’s yours. But when you’re locked in with things made of want, molded by it, twisted around it, you start to see what it looks like when obsession goes unchecked. I was the only one who remembered what it meant towait.What it meant tochoose.The rest of them… they forgot. Or maybe they never knew.”

She studies me, eyes tracing my face like she’s cataloging every piece, trying to match it with this version of me. The one she’s never seen. The one none of them ever asked about.

“I stopped wanting things for a long time,” I say. “Stopped thinking about taste or heat or company. But then I started remembering them again. One by one. A bite of ripe fruit. The burn of sunlight on skin. A laugh that wasn’t mine.”

My eyes meet hers, and this time, I let her see it all. The weight. The time. The ache of desire not denied but dissolved, atom by atom.

“I remembered voices before I remembered names. Laughter before faces. But yours…” I tilt my head, slowly, watching her exhale. “I remembered yourwant.Before I even knew your name.”

Her throat works around a swallow. The pulse in her neck beats faster.

“And what was it?” she asks.

I look at her, and I don’t blink.

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