Page 122 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“You wantedout.Even back then. You didn’t even know you were already in a cage.”

The forest leans around us. A breeze moves through the leaves, but it doesn’t carry comfort. It carries scent. Memory. The thrum of a world built on all the wrong rules.

I reach down and draw a line in the dirt beside her foot with my fingertip.

“Out there,” I say, “this place is going to keep changing. The trees won’t stay still. The paths will fold back on themselves. But we keep moving..”

She glances at the mark, then at me.

“And when we reach the next thing that wants to kill us?”

I grin.

“Let me go first. I’ve been in worse places.”

She lifts an eyebrow, and it’s all the warning I get before she lets out a low, dramatic sigh and rolls her eyes. She drags the toe of her boot through the mark I just drew in the dirt, smudging the line with a lazy sweep.

“Look at you,” she says. “Offering to go first like some tragic, reformed anti-hero. Real noble of you, Theo. I’m almost moved.”

I glance at her out of the corner of my eye, a grin tugging at my mouth. Her sarcasm lands somewhere warm in my chest. I like it when she teases me. She does it like it’s muscle memory, like the sharpness is real but never cruel. There’s affection under it. Reluctant, but there.

I stretch my legs out in front of me, boots crunching against the scattered gravel and roots beneath us, and let out a low chuckle that vibrates more in my throat than my chest.

“I’m growing,” I say, giving her a mock-serious look. “You should be proud.”

She scoffs, but there’s the ghost of a smile at the edge of her mouth. “You don’t grow, Theo. You loiter.”

“Not true. I evolve. Slowly. Like cursed wine or radioactive fruit.”

She lets out a sound halfway between a laugh and a breath. Then she leans forward, elbows resting on her knees, fingers loosely laced in front of her. Her eyes roam across the dark tree line beyond the stone circle, watching it the way someone watches deep water. Not with fear. With calculation.

“You know,” she says, still staring out ahead, “the old you probably would’ve let me go first. Just to see what would happen.”

I nod slowly. “Probably.”

Her gaze flicks back to me, the curve of her lip sharper now. “So what changed?”

“You did.”

She goes still, just for a second. But I see it. The way her fingers tighten, then loosen again.

“I’m not trying to save you,” I add, my voice quieter now. “That’s never been my instinct. But I know what it’s like to bestuck. To be reduced to your worst version by something you didn’t choose. I hated it.”

“I’m not looking for a savior,” she finally says, softly. “Just a way out.”

“I’m not a savior,” I murmur, leaning forward, elbows on my knees beside her. “I’m just someone who knows how to survive in places like this.”

“And you think I don’t?”

“I think you’ve always had magic to burn your way through everything,” I say. “Now you don’t. That changes the game.”

She huffs and pushes her hair off her face, eyes narrowing. “You’re not wrong. Doesn’t mean I like hearing it.”

“I wouldn’t like me either, if I were you.”

“You do love yourself, though.”

“Absolutely.”

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