Page 125 of The Sin Binders Ascent

He doesn’t answer right away. But his hand grazes mine.

Then he says, “Then we make one.”

At some point, I stopped hating him. I don’t know when it happened. It wasn’t during one of the fights. Not when he ripped that serpent-limbed horror off my back, its mouths still sucking at my spine. Not when he shoved me behind him and stood between me and a glass-eyed thing with claws like sickles. It wasn’t the moment he pulled me out of the river that flowed the wrong direction, or when he carried me up the cliffside on his back after my leg gave out.

It was slower than that. It crept in between the chaos.

Maybe it started the first time he made me laugh in this gods-cursed place. Told me some ridiculous story about a cult of sex-starved witches who summoned him on accident and refused to let him leave. I didn’t believe a word of it, but the way he told it, with that low, gravel-smooth voice and a grin like he was daring me not to crack, something in me softened.

And once it started, I couldn’t stop noticing it.

The way he always makes sure I eat first, even when the food is barely edible, and we both pretend it tastes like something other than rot and moss. The way he checks my bandages every night without asking, even when I try to brush him off. How he never flinches when I snap or curse or threaten to throw a rock at his head, he just raises an eyebrow like I amuse him, like he’s not keeping a tally of all the ways I’m coming undone.

He doesn’t let me slip into memory. Not for long. When my thoughts spiral, when I start thinking about the kids, the way Silas used to sing to them off-key just to make them laugh, the way Orin’s hand always found mine when I needed grounding, Theo says something that drags me back. Usually crude. Sometimes strange. Once, he pointed to a bird with eyes all over its wings and whispered, “That’s my ex. Don’t make eye contact.”

I almost choked on my spit.

And he makes it bearable, being here. This world changes every time we blink. The trees that curl in on themselves like dying things. The animals that don’t have faces. The water that sometimes whispers things in my own voice. None of it feels quite as sharp when he’s there, when he walks beside me with that lazy stride like he’s above the madness, like nothing here scares him.

He’s warm when everything else is cold. Steady when the ground shifts under our feet. He doesn’t ask for anything. Doesn’t demand comfort or thanks. He justis. Present. Real. And it’s more than I expected. More than I wanted.

And when I do something reckless, when I touch the wrong vine or step too close to something hissing in the dark, he never yells. Never blames me. He just sighs, rolls his eyes like it’s all part of the routine, and fixes it.

Tonight, we stand near the edge of a shattered cliff. Below us, the earth pulses. Literally. Like it’s alive under the surface, breathing slow and shallow, glowing in spots like veins under skin. The cliff face is jagged, torn apart by something that was either divine or starving. Maybe both.

He tosses a rock over the side, watches it fall, and doesn’t look away when it never hits the ground.

“I hate this place,” I say.

“I know.”

My shoulder rests lightly against his. I don’t remember moving closer, but I don’t pull back.

“I hated you,” I add.

He snorts, the sound lazy, amused. “You sure did. Told me you’d rather make out with a blood leech than be stuck here with me.”

“I stand by that.”

“But?”

“But the leech wouldn’t keep me warm.”

His eyes flick to mine, a slow sweep, something quieter behind them. Something real. And I hate how that looks twists something low in my stomach. How it makes me feelseenin a way that’s hard to ignore.

He shifts just enough that his knee brushes mine, and I feel it through every part of me.

“You’re not the worst,” I say after a while.

He smirks. “I’m touched.”

“You don’t yell when I fuck up.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”

“You’re funny.”

He shrugs like he doesn’t care, but he does. I can tell.

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