Page 126 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“And you make this place… less awful,” I admit.

There’s a beat. A real one.

“You ever wonder why you’re still sane?”

I glance at him. “Define sane.”

“Because this place is made to hollow people out. To make them forget who they were. You remember your lovers. Your children. The world you came from. That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Why is it?”

He finally looks at me. Not through me.Atme.

“Because I won’t let it take you.”

It hits me harder in moments like this. When the wind goes still, and the things in the trees stop whispering. When Theo’swarmth bleeds quietly into my side and the world pauses its relentless reshaping just long enough to remind me what stillnessfeelslike.

I’m wrestling.

And not with him.

Withthis.

This ache that started as resistance, bloomed into wariness, and now settles low in my chest like something blooming where it shouldn’t. Like somethingtrue.It gnaws at me when I catch myself watching him too long, when I laugh too hard at something he says, when I crave the sound of his voice because it means I'm stillhere. Still me.

It feels like betrayal. Sharp and unfair.

Because Ilovethem. My Seven. Lucien’s steady strength, Ambrose’s cunning affection. Riven, who is carved from fury and has only ever been soft for me. Orin’s ancient eyes and hands that never shake when he heals. Caspian’s loyalty runs deeper than blood, and Elias and his exhausting chaos masks the most observant heart I’ve ever known. Silas, wild, brilliant, utterly incapable of subtlety, whose grin could wake the dead.

I love them like air. Like fire. Like limbs, I don’t know how to live without.

But I’m here. Theo is here. Andsomewherein the bone-deep root system of this place, the gods are watching.

Blackwell planned this. He alwaysplans. He didn’t cuff me to Theo because it was convenient. He did it because he believed this was fate. Because I’m the Sin Binder, and Theo is the eighth.

Desire.

Not lust. Not craving. Somethingworse. Something deeper. He is thewantbehind all wants. The kind that scrapes at your ribs from the inside out until you feed it or fall to it. The kind that makes monsters out of mortals.

And he’s growing into me.

I feel it in every glance that lingers too long, in every moment where he shields me without asking, in the jokes he tosses like shields when he knows I’m seconds away from cracking. I feel it in the way my hand doesn’t shake anymore when I reach for his. I feel it in the way I lean toward his voice before I know what he’s saying.

This is what my men feared. Not because they don’t trust me. But because theyknowme. They knew that if I ever met the eighth Sin, I wouldn’t be able to stop the bond. I could try to deny it, rage against it, spit and curse and cling to what I had, but it would still take root. Because it’s not aboutchoiceanymore.

It’s aboutdesign.

I hate that Theo feels like somethingmeant.Something inevitable. Because if it’s fate, if it’s divine order, then maybe what I had before this was only ever borrowed. Maybe my bond with the Seven was always meant to be incomplete.

Maybe that’s why the gods intervened. But that can’t be true. Iknowwhat I had with them. Stillhave. That kind of love doesn’t get rewritten by celestial whim.

Still.

Theo turns his head, his eyes catching mine in the broken light. His mouth curves, lazy and soft, and I feel my body lean in half an inch without even thinking. My breath hitches. Just a little.

I shouldn’t want him.

Not like this.

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