Page 61 of The Sin Binders Ascent

Shackled,shackled, to Theo of all people. Golden cuff at my wrist, like some twisted divine joke, like the gods were drunk and laughing when they signed off on this. Maybe they still are.

I shift onto my side, dragging the cuff with me, and it resists,tight, inflexible, an ever-present reminder that there is no walking away from this. Fromhim.

“Do you always breathe this loud?” I mutter into my pillow.

Below me, Theo makes a wounded sound. “Are you serious right now?”

“Just trying to calculate how many decibels I can take before I go feral.”

He exhales dramatically, like he’s performing in a play only he can see. “I’ve been through many things, Luna. Shackles. Betrayal. Centuries of magical solitude. But this? Your cruelty? Truly the darkest of them all.”

I shove the pillow harder beneath my head and let out a long, frustrated groan. “You’re so dramatic.”

“Says the woman currently seething into Egyptian cotton.”

“It’s not Egyptian cotton.”

“I know. It’s appalling.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, clutch the edge of the blanket, and remind myselfthis is temporary.This has to be temporary. Because if I think too long about what it means to have him here, in my room, in my space, breathing my air like he has any right to it,my sanity is going to start leaking out of my ears.

Is this really how it ends? After thirty years of fighting fate, of clawing my way through every lie and prophecy and twisted bond,I get stuck withhim?

Theo shifts again, and the cuff yanks my wrist. I swear it takes everything in me not to leap off the bed and smother him with the threadbare blanket I so graciously offered.

He hums, low and irritatingly pleased. “You’re thinking about me, aren’t you?”

“Only about where I’d like to bury your body.”

There’s a pause.

“Romantic,” he says.

I let my head fall back with a heavythunkagainst the mattress and wonder,for the first time in a long time,if I made some kind of cosmic wrong turn.

Because this? This cannot be the right fucking path.

Theo

She’s going to murder me. Probably not tonight,she doesn’t strike me as impulsive when it comes to actual blood,but give it a few days, let this whole cuff situation steep in that righteous little fury of hers, and I’ll wake up with a pillow over my face and vengeance in her eyes.

Still, I smile.

Not a sweet smile. Not a charming one. No,this is the kind of grin that used to get me dragged out of temples and thrown into rivers by priests who didn’t appreciate what I said to their wives. I make sure it stretches slow and wide, just enough to rattle her.

She shifts again, muttering something venomous under her breath. I draw in a long, obnoxiously loud breath and sigh it right back out.

She stiffens.

Gods, she’s fun.

“You’re doing that on purpose,” she says, voice hoarse with exhaustion and barely-leashed rage. She sounds frayed,frustration peeling at the edges of whatever self-control she has left.

I roll onto my side, one arm propped beneath my head, gaze tracing the line of her back. She’s curled away from me like her spine is made of ice and indignation. "Doing what?" I ask innocently. “Breathing?”

“Existing.”

“Ah.” I let the syllable hang like smoke. “Well, if it helps, I find your rage very soothing. Like a lullaby wrapped in daggers.”

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