Page 84 of The Sin Binders Ascent

Something shifts in the dark just ahead. Not a creature. Not fog. It’s too angular, too still. A structure, half-submerged and covered in knotted vines that writhe like they’re trying to crawl back into the water. The outline juts out at an angle, jagged stone breaking the current. A ruin, maybe. A dock. A piece of something bigger.

“Luna,” I say, but it comes out ragged, swallowed by another splash behind us.

She doesn’t respond.

I twist, catching her profile. She’s pale beneath the grime, her lashes stuck together with riverwater, and there’s blood mixing with the green sheen along her jaw. Thin streaks, too dark to be anything else. Her breathing’s slowed, like her body’s giving in one gasp at a time.

“Swim to that,” I growl, pointing past her shoulder toward the broken stone.

Still nothing. Her legs are moving, but it’s all instinct now, survival running on fumes. She won’t make it.

I loop my arm around her waist, yanking her against my side. Her head falls against my collarbone and stays there. She doesn’t argue. Just slides her arm around my neck, fingers weak but deliberate, her body going slack in the crook of mine like she’s finally given up pretending she’s fine.

I swim hard, pushing against the current, using every ounce of strength left in my limbs to drag us toward the outcropping. It’s farther than I thought. The current twists like it’s alive, like it’s trying to spin us in circles, forcing my strokes wide and uneven.

Something scrapes my foot from below. Cold and slimy.

I kick harder.

“Almost there,” I mutter, not sure if I’m lying.

The rocks are closer, slick with algae and barbed vines that look like they bite. I spot a notch, a crevice shallow enough to pull her into, where maybe, if we’re lucky, we can rest. Hide. Regroup. Anything other than die here.

She tightens her hold around me, a quiet breath fluttering against my skin like a thank-you or a goodbye.

I don’t ask which.

Luna

The cave barely qualifies as shelter. Just a hollow pocket in the side of a twisted embankment, its entrance veiled by ropes of pulsing black vines that twitch whenever the wind gusts, like they’re sniffing for prey. We pushed our way through them to find maybe five feet of rock floor and a low ceiling that presses close enough to make me duck, even while sitting. Water drips from somewhere above in erratic, mocking rhythm, each drop sharp enough to feel like it could carve skin.

My clothes cling wet and cold to my body. Not damp, soaked through. Every inch of me shudders as the chill sets deeper, a slow gnawing that turns muscle to jelly and bone to ache. My fingertips sting, then go numb. My toes, curled in tight inside my boots, feel like they’ve been filled with wet sand and left to freeze. I press my knees hard into my chest, wrapping my arms around them, trying to hold in what little heat I have left. It doesn’t work. The shivers get worse. It’s a full-body quake now, my breath catching between clenched teeth, my jaw twitching uncontrollably.

Theo sits next to me, his body a warm presence I refuse to lean into. He hasn’t said anything in a while, which is new for him. He’s just there, arms resting loosely on his knees, his eyes on the vine-covered entrance as if he’s trying to see through it. His skin still glistens faintly, like riverlight caught in the angles of hisjaw, but even he looks tired. His shirt clings to him, soaked like mine, revealing lean muscle and too many old scars I’ve never seen before.

I try to stop shaking. My body won’t listen.

The weight of the missing bonds sinks harder into my chest. I keep reaching for them, mentally clawing at the empty places in me where they should be. Riven’s burn, Orin’s warmth, Caspian’s sharp pulse. Lucien’s command always curled around my spine like iron and silk. I try to summon something, anything, but there’s just cold. Just quiet. Like they were never there.

I dig my nails into my arms.

They’ll find me. They have to.

They’ve always found me. Every time the world collapsed, every time a door closed that shouldn’t have, or I walked headlong into the kind of danger we weren’t supposed to be able to walk back out of. They’ve torn through gods for me. Split dimensions. Ripped sky from earth. I know what they’re capable of.

But this place doesn’t feel like the kind of realm that gives second chances. And if I let myself think about that, if I truly believe they won’t come, that maybe theycan’t, that I’ve been severed and abandoned and dumped into a place with living vines and giant insects and a cuff I can’t take off…

I curl tighter. Closer to the edge. My throat closes up, tight and raw. I bite down hard enough to stop whatever noise tries to crawl up.

Theo doesn’t look at me, but I feel him shift closer. Not touching, but near enough that the cuff between us draws taut.

His voice comes low. Careful.

“You’re freezing.”

I don’t answer. He already knows that. My jaw trembles too much for words anyway.

A few more minutes like this and I won’t be able to move. That’s the kind of cold this is. The kind that doesn’t feel urgent until you’re too far gone.

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