Page 97 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“She won’t break,” I say, slower this time, trying to convince myself. “She’s stronger than that.”

Elias lifts an eyebrow. “You’re still calling it strength if she’s willing to crawl into bed with the man we locked away for two centuries?”

“She doesn’tknowshe’s with him,” Caspian says, voice tense. “Not fully. It would feel like dreaming. Like craving something you forgot you needed.”

“She’ll know soon enough,” Orin says quietly, hand resting on the hilt of the short blade at his side. “And when she does, he’ll either let her go…”

“Or he’ll become something none of us have seen before,” Ambrose finishes.

We stand there, the seven of us ringed in the twisted woods that pulse with her absence. The trees hum faintly, and somewhere deeper in the forest, something yowls. Not an animal. Not human. Just loud enough to tell us we’re being listened to.

The longer she’s with him, the harder it will be to pull her back.

Not because we can’t reach her.

But because she might not want to come.

Luna

We’ve been running for what feels like hours, though the sky hasn’t changed. Just a sickly indigo glow bleeding through the canopy of the massive trees, the ones that stretch higher than any cathedral I’ve ever seen. Their bark is cracked in places, leaking a slow drip of something the same color as old blood. The ground is slick with moss that smells faintly like honey left too long in the heat. Every step has been a gamble, roots that writhe just enough to trip us, rocks that look solid until your foot sinks through them like they're breathing.

The glowworms came first. Too fast, too many. Their light wasn’t soft. It seared. Their bodies pulsed with something acidic and gleaming, moving through the trees like hunting dogs bred from starlight and venom. We sprinted through a ravine, shallow and clogged with fungal spores that rose around our legs like fog. We barely outran them. Then came the squirrels. Or what looked like squirrels, if squirrels had barbed tails and chittered like they’d seen the inside of hell and wanted to take you back with them. One latched onto Theo’s shoulder. He threw it so hard it bounced off a tree trunk and exploded in a puff of purple gore.

The bat-thing was the worst. Its wingspan alone was bigger than a truck. We ducked through a thorn tunnel with thorns made of bone and shadows and just prayed it wouldn’t follow.

And now we’re here. Hiding under a hollowed-out tree that looks like it died a century ago and never stopped rotting. The roots curl over us like claws, twisted and blackened, the wood cold and damp against my back. The space beneath is barely big enough for one of us. Which is why Theo’s on top of me. Breathing hard. His chest is slick against mine, his weight not unbearable butthere, pressing me into the soil like he’s trying to merge with it. My knees are drawn up, one thigh pinned between his, and I can feel every inch of him. Not in a seductive way. In the way that sayswe survived, and that has to be enough right now.

His breath ghosts across my neck, fast and uneven. Damp curls cling to his forehead. His hands are braced beside my head, one of them bleeding where he caught it on that rusted root while pulling me out of the pit. There’s a cut along my ribs, shallow but slow to clot. I feel it pulse with each heartbeat, heat and sting curling together.

And we’re both bleeding. Which should be fine. Normally. Except we’re meant to bond. And blood would activate the bond if webothwanted it. If we both consented.

My skin is too hot. Not from him. From the way the bonddoesn’tlight up. It’s quiet. Dormant. It knows better. It knows the line hasn’t been crossed yet. But it waits.

His head drops onto my shoulder. I flinch, but barely. There’s not enough room to protest. Not enough energy to bother.

“Sorry,” he mutters, voice rough, quieter than I’ve ever heard it. “There’s nowhere else to put my head.”

“Don’t care,” I say. And I mean it. For once, I really do.

The ceiling of the root system hangs low above us, riddled with fine cracks where strands of silver lichen dangle like thread. Tiny blue beetles flicker in and out of the crevices, but they haven’t tried to eat us yet, so I’ll take the win.

Theo moves just enough to let more of his weight settle into me, like he knows I won’t shove him off. Or like he’s daring me to.

His voice is closer now, breath warm against my neck. “You smell like salt and ash.”

“You smell like something that crawled out of a whiskey bottle and died.”

I feel the slow grin curve against my skin.

We lie there, sweat-soaked and blood-crusted, pinned beneath the roots of something ancient and dead, and for the first time since this nightmare began, my body doesn’t ache with urgency. There’s nothing we can do right now. No next step to run toward. No thing to fight. Just this.

“Do you think that bat thing had babies?”

He groans. “Don’t say that.”

“Because I saw a nest earlier. Hanging from a branch. And I’m not saying they were eggs, but they looked… juicy.”

“If one hatches in here, we die together.”

---