Page 80 of The Sin Binders Ascent

He tilts his head slightly. “It’s not just this place,” he murmurs. “You’ve looked worse since the second we landed.”

I want to tell him to shut up. Want to tear into him again, anything to keep the grief from rising in my throat like bile. But it sticks there. Thick and hot and all-consuming.

“I can’t feel them,” I whisper. “The bonds. They’re just… gone.”

Theo goes still. I mean, truly still, like even the breath in his chest suspends. His gaze flickers to my wrist, then back up to my face.

“Gone?” he says, like he’s testing the word on his tongue, like it doesn’t quite make sense to him either.

I nod, jaw tight. “It’s like they were never there.”

He doesn’t say anything, and the absence of his usual sarcasm makes the silence stretch longer. I expect a joke. A jab.Something about how maybe it’s better for them not to be inside my head. But nothing comes. Just the weight of his stare, more sobering than I want it to be.

“I didn’t do this,” he says finally, voice low.

“I know.”

The admission surprises both of us.

Because for all the reasons I could hate him, for the constant irritation of his presence, for what he is, this isn’t him. I’d feel it if it were. Desire twists. But it doesn’t destroy.

He moves a little closer, and I let him, which feels like another betrayal. “Then we find out who did.”

I don’t tell him I’m scared. I don’t tell him that without my power, I feel like a ghost trapped in her skin. But I don’t have to.

Because even though he’s Desire, not Comfort, even though everything about Theo is sharp edges and bad decisions wrapped in silk, he doesn’t reach for me.

He just walks.

And I follow, because we're bound. And I might need him more than I want to admit.

“What exactly happened?” Theo asks, the words softer than I expect from him, and far more dangerous for it.

I keep walking. Not because I have somewhere to go, because I don’t, but because standing still in this place feels like inviting something to find us. The ground shifts beneath our boots like it resents being walked on, like it remembers blood and wants more of it. Even the trees lean in, their bark a raw gray color, almost bruised, their branches twisting unnaturally toward one another like they’re whispering secrets I’m not supposed to hear.

“I don’t know,” I say, the admission scraping at my throat. I hate not knowing.

But I don’t. One second, I was staring at the harp, strung with something I still don’t believe was silk. The music was growing,swelling into something primal, a melody that knew my name even though no one played it…and then…

“Something grabbed me,” I mutter, rubbing my ribs through my shirt like the memory of it still lingers there. “Around my waist. I couldn’t see what it was. It was fast. Cold. But not like ice, it was colder in a way that feltancient. Like a void. Like absence.”

He’s watching the shadows between the trees like they’re going to reach out and touch him. Maybe they will.

“Could’ve been something from the harp,” he murmurs. “Or something, it woke up.”

I stop walking.

He does, too, just one step ahead, the cuff between us pulled tight.

Because I see them now.

Red. Dozens of them.

Eyes.

They glow from the treeline like pinpricks carved into shadow, watching. Waiting. Unblinking. Too high to be wolves. Too low to be birds. Toostillto be anything natural. I don’t hear breathing. Don’t hear movement. Just the eerie rustle of the wind threading through the massive stalks of grass that brush the tops of my thighs like hands, and the low moan of something far away… something the air itself seems to carry like a warning.

“What the fuck are those?” I whisper.