Page 99 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“What, hungry?”

“No.” His voice dips lower. “Calm.”

“I think I’m just too tired to be mad at you.”

He gives a quiet, bitter laugh. “You’ll make up for it later.”

“Probably.”

The moss under my back is starting to dry from the heat of our bodies, a subtle shift that makes the cold less sharp around the edges. The longer we stay like this, the easier it is to forget how awful everything smells. Or that we’re being hunted. Or that I’mbonded to the person I probably hate the most in any world. Or maybe I just want to hate him, and that’s worse.

He glances at my arm. His voice softens. “That cut still bleeding?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Don’t make this weird.”

“I’m lying on top of you in a root coffin in some nightmare version of Narnia. I think we passed weird six hours ago.”

I try not to laugh, but it slips out anyway. It’s breathy and cracked and so small I almost miss it.

His palm slides to rest just over my ribs, the spot where the cut is. His touch is light. Tentative. And I don’t stop him. Like he's afraid of startling me, or maybe afraid of how close we still are. His chest rises against mine as he shifts his weight onto one elbow, and for a second, he just looks down at me. Not in that usual smirking, cocky way he wears like second skin. This is quieter. His eyes are still too blue, the kind that belong in mythology, not real life, but there's something steadier in them now.

Then his gaze drops to my mouth.

Andnope.

If he kisses me, if he eventhinksabout kissing me, I swear on every god that’s ever existed, I will knee him in the balls so hard he’ll remember this moment from the afterlife.

But instead, his hand moves. Just his fingertips at first, brushing lightly against my temple. He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, gentle in a way that doesn’t match anything else about him. My hair’s plastered to my face, soaked with sweat and dirt and whatever horror-spores we ran through earlier, and he still does it like I’m something precious.

“There,” he says, quiet and half a breath, “now I can see you.”

I roll my eyes. “You could see me just fine while you were crushing me.”

“I was not crushing you. You said I wasn’t crushing you.”

“I also said brunch was real and you didn’t believe me, so clearly your judgment’s already compromised.”

His lips twitch, and that’s worse than a full smile.

“You look like hell,” he says, almost fondly. “Your face is doing this thing where it’s halfway between pissed off and unconscious.”

“I’ve been sprinting through cursed foliage for half the day. I didn’t exactly have time to reapply mascara.”

His fingers brush down, trailing along the edge of my jaw. Warm. A little rough from the fight earlier. I should push him away. There’s no excuse for this much contact when we’re not actively dying anymore. But the shelter is cramped, and his body’s warm, and my legs still don’t want to move.

“You’re really not going to kiss me right now, are you?” I ask, mostly to break the moment, mostly to remind us both who we are.

His eyebrows lift, that lazy drawl sliding into his voice like it always does when he’s trying too hard to sound casual. “If I wanted to kiss you, I wouldn’task.”

“Cool. Good. Just checking. Because I’m not above biting you.”

He leans in a little, his face close enough now that I can count the freckles dusted across his cheekbones. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

I groan, dropping my head back into the dirt. “How are you like this when we’re both half-dead?”