Page 69

“Where’s Riven?” I demand. My voice comes out lower. Rougher. Not my own.
Silas glances behind me. “He was—”
“I’m here.”
Riven’s voice cuts through everything. Deep. Grounding. A growl and a promise.
He steps forward, jaw tight, eyes already burning red around the edges. “You’re pulling from me.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“That’s the problem,” he says, coming to stand in front of me. He doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t have to. His presence alone is a strike of flint against fire. “It’s instinct. And instinct is chaos unless you learn to command it.”
“I don’thavetime to learn.”
“Make time.” His voice is ice and embers. “Because this isn’t just you now. It’s all of us. You bleed Wrath, you bleed me. Youbleed Sloth, you bleed Elias. You lose control, and we burn with you.”
The words hit. Too true. Too raw.
I close my eyes. Try to slow the pulse. To call the fury back from where it’s reaching into the ground like roots. It takes more than I want to admit. But eventually, the pulsing quiets. The earth stills.
I exhale. Shaking.
And when I open my eyes again, Riven is still watching me. Elias is still beside me. And Silas—bless his idiot heart—is making a “phew” motion like we all didn’t almost get swallowed whole by my tantrum.
But none of them move. Even after everything. Even when I could’ve leveled this village with a heartbeat I didn’t mean to have.
I crack my neck, a Riven move if there ever was one. He does it when he's holding too much fury in his shoulders and doesn't want to speak. I do it now because speaking would betray too much.
The ground might’ve stilled beneath my feet, but that anger—it hasn't gone anywhere. It's shifted. Turned inward. The kind of storm that doesn't shatter buildings but eats through steel from the inside. Silent corrosion.
Because the truth is, I’m not just angry about the girl.
I’m angry at myself.
For caring that he smiled.
For needing more than what we are.
I can’t stop thinking about the way Elias looked at her—light in his silver eyes, warmth in his grin. Not fake. Not forced. He didn’t look at her the way he looks at me. That, somehow, makes it worse.
Because I don’t know what this thing between us is. Not really.
We’re bonded. We sleep together. He says he loves me in the way Elias says everything—slightly unhinged, always half a joke—but I never know if he means it when he says it with that ridiculous grin on his face.
And the truth I don’t want to admit, the one Wrath keeps forcing into the light, is this:
I’m scared I’m not enough for him.
Not because I don’t burn for him. I do. God, I do. But because I’m shared. Fractioned. I give myself to all of them, and no matter how deep the bond runs, how sacred it feels in the dark, when it’s just us… the second daylight hits, I belong to more than one.
And maybe that’s fine. Maybe that’s who I am now. The Sin Binder. The center they orbit.
But I don’t know ifhecan handle that. Not really.
He’s had others. I've never asked how many. I've never wanted to know. But I canfeelthem sometimes—shadows in the way he touches me, ghosts behind the things he doesn’t say. I pretend I don’t notice. Pretend I don’t wonder if, when he closes his eyes, he’s thinking of someone else's laugh. Someone else's skin.
And if I asked?