Page 147 of She Who Was Severed

The blindfold’s still on. Every breath sharpens. Every shift becomes a question I can’t see the answer to. Then his fingers touch the waist of my trousers.

Not fast. Not greedy.

He unbuttons them like it’s sacred.

One at a time. Slow. Intentional. Like he wants me to feel it—not just on my body, but in my chest, in my pulse, in the space between who we were and what we’re about to become.

He peels it down my hips, over my thighs. I feel the air hit my skin. Cool. Electric. His hands follow—palms to the outsides of my thighs, sliding down like he’s memorizing the shape of surrender.

He kisses lower.

Trailing fire where his mouth lands. Over my ribs. My stomach. The curve of my hipbone.

“You’re mine,” he says against my throat. His voice is gravel and heat. “And I’d burn the world for you.”

Another kiss. Lower.

“Because my fire belongs to you.”

He doesn’t ask.

He enters me with the kind of certainty that makes a lie out of every other touch I’ve ever known. Like his body remembered this before we ever earned it.

We find a rhythm older than speech. His hips thrust deep. Deliberate. Like every motion is a sentence in the language we never dared speak aloud. I brace on his shoulders. Breathe through clenched teeth. Burn through my ribs.

The wax cracks. The Chain stirs.

First around his wrist. Then mine.

It doesn’t bind. Doesn’t squeeze.

Just… coils.

Blessing. Witness. Consequence.

His breath breaks against my collarbone. My name slips from his mouth like it costs him.

And I want him to say it again. To ruin me with it.

I pull him closer. Wrap my legs around his waist. He thrusts harder, deeper. My spine arches. His forehead presses to mine, then drops.

He finds the hinge of my jaw.

Kisses it.

“It’s not a goodbye,” he rasps.

I’m already crying when I whisper it back. “It never is.”

The Chain pulses once.

And I know—

This was never about sex.

It was a ritual.

And now it’s carved into memory.