The Binder had saved her life. It had happened, she’d seen it happen, but it still didn’t seem real. In a handful of heartbeats everything she’d known– or thought she’d known– had been reversed.

It hadn’t been the Golden, leonic manifestation of the very Godhood, but the Binder who had leapt into the river after her. Every folktale, every legend, every law of man or nature insisted that the Golden should have been the one to drag her from the rapids. No one was ever saved by Demons.

She huddled in the late summer grass, still breathing in short gasping breaths, expecting the river to somehow reclaim her. Anything was possible now.

The Binder had dispersed, no longer a solid form but a mere shadow on the long grasses. It watched her and it waited.