Page 48 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

Silas is gutted, utterly, catastrophically gutted, and I feel like an ass for how easy we all made that decision.

Send the bonded one. Send the golden retriever.

The one who’s too honest, too easy to forgive.

..except this time, she didn’t. Luna hasn’t said a word to him since, hasn’t even looked at him unless it was to burn him alive with her eyes.

And gods, it’s not like he was wrong. It’s not like we had better options.

But still, watching him unravel in the aftermath, I wonder if we fed him to her on purpose.

I find him outside camp, far from the others.

He’s standing in the clearing like he’s part of the scenery, back tense, shoulders tight, the moonlight silvering his hair like a blade half-drawn.

He’s been throwing rocks. Not skipping them, not tossing them.

Hurling them into the darkness with this quiet, repetitive fury, as if he throws hard enough, maybe he can lob his guilt into another plane of existence.

I lean against a crooked tree, arms crossed, not bothering to make my presence gentle. “You’re gonna run out of rocks before you run out of guilt, you know.”

He doesn’t stop. Just picks up another one and wings it hard enough, I hear the snap of a tree branch in the distance. He exhales like he’s been holding his breath since she walked away from him. “She hates me.”

“Well,” I drawl, “technically, she hates all of us. You’re just the face of our collective betrayal. Congrats on the promotion.”

He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even flinch. That’s how I know he’s spiraling. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. But you did. And if you hadn’t, someone else would’ve. Probably me. And you know I would’ve made it worse.”

Silas finally turns toward me, eyes hollow, mouth drawn tight. “She trusted me.”

“Yeah,” I say, and that word hangs there for a beat. “She did. And she still will. Eventually.”

He scoffs, bitter. “You don’t know that.”

I push off the tree, walking toward him until we’re standing shoulder to shoulder. “I do. Because she doesn’t hate you, Silas. She hates that it was you. There’s a difference.”

Silas looks down at his hands like he’s still holding something sharp. “I thought being the one to tell her meant I could soften it. Make it hurt less.”

I let out a low whistle. “Sweetheart, you stood in front of a girl with wrath in her blood and told her we were considering sacrificing her sister. There’s no soft version of that.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just breathes. Just bleeds in silence.

I glance at him, then away again, too much in my chest to look him in the eye. “She’ll come around. But when she does… don’t expect it to be clean. You’ll have to earn her again.”

Silas nods, slow and heavy. Then his voice cuts through the dark, raw and stripped bare. “I don’t care how long it takes. I just want her to be okay.”

And for the first time in a long while, I don’t have a joke to cover the ache in my chest. So I just stand there with him. Let the night breathe around us. Let him break in peace.

Silas says it like it’s nothing. Like it’s inevitable. Like breathing.

“I love her.”

The words hang there, soft and reverent, but they cut like a dull blade dragged across the marrow of my bones. I laugh, low, bitter, forced because that’s the only way I know how to respond. If I don’t turn it into a joke, it’ll turn me inside out.

“Of course you do,” I mutter, shoving my hands deep into my coat pockets, kicking at the dirt like a petulant child. “Why wouldn’t you? She’s smart, terrifying, freakishly hot, and occasionally doesn’t stab you when you piss her off. What’s not to love?”

He doesn’t rise to it. Doesn’t even glance my way.

He’s staring at the space where she disappeared into the trees, like the imprint of her is enough to keep him tethered.

Like she’s some sacred thing carved out of divinity and danger, and all of us are just worshippers too afraid to touch the altar.

But not Silas. No, Silas is the golden boy, the bright flame she didn’t snuff out. The one she chose.

And for the first time in a very long time, I fucking hate him for it.

Not because he’s in love with her hell, who isn’t?, but because he used to be mine.

Not in the romantic sense, gods no. But he was mine.

My constant. My favorite person to make miserable.

The only one who laughed when I said something twisted instead of glaring was.

The only one who would willingly crawl into the dark with me just because I asked.

Silas was the one thing in this damned world I didn’t have to explain myself to.

Now he’s hers.

Now I watch him soften in ways he never did with me. Now he looks at her like he was made for her. And I hate that I miss him even while he’s still standing right next to me.

“I just…” I start, then stop, because I don’t know how to say it without sounding pathetic.

I shake my head and try again. “You’ve never loved any of them.

Not the other Sin-Binders. Not even the ones who tried.

You said they were just placeholders. ‘Temporary magic batteries with tits,’ I believe was your phrase. ”

Silas finally turns to me. His expression isn’t smug or defensive. It’s worse. It’s apologetic.

“She’s not like the others,” he says quietly. “You know that.”

Yeah. I know that.

That’s the problem.

Because she didn’t just take Silas’s heart. She took my place, too.

And now, standing in the shadow of the only bond Silas has ever wanted, I feel more unchosen than I have in centuries.

So I grin, wide and poisonous. “Great. Fantastic. Love that for you. Just promise me when you two start making creepy, magical soul babies or whatever, you’ll name one after me. Maybe the angsty one who never shuts up.”

Silas’s mouth twitches. A half-laugh. But there’s sorrow in it too. Like, he knows I’m not just joking. Like he hears the fracture underneath.

“I still need you, Elias,” he says softly.

But it’s too late.

Because he doesn’t need just me anymore.

And I don’t know what the hell to do with that.

“Yeah, well, I don’t need you,” I mutter, arms crossed tight over my chest like a pissed-off teenager, which, for the record, I haven’t been for…

let’s just say a very long time. The words taste petty even as they leave my mouth, but I don’t take them back.

I can’t. Not when he’s looking at me like that.

Not when I know it’s a lie, and worse, so does he.

Silas turns, lips tugging into that goddamned grin, the one that’s always been a little crooked, a little too knowing. It used to be for me. Our mischief, our chaos, our carved-out corner of survival where nothing else mattered. But now?

Now it’s soft.

Now it’s hers.

“You don’t mean that,” he says, not unkindly. Just… certain.

And fuck him for being right.

I drop my arms and sink onto a half-rotted log, glaring at the nothing beyond the edge of camp like it offended me personally.

“I do,” I insist, kicking at a pebble with the tip of my boot.

“I’m thriving. Flourishing, even. You just haven’t noticed because you’re too busy playing soulmates with Little Miss Apocalypse. ”

Silas doesn’t bite. He just moves closer, drops into a crouch across from me, elbows on his knees, like we’re about to have some heart-to-heart bullshit moment. I hate it. I hate how calm he is. How sure. How easy he’s making this look.

“I still want you around, Elias,” he says quietly. “That hasn’t changed.”

And that right there? That’s the worst of it. Because he’s not lying. He means it. He’s not pushing me out, he never has. He’s trying to make space for both of us, like that’s even possible.

But I don’t want space. I want what we had. I want the world before Luna. Before bonds and battles and feelings. Before everything cracked open and started spilling out things I can’t shove back in.

“Yeah,” I say, voice brittle, “but not like before.”

Silas’s grin fades. Just a flicker. But I see it. I know him too well not to.

“No,” he agrees. “Not like before.”

And there it is. The truth between us, raw and undressed. I want to lash out. Say something cruel. Make him feel small just so I don’t.

But I can’t.

Because even now, even gutted, I still love the bastard.

So instead, I do what I do best, I ruin the moment.

“You’re lucky I’m not the jealous type,” I say dryly. “Otherwise, I might be tempted to throw her into a portal and see if you follow.”

Silas barks out a laugh, and it’s not the same, not entirely, but it’s enough.

“I’d follow her,” Silas says, his grin crooked and annoying as ever, but there’s weight behind it. Then he adds, eyebrows wagging like a damn idiot, “But I’d follow you too, if you were thrown into a lava pit.”

I glare at him. “Wow. Romance isn’t dead after all.”

He just shrugs, like his declaration of idiotic devotion is normal. Like we didn’t just crack something open between us again. Because that’s what Silas does, he makes you feel like you’re bleeding and laughing at the same time.

“Would you?” I ask because I hate myself enough to want to know. “Follow me, I mean.”

He tilts his head, pretending to think, but I can already see the answer in his eyes. There’s no calculation there, no delay in loyalty.

“In a heartbeat,” he says, and the humor is gone. Just like that. “I’d cannonball in after you. Arms wide. Middle fingers up.”

It’s stupid. It’s reckless. It’s so Silas, it makes my throat tighten.

“I’d haunt you,” I tell him. “If you died for me. I’d come back just to scratch your records and hide your socks.”

“Worth it.”

I look away, because if I don’t, I’m going to say something I can’t take back. Something like I missed you. Or I don’t want to share you. Or worse, that I’m scared you’re already hers in a way you were never mine.