Page 49 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

And maybe that’s what this is. The root of the rot I can’t cut out. Not that I want Luna. Not even that I can’t stand her, though sometimes I swear she breathes just to piss me off. It’s that she’s changing everything. That she’s peeling him away from me, one soft look at a time.

“I hope she’s worth it,” I mutter.

“She is,” Silas says quietly. “But so are you.”

I hate how easily he says it. Like it’s just a fact. Like it doesn’t make something deep in my chest crawl with grief. Like I haven’t spent centuries pretending I don’t need anyone, so I wouldn’t feel this exact thing.

“She’s not even that cute,” I mutter, mostly to myself, but Silas is close enough to hear it, of course, he is. “She has… terrible eyelashes. Way too long. It’s unnatural. Like they’re plotting something.”

He doesn’t say anything at first, just gives me this side-eye smirk like he knows exactly what I’m doing. Because he does. And that makes it worse.

“They flutter when she lies,” I add, arms crossed as I glare in the general direction of the campfire. “It’s not charming. It’s manipulative. They should be declared weapons. I bet they have their own shadow.”

Silas hums in mock sympathy. “It must be so hard for you.”

“I’m suffering,” I deadpan. “Truly. And no one cares.”

He chuckles, the traitorous bastard.

“She’s not even my type,” I mutter. “Too… bossy. Too loud. Too, ”

“Too much like someone who keeps you up at night?” Silas supplies, teeth flashing.

I groan, dragging a hand down my face. “Do you want me to throw myself into the fire, or are you just hoping I’ll combust from emotional repression?”

Silas shrugs. “I’d pay to see either.”

He’s trying to make it easier, I know that.

Trying to ease the twist of something raw in my chest that I can’t name, because if I do, it becomes real.

Becomes something I can’t ignore or joke away.

It’s not about love. It’s about gravity.

She pulls at me like she’s made of stars, and my bones forgot how to orbit anything else.

“I’m not jealous,” I say, even though no one asked. “I just don’t like her stupid face. Or the way she laughs like it means something. Or how she smells like blood and something sweet, and I, ”

“Elias.”

I glance up. Luna’s voice. Not loud, but sharp enough to pierce right through me.

She’s looking at me. Just me. I forgot what I was saying. Forget how to stand, or breathe, or speak. My mouth opens. Nothing comes out.

Silas laughs under his breath, clapping me on the shoulder as he passes by. “You were saying?”

I shove him, but it’s weak. She’s still looking. I don’t know if she heard everything or nothing, but the way her brow arches suggests it was enough.

And I, the ever-composed, ever-cruel Elias Dain, do the only thing I can think to do in the moment.

I wink.

It’s stupid.

It’s pathetic.

She blinks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

I think I have.

And I hate how good that makes me feel.

She’s coming toward me.

Which means I’ve been caught. Hunted. Tracked by the most dangerous creature this side of the Rift, a woman who sees straight through the smugness and sardonic jokes I wear like armor.

And of course, the bastard who was supposed to shield me, Silas, my ride-or-die, my chaos twin is now mysteriously nowhere in sight.

Poof. Vanished. Like some grinning, curly-haired traitor who knew this was coming and decided to yeet himself into the Void before I could drag him down with me.

I consider doing the same. But it’s too late. I can feel her presence already. It rolls through me like heat, too specific, too knowing. And then there’s her scent. That impossible combination of magic and danger and something sweet, I don’t have the vocabulary for.

And I am doomed.

She stops in front of me, arms crossed, eyebrows lifted like she already knows the crime and is just waiting for my pathetic defense. Her mouth is pursed, her gaze level. The long lashes I mocked an hour ago now seem... spiteful in their perfection.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she says.

I blink. “Me? Avoiding you? Pfft. Please. I’ve just been... patrolling the area for, you know, deadly squirrels. Real menace lately.”

She doesn’t even blink.

“Okay,” I admit. “Maybe one deadly squirrel.”

“Elias.”

Her voice is calm, but it coils around me like a noose. My brain is telling me to back up, to retreat, but my body’s an idiot, because I lean in instead. She smells like trouble. Like heat and old blood and whatever part of me still remembers how to ache.

I grin. It’s not convincing, not even to me. “If I say you look intimidating right now, will that buy me some mercy?”

“No,” she says simply.

I sigh. Dramatically. “Knew it.”

She doesn’t speak right away. Just watches me. Not with fury, or even irritation. No, what I see in her eyes is worse. It’s understanding. She knows I’m dodging. She knows I’m scared. And she’s not letting me go until I admit it.

“You’re not funny when you’re hiding,” she says, softer now.

“That’s wildly untrue,” I reply. “I’m hilarious under duress. It’s my brand.”

“You voted with them,” she says, and just like that, the air shifts. “You sent Silas. You knew what they were going to say.”

I could lie. I could spin something clever, shrug it off. But something in he, maybe the way her voice caught at the edge, makes my chest twist in a way I don’t want to name.

“I didn’t want to,” I say quietly. “But yeah. I knew.”

She looks at me for a long moment, and then nods, stepping back like she’s already done with me. Like I’m another coward, she won’t waste time fighting.

Which is when I panic.

“I would’ve gone instead,” I blurt, and she turns. “If it were up to me, I would’ve gone to talk to you. I just… I didn’t think you’d look at me the same way afterward.”

A beat of silence.

She tilts her head, brows lifting. “And what way is that?”

I look at her. And I want to laugh at myself, because even now, with everything falling apart, I want to touch her. To say something that makes her laugh again. I want her eyes on me like I matter.

“You know what way,” I say.

She doesn’t smile. But she doesn’t walk away, either.