Page 50 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

I shouldn’t care how he looks at me. I shouldn’t notice the way his shoulders slump when he thinks I’m not watching, or how he can’t seem to meet my eyes now that everything’s fractured between us.

But I do.

And it makes me furious.

Because I should be furious. I am furious.

They’re talking about sacrificing Layla like she’s a goddamn chess piece.

Like her body, her life, and her soul can be bartered for convenience.

And not one of them, not one, had the decency to say it to me outright.

Instead, they voted. Whispered. Plotted.

And when it came time to break the news, they threw Silas at me like he was a balm.

A distraction. The one they knew I couldn’t bear to hurt.

But Elias? He was part of that. The smirking, unbothered one.

The one who makes it seem like nothing matters, like I don’t matter.

And now here he is, sulking in front of me, quiet in a way that makes me more unsettled than when he’s cracking jokes.

Because Elias is not talking is Elias feeling, and that’s always a little dangerous.

"You’re upset,” he says, voice low. Careful.

“No shit,” I snap, crossing my arms so I don’t punch him. Or worse, reach for him. “They want to offer up my sister. You don’t get to play surprised.”

He winces, and it’s real. Not performative. Not the sarcastic flinch I’ve seen a hundred times when I call him out. This is smaller. Sharper. Something that carves at the edges of his expression, like he’s trying not to let it show how much that truth cuts him, too.

“I didn’t want this,” he says, finally meeting my gaze. “But you know how Lucien is. Once he decides something’s strategic, the rest of us are just... roles to play.”

“And you just played yours?” I ask, bitter and cold. “You voted for it. You stood there while they decided my sister was disposable.”

His jaw tics. “You think I didn’t lose sleep over it? You think I’m not still losing sleep over it?”

“Why should I care if you lose sleep?” I ask, stepping closer. The pull between us shivers, subtle but undeniable. It doesn’t care that I’m angry. It doesn’t give a damn that I want to shove him away. It only knows that he’s mine. That part of me wants him to hurt because he matters.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t smirk. And that, more than anything, makes my stomach twist.

“Because you always care, Luna,” he says, soft but unflinching. “Even when you’re ready to set us on fire.”

His voice is stripped of humor now, stripped of the armor he usually wraps around himself so tightly no one can touch him. I hate that it disarms me. I hate that I see the truth in him when I want to only see the betrayal.

“Do you even like me?” I ask, my voice breaking without permission. “Or am I just something to fuck when you’re bored? A distraction until the next time you and Silas come up with something reckless to keep yourselves entertained?”

That finally makes him flinch. His mouth opens, then closes. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, and for a second, just a second, he looks lost. Not cocky. Not amused. Just... wrecked.

“I like you too much,” he says quietly. “That’s the problem.”

I don’t respond. I can’t. Not when everything inside me is twisting, rage and need, betrayal and longing, so tightly I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

Elias shifts his weight like the ground beneath him is made of needles. Hands slide into his pockets, but it’s not casual. It’s a retreat. A stall tactic. And I know him well enough by now to recognize the exact second the sarcasm leaves and the truth threatens to claw its way out.

He doesn’t look at me.

That’s how I know he’s serious.

“If it were just sex,” he says finally, voice low and raw, “I wouldn’t still be here.”

His words hit softly, but they land hard, like a knife dressed in velvet.

My breath catches, not because I’m surprised, but because I feel something in me recoil and reach for him at the same time.

It’s easier when he’s making fun of my boots or rolling his eyes mid-orgasm.

It’s easier when we’re nothing but friction and sweat and mouths too busy to say anything real.

But now?

Now he’s letting me see him.

“I’m not good at this,” he mutters, kicking at the dirt like it’s personally offended him. “The talking. The feelings. The… whatever-the-fuck-this-is with you.”

“This?” I echo, folding my arms, trying to keep my heart from barreling out of my chest. “You mean lying to me? Letting them send Silas to tell me they’re offering my sister to a monster?”

“I didn’t vote to hand her over,” he says, sharp but not defensive. Just tired. “But I didn’t fight hard enough. None of us did.”

I move closer. He doesn’t back away, but he doesn’t look up either. I could swear there’s a war happening just beneath his skin, the one where he wants to run, wants to laugh it off, and the one where he finally, finally stays still.

“And us?” I ask quietly. “Are you going to fight for that?”

Then finally, he lifts his gaze. It’s not guarded. Not cocky. It’s bare. That same haunted softness I’ve only ever seen when he thought I was asleep.

“I don’t know how,” he says.

That admission? It guts me more than any apology could’ve.

Because it’s not that he doesn’t want to.

It’s what he does, and it terrifies him.

His voice drops into something lower, not seductive but stripped.

Raw in a way Elias rarely allows. The smirk fades from his mouth, not because he’s lost it, but because this memory leaves no room for jokes.

His eyes flick toward the campfire in the distance, burning low, barely clinging to life. It matches his tone.

“There was another one,” he says quietly, the words thick like ash in his mouth. “Before you.”

I already know this. I just didn’t know he would ever say it out loud.

“She was poison wrapped in perfume,” Elias continues, gaze still fixed on the flames like they might scorch away the memory.

“Sin binder. Though the bond made her untouchable. She’d play us against each other me and Silas, mostly.

But she didn’t stop there. She wanted to own Riven, too.

And when she couldn’t? She made him hate himself for caring. ”

He laughs, but there’s no humor in it, just bitterness burned down to its last dreg. “She liked the chaos. That was her real kink. Not the sex. Not the power. Just the fucking ruin.”

I shift, the weight of his words settling on my chest like smoke I can’t breathe through. The bond inside me reacts, not with jealousy, but something colder. Protective. Territorial.

“She turned everything into a contest. Who would she fuck that night? Who would she ignore? Who could she hurt more?” He drags a hand down his face. “Silas got the love-bombing. I got the knives.”

There’s a flicker in his gaze now, guilt or maybe something deeper. A memory he doesn’t want me to see.

“She played us all. And I let her. Because I was young and stupid and wanted to believe someone could love me like that. Then she tried to make me choose between her and Silas.”

I already know the end of that sentence.

“I chose him.”

He finally looks at me, and there’s nothing clever left in his eyes. Just an ache I recognize because it’s a mirror of my own.

“I wasn’t going to let her make me hate the people I bled with. Not for a girl who wanted to set us all on fire and watch us burn.”

There’s a pause. Not silence, just stillness, thick with history and unsaid things. When he speaks again, it’s a confession. Not to clear his name, but to explain why he looks at me the way he does. Like I might be different. Or exactly the same.

“So yeah,” he says, voice almost a whisper now. “Forgive me if I’m slow to trust that this time it’s real.”

I step toward him, close enough that if I breathe too deeply, my chest might touch his.

“I’m not her,” I say.

And I mean it with everything in me.

“I didn’t even care when she died,” he says, voice low. “Not really. Just felt like breathing got easier.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Maybe nothing needs to be said. Maybe it’s enough that I’m here, that I’m not her. That he knows I see him, even the parts he tries to drown in sarcasm and distraction.

“She didn’t deserve you,” I say quietly, and when his head turns, finally meeting my gaze, I see it, bare and vulnerable and real. The part of Elias no one else gets to see.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing to me, Luna,” he says. “But it’s not the same. You’re not the same.”

“I know.”

He doesn’t smile. Just breathes, and that feels like a confession in itself.

“So,” he says, dragging out the word like it physically hurts him to say it. He scratches the back of his neck, rocking back slightly on his heels, then forward again like the ground beneath him is too unsteady to stay still on. “I got all these… gross feelings inside me about you.”

I blink. That’s it. That’s all I can do because, what the hell kind of sentence is that?

He watches my reaction carefully, eyes narrowed like he’s waiting for me to laugh or punch him or maybe both.

I do neither. I just stare at him, trying to figure out if he’s having an actual emotional moment or if this is just another one of his catastrophically terrible jokes.

He clears his throat, glances away, then back at me with an almost pained expression, like he’s forcing the words out through sheer will.

“And I don’t mean, like… normal feelings. I mean, it’s not just the you’re-hot-and-I-wanna-see-you-naked kind of thing. Though, for the record, you are. And I do.”

I cross my arms, raising an eyebrow.

He groans. “Right, no, that’s not helping. What I’m saying is, I think about you all the damn time. And not in a normal, healthy way. In a ‘Luna smiled at me today, and I haven’t stopped replaying it in my head like a lunatic’ way.”

“You are a lunatic,” I say dryly.

“Exactly!” he says, pointing at me like I’ve proven his point. “And now you’re part of it. So really, this is your fault.”