Page 53 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

“No.” Layla’s voice sharpens. “Don’t protect me from this. Not this. If you want to save Caspian and Ambrose, we can’t afford for me to be the weak link. I’m not just your sister. I’m something else. And I need to find out what.”

Luna looks stricken. I can feel her rage, the chaos of it threading through the air like a live wire. But she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t curse. She just closes her eyes and nods, once, like it’s the hardest thing she’s ever done.

And it might be.

I stand slowly, watching both of them as I do. My power hums beneath my skin, coiled and ready. But this decision, it wasn’t mine to make. Not truly.

“She goes when she’s ready,” I say. “Not before. And if Severin tries to take her before that, he’ll learn what true Dominion feels like.”

Luna looks up at me then, and for once, she doesn’t look like she wants to gut me.

Progress. Of a kind.

I turn, retreating into the darkness beyond the firelight, because there’s planning to do. Paths to chart. Every move from here has to count.

And I’ll be damned if we lose anyone else to the void.

Silas doesn’t look at me when I sit beside him, and I don’t blame him.

His shoulders are slumped forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands dangling like they’ve lost their purpose.

The fire behind us crackles, distant, and the rest of the camp is tucked into uneasy quiet.

But he’s out here alone, brooding in the dark like the fucking weight of the world decided to press on his back, and I helped set it there.

I exhale, slow and deliberate. “I shouldn’t have made you do it.”

Silas hums, low and bitter, like he’s chewing glass. “Yeah, no shit.”

His voice isn’t cruel. It’s tired. Like something in him cracked when Luna turned her eyes from him, and now it’s leaking out slow, drop by drop.

“I thought…” I trail off, searching for the words. “She trusts you more than the rest of us. Or maybe I just hoped that if it came from you, it would feel softer.”

He snorts. “Soft? You think I ever come off soft to her?”

I glance at him then. His jaw’s tight, lips pressed in a hard line, but there’s a rawness bleeding through the corners of his expression. The kind he never lets anyone see unless he’s breaking. Not in battle. Not in rage. Just here. Gutted.

“She hates me now,” he mutters, more to the void than to me.

“No,” I say. “She’s angry. Hurt. There’s a difference.”

His head lifts just slightly. “Feels like the same thing.”

Silas has always been reckless. Loud. The first to leap into madness with a joke and a grin and no real plan. But with her… he was different. Unhinged, yes, but careful, too. Obsessive in the way only someone who didn’t know how to love properly could be.

“You didn’t deserve to be the one to tell her,” I admit. “That was my call to make. My burden.”

Silas turns to me finally, his eyes rimmed red, not with tears, but something worse. Shame. “I didn’t even say it right. I tried to make her laugh first. Thought maybe if I was me, she wouldn’t take it so hard.” His voice cracks, and he shakes his head. “She looked at me like I was a stranger.”

I lean forward, resting my forearms on my thighs, watching the stretch of nothing beyond the campfire’s reach. “She’ll come back to you.”

“You think that?” he asks, almost hopeful.

I nod once. “I know it.”

He doesn’t thank me. Doesn’t smile. But his shoulders relax a fraction, like he’s bracing less against the world.

And then, because he’s still Silas, he mutters, “I mean… I am the prettiest one. She’ll miss that eventually.”

I bark a laugh despite myself. “Shut up.”

“Just saying,” he says with a weak grin. “I have great lashes.”

We sit there, the two of us, just breathing for a while, until the weight lifts a little, and the night feels slightly less impossible. But the void watches us still, whispering promises and threats we’ve yet to understand.

And we both know the real battle hasn’t even started yet.

There’s something pathetic about missing Daemon Academy.

I used to dream of burning it down, taking its ash and grinding it into Severin’s smug, sharp smile.

And now, here I am, in the middle of a warped, collapsing world that reeks of the void and clings to you like mold, and all I can think about is the sound of the floorboards in the west wing when they creaked beneath our steps, or the way the walls groaned at night like they were holding something in, maybe us.

Maybe me.

I shift against the cold stone, my back pressed to a jagged pillar of rock that juts out from the ruined landscape like a broken bone.

The fire nearby flickers in its pit, struggling against the wind, throwing warped light over the faces of the others.

Luna’s curled up with Layla, but she keeps looking over at us, eyes sharp, waiting for another betrayal to fall out of our mouths.

She hasn’t forgiven Silas. I don’t think she will.

And I can’t even blame her.

“I miss the house,” I murmur aloud, more to myself than anyone, though Riven hears it and lets out a low, bitter laugh.

“You hated that place.”

“I did,” I agree. “Still do. But I miss hating it in comfort.”

He snorts and doesn’t respond, kicking a loose stone into the dark. It vanishes without a sound, like the void swallowed it whole.

There was order at Daemon. Brutal, cruel order, but order nonetheless.

Even when Severin was breathing down our necks, even when we were bound by spells and rituals, shackled by ancient contracts carved into our skin, we knew the rules.

We knew the battleground. Here? There’s no battleground.

Just endless terrain, bleeding into itself like ink on water. No landmarks. No time.

Just monsters.

And Layla, looking more fragile by the hour.

And Luna… still burning like she doesn't realize the fire has to consume something.

I look at her again. Her hair’s tangled. Her lips are pressed in a hard, thin line. But she’s beautiful in a way that grates at me like a truth I can’t unlearn. Beautiful and wrong and impossibly necessary.

She’s not my sin binder. Not yet. Not ever, if I can help it. But I want her.

Gods, I want her.

And that’s the worst part. That somewhere in all of this, I’ve started craving the very thing I was made to resist.

The fire pops beside me, and Orin shifts where he sits, unreadable as ever, his ancient gaze watching Luna like he already knows the outcome of every path we take.

Maybe he does.

I sigh again, letting the exhaustion pull at the bones beneath my skin. “We’re not built for this,” I murmur. “This war. This… wandering.”

Elias strolls past, muttering something about how he found a frog with teeth and tried to keep it as a pet until it bit him. He doesn’t break stride. Doesn’t pause to ask if we’re okay. Just keeps talking. “Honestly, he’s probably still somewhere around here. I called him Larry.”

Riven groans. “If that thing crawls into my bed again, ”

“Don’t be jealous of Larry.”

“I’m going to kill Larry.”

“Try it. He knows your scent.”

Silas mumbles something unintelligible, curled up on his side with his cloak over his head like a shroud.

I miss Daemon.

But not the place. The illusion of something stable. Something known. Now all we have is Luna. And the impossible weight of what she’s becoming. And the truth none of us wants to admit.

She’s not leading us anywhere safe. She’s leading us deeper. And we’re going to follow her anyway.