Page 54 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

I feel like shit. And I know that’s not poetic or noble or haunted in some tragic, tormented way, it’s just the ugly truth.

I’ve got this ache behind my ribs, like something inside me got knocked loose and now it’s rattling around without direction.

It’s envy. It’s guilt. It’s the venom of watching her eyes go cold when they look at me.

Like I’m someone she can’t trust anymore.

I’m Envy. I should be able to fucking handle this.

But when Luna won’t meet my gaze, when she brushes past me like I’m nothing more than an afterthought, like she’s keeping herself from saying something cruel, I feel it clawing at my throat.

Not the bond. Me. The worst version of myself, the one who flinches when Elias jokes about Larry the Void Frog because I know I’ll laugh too loud, and she won’t.

She’s so mad at me. And she’s right to be. We all agreed, sure. But I was the one who said it out loud.

The lamb to the slaughter.

I tried to be gentle. I tried to soften it. I thought if it came from me, if I held her hand and kept my voice soft and let her see the panic in my own eyes, it wouldn’t hurt as much. But maybe it’s worse that it came from me. Because she trusted me.

And that’s the part that fucking kills.

Luna’s the first thing I’ve ever committed to without a catch. No claws behind my back. No backup plans. No bitter jokes to make it easier. I bound myself to her, and not just with magic. With every dumb, raw, messy part of me that no one else ever wanted to keep.

I’ve never bound myself to a Sin Binder before. Never even thought about it. They came and went. Pretty little mouths and too much ambition. Power-hungry brats in silk dresses trying to weaponize our magic and wear us like trophies.

Luna isn’t like them. Luna is sweet.

Too sweet for this world. Too soft for the cruelty that pulses in all of us.

And maybe that’s why I love her. Not just the kind of love that glows warm in your chest when she says your name, but the kind that hurts.

The kind that makes you want to protect her even if it means she’ll hate you for it.

She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. I know. I’ve checked them all.

I sit with my elbows on my knees, face buried in my hands, and I swear I can still smell her on my skin.

She hasn’t looked at me since I told her.

Not really. And I don’t know if this... whatever the hell is blooming between us.

.. will survive it. But I’ll be damned if I let this be the thing that ruins what I’ve finally found.

I hear footsteps and don’t look up expecting Elias, maybe, coming to dig into me like he always does, using sarcasm as a scalpel.

But it’s not Elias.

It’s her.

My heart kicks like a traitor in my chest, and I look up.

Luna stands there, arms crossed, her expression unreadable but her eyes burning. God, she’s beautiful when she’s angry. Not just the kind of beauty that turns heads, but the kind that crushes worlds.

I start to speak, to say something dumb and flirty just to get a rise out of her, something like, “You’re going to make me beg, aren’t you, pretty girl?” but the words shrivel on my tongue.

She doesn’t need charm right now. She needs the truth.

And fuck, I’m scared to give it.

I do the only thing that makes sense to a lunatic in love.

I drop.

Not just metaphorically. I go all in, on my knees, palms flat in the dirt like a sinner at a fucking altar. Because that’s what she is. My altar. My everything. And I, the fool who dared to speak her sister’s name like a solution.

“Luna.” Her name catches in my throat like it’s been laced with thorns.

“Pretty girl. I, ” My voice cracks. I let it.

“I know I look pathetic right now. I’m aware of how stupid this is.

But I’ll stay here until you forgive me.

I’ll sleep here. I’ll die here. Dramatically.

And then Elias can carve ‘Dumbass Who Wronged Her’ on my grave in Comic Sans. ”

Her arms are crossed, jaw tight, eyes furious. She doesn’t blink.

I keep going.

“You want me to grovel? I will. Want me to lick the Void moss off your boots? I’ll do that too. Want me to, shit, I don’t know, sing you a love ballad about your thighs and how they haunt my dreams? Consider it done. Rhyming couplets. A lute. I’ll find a lute.”

“Silas,” she warns, but her voice wavers, and that gives me the tiniest flicker of hope.

I seize it like a man dying of thirst.

“I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s the truth.

That’s the whole ugly fucking truth. And I swear on every joke I’ve ever made and every bad pickup line I’ve ever unleashed on the world, I only said what we were all too scared to say.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel like I’d ripped something sacred apart the second your face changed. ”

I shift forward on my knees. Reach for her hand. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t give it to me either. Just lets me hover there like a fool waiting for absolution.

“You make me want to be good. And I don’t have a fucking clue how to be good, Luna. Not with all this inside me.” I thump a fist against my chest. “But I love you. And I’m going to love you even when you hate me. Especially when you hate me. That’s probably when I’ll love you most.”

I risk a look up. Her lashes are spiked with unshed tears, but her mouth is still hard, her silence louder than any shout.

I break.

“You want me to say it again?” I whisper.

“You want to hear it like it’s the first time, not buried beneath a dozen bad jokes and distractions?

” I breathe deep. Let it wreck me. “I love you. You. Luna fucking Evernight. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything.

More than pranks. More than Elias, don’t tell him I said that, and more than my own fucking life. And I’m sorry. I am so goddamn sorry.”

I bow my head to the ground. And wait. Because if she doesn’t forgive me… I’ll still mean every word.

Her voice hits me like a slap and a balm at the same time.

“Get up, you idiot.”

I lift my head. She’s standing over me, arms crossed, brow arched like I’ve offended her by groveling this long. Her mouth curves, not into a smile, no, Luna doesn’t do mercy like that. It’s worse. She looks amused.

“I stopped being mad at you a while ago,” she says, and then shrugs. “And then I was just… messing with you.”

I blink. “Messing with me?”

She rolls her eyes like I’m the most exhausting creature she’s ever laid eyes on, and she’s not wrong. “You practically cried on my boots, Silas.”

“I did not cry,” I lie. “That was sweat. From emotional exertion.”

She kneels in front of me, slow and deliberate, and now we’re level. Her gaze doesn’t soften, not really. It sharpens, in that way only she can, cutting straight through every defense I try to hold up.

“Next time,” she says, quiet now, “don’t pick the short straw if you can’t handle the burn.”

“I could handle the burn,” I mutter, but she’s already reaching for me, fingers curling into the front of my shirt. “I just didn’t know it’d feel like acid in my lungs when you stopped looking at me.”

That earns me a pause. She stares at me a second too long, her mouth twitching, not in amusement anymore but something else, something warmer. Something dangerous.

“You’re the worst,” she breathes.

“I try.”

Then she leans in and kisses me.

It’s not soft. It’s not gentle. It’s punishment and forgiveness all at once. It tastes like ash and her fury and the impossible sweetness of being loved back. My hands find her waist like they always do, like they were made for it, and I groan into her mouth, half-relieved, half-starving.

When we break apart, I rest my forehead against hers.

“You’re stuck with me,” I whisper. “Like a parasite. The sexy kind.”

“You’re a lot of things,” she says. “Sexy isn’t one of them.”

“Rude.”

She hums, and for the first time in what feels like days, I see it, that spark in her. That heat. That affection she pretends not to drown in when she’s near me.

Behind us, I hear someone gag dramatically.

Elias.

Of course.

“I’m gonna be sick,” he calls, and I grin against Luna’s skin.

“Jealousy’s not a good look on you, Dain!” I shout back, still holding her like she’s oxygen.

Luna sighs into my neck. “You’re lucky I love you,” she mutters.

“I know,” I say, because I do. I know. And I’m never letting go.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she says, turning like it’s a command and not a suggestion. “So you can grovel more.”

I laugh, because that’s my fucking girl.

She doesn’t wait for me. She never does.

She moves through the dark like she’s always belonged to it, hair wild, boots biting into the ashen dirt, spine straight and unforgiving.

I follow a few steps behind, like the obedient disaster I am, admiring the view and praying she doesn’t catch me ogling her like I haven’t already had her half a dozen ways in the last week.

But she always catches me.

“You’re staring.”

“It’s not staring,” I say, catching up and bumping her shoulder. “It’s awe. Deep, primal awe. Also, maybe lust. Definitely lust.”

She rolls her eyes and keeps walking.

We cross the edge of camp, past the last embers of Elias’s failed attempt at a fire spell, which exploded, by the way.

Not that he’ll admit it. The Void sprawls out in front of us, ink-black and ever shifting, whispering in tongues that claw at the edges of my thoughts.

But here, with her, it doesn’t feel as loud.

“Do you forgive me?” I ask, slipping my hand into hers like I have every right.

She lets me. Her fingers don’t tighten, but she doesn’t pull away either.

“I already said I did,” she murmurs.

“Yeah, but I need to hear it like, I don’t know, ten more times. Maybe with some affection? A kiss? Or light groping? That would help my shame wounds heal.”

“You’re shameless.”

“I’m yours,” I counter, grinning like a fool. “Which is worse.”