Page 57 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

If she binds me, she’ll never come back the same. But if she doesn’t… the world may never survive what comes next.

She sighs, soft and low, like she’s trying to let something go but it’s lodged too deep. Then she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, something so unguarded it nearly undoes me.

“They’re going to be mean to her,” she says, voice thin around the edges.

“Some of them, yes,” I admit. “Just like Lucien and Riven were mean to you when you first arrived.”

Luna’s lips curve into something between memory and warning. “They weren’t just mean.”

“No,” I agree. “They were cruel. Because they were afraid. You rattled something inside them they didn’t know could still move.”

“And the Sub-Sins?” she asks. “Will they hate her like that?”

“Not all of them,” I say. “They don’t want her. Just like we didn’t want you.”

She huffs a bitter laugh. “You make that sound like a compliment.”

“It is.”

I step closer, not quite touching her. I don’t need to. The air between us already hums like it remembers every almost we’ve ever let pass.

“And how did that turn out for you?” I ask.

She smiles, slow and sly. “Not as terribly as I thought it would.”

“You have two bound,” I remind her, voice velvet-soft. “And everything else just... settled around you. Did it not?”

Her smile falters. Not gone. Just thinking. She looks at me like I’ve just held up a mirror and she’s not sure if she likes the reflection.

“I didn’t ask for any of it,” she says.

“No one ever asks for power that matters.”

“I don’t feel powerful. I feel like the gods made me a fulcrum and forgot to tell me which way the world tips.”

“You are powerful,” I say, each word deliberate. “Because you were not made to hold power. You were made to balance it. That’s why the world tips toward you.”

She exhales through her nose, quiet. “And Layla?”

“She’s not your opposite, Luna. She’s your equal. A different kind of center. They’ll feel that. The Sub-Sins will sense what’s waiting in her. Even if they want to reject her, they won’t be able to.”

She frowns, uncertain. “But that doesn’t mean they’ll be kind.”

“No,” I say. “Kindness doesn’t birth loyalty. But the hunger to belong? That binds deeper than love.”

She blinks, and something sharp flickers through her. Something almost mournful.

“You say that like you know.”

“I do.”

I’ve seen it. Lived it. That feral need to anchor yourself to something, anything, just to stop floating into the dark.

Her.

She doesn’t know what she’s already done to me. And I won’t be the one to tell her.

Before she can say more, a rock crunches behind us.

Elias stumbles out from behind a pillar of charred stone, hair wild, shirt inside out, one boot on. He looks like he’s been fighting a demon in his sleep and lost. Badly.

“Am I interrupting?” he asks, grinning like a sin. “Or is this the part where you two finally kiss and doom us all?”

Luna gives him a look that would incinerate lesser men. Elias just beams wider.

“You look like you lost a fight with your dreams,” she mutters.

“Wrong,” he says, staggering over. “I won that fight. I just let the nightmare think it had a shot.”

I arch a brow. “You’ve got ash on your face.”

“Good,” he says, wiping at it with the inside of his shirt, making it worse. “Makes me look haunted. Women love haunted.”

Luna doesn’t even blink. “Do they?”

“I mean, maybe not all women. Probably not you. Not you.” He clears his throat, failing to hide the way his eyes flick to her mouth, then away again, like he’s trying not to drown in something he started himself.

“You’re more into… brooding philosophers with centuries of brooding and, ancient facial expressions. ”

I give him a look.

He throws up his hands. “No offense, Orin. You wear the brooding well. It’s like your thing.”

Luna suppresses a smile.

Elias leans closer to her, lowering his voice like it’s a secret and a dare. “But if you ever get tired of being psychoanalyzed by candlelight, I could offer you a very chaotic rebound. The kind that ends in… absolutely no character development.”

She blinks. “Did you just proposition me with trauma avoidance?”

“Yes,” he says, proud. “I also come with snacks.”

She rolls her eyes, but her smile breaks through fully this time. And for a moment, the weight of the world lifts just enough for her to breathe.

I watch it happen. That flicker of ease.

He’s not competition.

He’s distraction.

And she needs that too.

“Go back to sleep, Elias,” she says, turning from both of us. “Before I let Riven stab you just for the quiet.”

He salutes, backs away, stumbling over a root, and vanishes behind the ruins, humming something obscene under his breath.

Luna watches him disappear behind a fractured stone pillar, arms crossed, jaw tense. Her shoulders are still lifted, half-defensive, half-considering. She thinks she's hiding it. She isn't.

I wait. Let the silence stretch, not the kind that weighs, but the kind that reveals.

Then I say it, quietly.

“He likes you.”

She flinches. Just a flicker. But I see it.

Her lips press together. Her eyes narrow like she’s about to deny it, then don’t. “He doesn’t even know what that means.”

“No,” I agree, smiling faintly. “But he knows how it feels.”

She shifts her weight, discomfort flickering in the angle of her hips. Not because of Elias. Because she’s thinking about what it would mean to let someone else inside again.

“I’m not sure I’d survive binding with him,” she mutters.

I chuckle. “It’s a good thing, Luna. To be wanted. Even if Elias has the emotional maturity of a warlock with a god complex and a sugar high.”

That earns a small huff. Almost a laugh. Almost.

“But,” I continue, tone gentling, “I’m not certain he’s the best next one.”

Her brow lifts. “You think I should pick one like it’s a feast?”

“No,” I say. “But you’re consuming us. Piece by piece. You’re not just linking to us. You’re absorbing. And each bond shifts you. Riven’s cruelty. Silas’s obsession. They’ve already left their marks. Can you feel it?”

She doesn’t answer.

That’s answer enough.

“Another screw-up like Elias,” I say carefully, “and you’ll be off-kilter for a while. Until you bind with someone… steadier.”

She looks at me now, fully, as if she’s weighing me in her hands.

“Is that what you are?” she asks. “Steady?”

“I’m not safe, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She doesn’t blink. “I’m not looking for safety.”

“No,” I murmur. “You’re looking for clarity.”

She doesn’t like that either.

“Do you think I’ve changed?” she asks suddenly. “That the binding… shifts something in me?”

“Not something,” I say. “Everything.”

Her breath stutters just once, then evens out.

“You don’t feel it all at once,” I continue. “That’s the trick. It creeps in. A thought that doesn’t feel like yours. A hunger that never used to be there. The way you flinch when you should strike. Or strike when you should stop. Silas taught you need. Riven taught you fury. And Elias…”

I trail off.

She swallows. “He’d teach me what?”

“Chaos,” I say simply. “He’d teach you how to shatter things that were never meant to be whole.”

She looks away, jaw clenched. “You make it sound like I’m not myself anymore.”

“No,” I say, softer now. “I think you’re more yourself than you’ve ever been.”

“But?”

“But if you bind with too many fragments before you’re ready, you won’t be able to tell which thoughts are yours anymore. And then you won’t be a Binder. You’ll be a reflection.”

She’s quiet. For a long time.

Then she says, “And you? What would I get if I bound with you?”

I feel her watching me. Measuring me. Not with fear. With fascination.

“You’d get stillness,” I say at last. “But it would come with a price.”

Her voice is barely audible. “Which is?”

“You’d crave it. Constantly. You’d ache for quiet even when the world is screaming. And that hunger would never leave you.”

She breathes out. “That doesn’t sound like a burden.”

“No,” I say. “It sounds like love.”

She turns away then, but only to steady herself. Behind us, Elias lets out a loud snore that’s fake.

I glance toward the ruins. Then back at her.

“You should rest,” I say.

She hesitates. Then nods. “You’ll wake me before dawn?”

“Always.”

She walks away without another word.

But I feel it.

The way she wants to ask.

The way she’s afraid of the answer.

She won’t bind with Elias. Not yet.

But he’s already under her skin.

Just like the rest of us.