Page 58 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

Luna’s crying. I look away. I don’t do tears. Hers least of all.

It’s not the sound. She’s quiet, like everything in her tries to hide it. But it’s the shape of her, the way she folds in on herself. Arms around Layla, head low. She cries like it costs her something. Like giving it up makes her smaller.

It ruins me.

Lucien shifts beside me, clearing his throat like the noise can make the moment less real. He glances toward the girls, then turns away again, jaw locked.

We decided unanimously, for once, that Luna’s safer if she stays behind. With Orin, Silas, and Elias hovering close like wolves with differing degrees of guilt.

Not that Severin wants her. Not anymore.

But we’ve all seen the way he looks at Layla. The way she feels like a thread he’s already winding around his wrist.

Keeping Luna away from that is strategy. But it’s also something else.

If she came with us, if she saw what Severin left behind in that ruin, what kind of creatures slithered out of that Rift in her name, I don’t think she’d survive it. Not this version of her. Not the girl who still thinks she can save everyone.

I run a hand through my hair, drag my fingers through the nape of my neck like it’ll ground me. It doesn’t.

“I hate this,” I mutter.

Lucien nods once. “You’re not the only one.”

“She shouldn’t be here.”

“And yet she is.”

I scowl. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

We watch as Layla pulls back, wiping Luna’s cheeks with the sleeve of her coat. The sister thing is eerie, like watching Luna’s softness held in someone else’s hands.

It does something to my chest. Makes it feel too tight.

Luna steps back, arms still half-lifted, like letting go isn’t something her body understands yet.

I can’t look at her like this.

Not when I’ve spent every breath since Daemon trying not to want her. And now, after the bond, after that night, wanting her feels worse than need.

Need is primal. Animal.

Want is choice.

And I still don’t know what the fuck I’m choosing.

Layla finally turns toward us, face pale, mouth a thin line. She doesn’t look like she should be walking into a nest of half-made monsters. She looks like she should be hiding in a library, pretending the world is made of ink and pages.

Lucien straightens as she approaches. “We’ll follow the river cut until we reach the obsidian rift,” he says. “Once we’re past the Hollow’s edge, they’ll feel you. Just like you’ll feel them.”

She nods. Doesn’t speak.

I don’t blame her.

“You remember what Orin said?” I ask. “About the pull?”

“I’ll know which ones to touch,” she says. “I just don’t know if I want to.”

I snort. “Welcome to our world.”

Lucien elbows me sharply. “Not helping.”

“I’m not here to help,” I mutter, stepping away from them both.

I walk toward the rocks, pretending I’m checking the ridge for movement. I’m not.

I just can’t look at Luna again.

Not until we leave.

Not until I’m sure I won’t walk back and drag her with me just to stop that fucking heartbreak from sitting on her face like it belongs there.

I don’t do soft.

Not even for her.

Especially not for her.

Layla walks between us like she’s already left.

Not in her body, no, she’s still here, boots scuffing the earth, braid swinging with every step, but in her bones, she’s halfway gone.

Tired. Hollow in a way that reads more like clarity than weakness.

She’s made her decision, and it burns through her with a quiet finality that even I won’t touch.

She doesn’t cry. Doesn’t cling. Just walks the path like it’s carved into her skin.

Lucien stays to her right, silent for a while, gaze flicking out toward the horizon where the ground blackens. He’s reading the Hollow like it’s a map no one else can see, watching for movement, for magic, for things that no longer have names.

“The Sub-Sins aren’t like us,” he says, voice low and deliberate. “We were made whole. Fractured later, maybe, but still born as full entities. Theirs were born already torn.”

Layla glances at him. Sharp-eyed, curious. She doesn’t ask questions, not yet. Just listens.

Lucien continues. “They were extracted. Spliced. Pieces of desire and power and rage pulled out of the Originals. They were never meant to survive. But they did.”

I smirk. “Mistake number one. Severin thinking anything cut from sin would just… die.”

Lucien doesn’t argue. “Each of them was meant to represent the excess. What couldn’t be balanced. That’s what makes you different, Layla.”

Her brows pull together. “Because I can?”

“Because you were born to,” he says. “You’re not their prison. You’re the tether. Without you, they spiral. Bind themselves to mortals. Feed off their flaws until there’s nothing left but ash.”

“And with me?”

“They’ll burn slower,” I mutter.

Lucien shoots me a look, but he doesn’t correct it.

Layla nods like she already knew. Maybe not the words. But the shape of it. She’s not afraid, and that’s the part that unsettles me.

She should be.

Lucien tilts his head toward her, thoughtful. “Each Sub-Sin mirrors one of us. They’ll gravitate toward you like gravity itself has teeth. You won’t need to ask who’s who. You’ll know.”

“Will they know me?” she asks.

Lucien’s jaw ticks. “They’ll know enough.”

“And if I fail?”

I glance at her now. Really look. Her face is calm, but her fists are clenched at her sides. The way Luna’s used to be when she thought fury was a way to stay upright.

“You won’t,” I say, too quickly.

She huffs, amused. “You don’t even like me.”

“I don’t need to like you to know what Severin’s going to look like six months from now.”

Lucien’s lips twitch. “Wrapped around her finger?”

I shrug. “He’ll fight it. Pretend he’s not one of them. But Severin was cut from the same threads. You bind the Sub-Sins, and he’s probably the first one to go.”

Layla doesn’t smile. But there’s something in her eyes. A flicker of something older than she’s supposed to be. Like maybe she finally understands what Luna’s been carrying.

And maybe she’s ready to carry it too.

The terrain shifts beneath our feet. The Hollow here is different, twisted, darkened by rites and rituals long since erased from temple walls. Magic leaks from the cracks like steam from a broken bone.

Layla slows, sensing it. Her gaze lifts, eyes tracing something none of us can see.

“They’re near,” Lucien says. “The first of them.”

The ruins split open like something exhaling rot.

Stone curves where it shouldn’t, like the bones of a god cracked and stitched into a cathedral that forgot it was meant to bless. This place doesn’t invite. It waits. And it knows why we’re here.

Lucien leads. Always the first into the dark, even if it means setting himself on fire to see the path.

Layla keeps to his side, spine straight, eyes forward, but I can feel it.

The tremble behind her bones. Not fear. Not quite.

Just knowing. Like the world’s already shifted beneath her feet and she’s too stubborn to flinch.

And then he steps out.

Severin.

Dorian, Alistair, and Soren flank him like sins dressed as saints, their silence louder than most men’s battle cries. The others aren’t here, which means they’re watching. Listening. Or hiding.

Severin’s smile lands like poison on a silver platter. Polished, deliberate, and a little too pleased with itself.

“Lucien,” he says, tone silked with false familiarity. “I expected you'd come armed. You always were more sword than strategy.”

Lucien doesn’t blink. “I came prepared. That’s not the same thing.”

Severin chuckles, but his eyes slide past Lucien like he’s nothing more than a shadow.

He’s already looking at her.

Layla.

And just like that, he forgets how to breathe pretty. It’s subtle, barely a shift in the air around him, but I feel it. The bond. Not a bond-bond, not yet. But the pull. Ancient. Bone-deep. The thing that wants. The thing that claims.

He doesn’t speak right away. Just studies her like she’s something between a prophecy and a problem.

Then: “So. You’re the Binder.”

Layla lifts her chin. “And you’re the coward.”

Lucien smirks. I don’t even bother hiding mine.

Severin’s smile doesn’t crack, but his posture does. A little too stiff now. A little too reactive.

“You’re not what I expected,” he says after a beat.

“And you’re exactly what I thought,” she replies, voice calm, clear. “Arrogant. Cornered. Pretending you still get to choose.”

His gaze darkens.

“You think I’m cornered?” he asks, stepping forward. “You have no idea what I am.”

“No,” she says. “But you don’t either. That’s the problem.”

He stops just short of her, breath too steady, smile too tight.

“You don’t belong here,” he says, almost gently.

“And yet you called,” she fires back.

He flinches. Just a breath. Just enough.

“I didn’t call anyone.”

“Then why can’t you stop looking at me?” she asks.

Severin’s hands clench behind his back. The others behind him, Dorian, Alistair, and Soren, shift, uncomfortably. Not for her. For him. They see it too.

The pull. He doesn’t want her. But he has to have her. And it’s eating him alive.

“You think this is fate,” he says, voice lower now. “You think you’ve come to save us. To bind us.”

“No,” she says. “I think you’ve already lost. And now you’re trying to convince yourself it was your idea.”

Lucien lets out a breath like a prayer. Dorian tenses again, but Severin doesn’t move.

He just looks at her like she’s the one sin he was never allowed to touch, and now she’s standing in front of him, daring him to break the rules he wrote.

“This isn’t a binding,” he says finally.

“No,” Layla agrees. “This is a reckoning.”

And I swear to every god in the Hollow, I think he’s scared.

Severin watches her like she’s a riddle he already solved but can’t stop rereading. The way a man rereads a curse and pretends it’s scripture. Dorian hasn’t moved. Alistair’s jaw flexes. Soren’s hands are behind his back, but I can see the way his knuckles go pale.

She just sighs. Deep and annoyed. Like he’s inconveniencing her.