Page 60 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

The house is ruined. Not just broken. Not just overturned.

Ransacked.

Like someone came here not to search, but to desecrate.

The front door hangs off its hinges, jagged wood like snapped bone. Inside, the scent hits first. Blood. Burned magic. And something else. Something colder. Older.

I step across the threshold, careful not to flinch when my boots crunch glass.

The living room, if you could still call it that, looks like it lost a war.

The couch is split open, stuffing trailing like intestines across the floor.

One of the mirrors is shattered, its silvered shards arranged in a spiral pattern that makes my stomach turn.

I don’t breathe until I reach the center of the space.

And even then, I don’t breathe deeply.

Caspian’s coat is still here. Slung over the back of the ruined chair. One sleeve is torn. Blood dried along the collar. Not his, I tell myself. Not yet.

But it’s Ambrose’s cuff I find in the hallway.

Torn from his wrist. A fragment of shadow magic still clinging to it, twitching like it doesn’t understand it’s been severed from him.

It takes me a moment.

A full, horrible moment to embrace what I already know.

They’re gone.

Caspian. Ambrose.

Taken.

I’d known before stepping back into this house. The bond hadn’t fractured, it hadn’t been made yet, but I’d felt the shift. Felt the absence. Like the world had turned too fast and left me off-kilter.

But seeing this? The violence of it. The audacity of it.

That’s different.

I stagger back into what’s left of the kitchen, palms pressed to the warped counter, trying not to put my fist through the nearest cabinet.

There’s a hole in the floor near the hearth, something clawed its way out, not in.

The smell rising from it is wrong. Sulfur and smoke and something that doesn’t belong in this world.

This wasn’t just a kidnapping.

It was a message. A fucking promise. And I know who sent it. I don’t want to say her name. Don’t want to give it the shape of breath.

But Severin would’ve done it clean. Strategic. Cold.

This?

This is someone who wanted me to feel it.

To hurt from it.

Someone who knows I haven’t bound Caspian or Ambrose, but still dares to touch what’s mine.

And they are mine. Even if they won’t say it. Even if I haven’t claimed them the way I did Silas or Riven. That doesn’t matter. Because I will.

And whoever thought they could take from me and walk away whole,

They’re about to learn how wrong that is.

I hear a crash behind me.

Of course I do.

“Silas!” Elias’s voice rings out. “For fuck’s sake, that vase was already broken, why are you throwing pieces of it at the wall now?!”

“I’m expressing grief,” Silas calls back, voice way too chipper for the scene we’re in.

“You’re expressing dumbassery!”

I don’t move as they bicker. Not yet. Not until I find the scorch mark on the wall above the fireplace Ambrose’s mark.

His magic tried to fight.

Didn’t matter.

The house lost.

“Luna?” Elias’s voice shifts.

Closer. A beat quieter. I brace myself. He enters slowly, holding a broom like a weapon, which would be funny if I didn’t feel like I was vibrating from the inside out.

“Oh,” he says when he sees me. “You’ve got that whole… ‘on the edge of bloodshed but too pretty to be stopped’ look going on.”

I don’t respond.

He walks closer. Still holding the broom. “You good?”

“No,” I say.

He exhales. “Cool, cool. Just checking. So… should I start sweeping or preparing a ritual sacrifice?”

I may not say her name. But I feel it like a curse inside my bones. The first Sin-Binder. She’s supposed to be dead. She was erased. Gone before the world even understood what it meant to hold something like us.

But someone forgot to close the door on her properly. And now she’s back, and she took them from me.

I grip the edge of the hearth, fingers curling around the scorched stone like it can keep me upright.

Riven’s the first to come in. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask. Just looks around, mouth tight, fists tighter. His knuckles are already split. Like maybe he knew what he’d walk into. Like maybe he felt it too.

Lucien follows. Slower. More composed. But his eyes flash the moment he sees the damage. Not surprised. Just confirmation.

Orin’s the last to enter. And his silence is the worst. He stands there, gaze moving over the ruined walls, the shattered mirror, the spiral cut into the floor like it means something.

It probably does.

“She did this,” I say, and my voice barely sounds like mine.

They all look at me.

“I don’t need you to tell me her name,” I go on, stepping forward, the heat inside me rising with every breath. “I don’t need to hear the how or the why or the fucking when.”

I meet Orin’s gaze. His is the only one steady enough to hold mine.

“She’s supposed to be dead,” I say. “So why is she walking through the house like she owns it?”

“She was bound once,” Orin answers, quietly. “But not destroyed. Not truly.”

Lucien nods. “Something unbound her. Or someone.”

“She took them,” I say, throat tightening. “She didn’t just want to send a message. She wanted me.”

“She wanted what’s yours,” Riven growls.

“She can’t have it.”

No one argues.

I step through the rubble until I reach the spiral on the floor. My boots grind over its center, disrupting it. I don’t care. Let it burn.

“She took Caspian. She took Ambrose. That’s not a challenge.”

I lift my eyes.

“That’s a declaration.”

Lucien nods once. “Then we answer it.”

Orin moves beside me, slow, deliberate. “She’ll want us to come after them.”

“I’m counting on it,” Lucien says.

Riven’s jaw clenches. “We move tonight.”

“No,” Lucien says. “We prepare tonight. And when we come for her… we don’t just take them back. We end her.”

The promise still echoes in the ruin of the house.

We end her.

Orin doesn’t flinch. Lucien watches me like he already knows what that will cost. And Riven,

Riven’s staring at the wall like he’s imagining her throat beneath his hand and trying not to smile about it.

The room feels stretched. Warped around that vow.

I feel it too.

Like the magic underneath the floorboards is listening. But it’s Elias who breaks it first. A quiet step. A clearing of his throat. A voice too innocent to trust.

“So,” he says, dragging the word out, “do we get matching outfits for this vengeance mission, or am I the only one thinking blood-themed couture?”

I blink.

He’s perched on the toppled arm of the ruined couch like a bored theater kid who missed his cue and decided to improvise. His shirt is unbuttoned. One sleeve is rolled. The other is still soaked from the half-glass of whiskey I didn’t even see him grab.

Silas follows behind him, shirtless, carrying a baguette like it’s a fucking sword.

“I vote armor made of leather and regret,” Silas offers, swinging the bread with a flourish. “Maybe a little lace, for dramatic flair.”

Orin turns toward them slowly, with the kind of expression that says centuries of self-discipline are being tested in real time.

Lucien exhales like this has become a daily affliction. “Why do you have a baguette?”

Silas looks down at it. Blinks.

“Oh. For emotional support.”

Elias leans toward me, stage-whispers, “I think the real question here is whether he intends to eat the emotional support bread or duel someone with it.”

Silas raises an eyebrow. “Why not both?”

“Of course,” Orin mutters. “Why choose chaos when you can devour it instead.”

I don’t want to laugh. I shouldn’t laugh. But I do. Just once. A sharp exhale through my nose. It’s enough to crack the anger holding my jaw too tightly.

Silas hears it.

His head snaps toward me like a dog spotting a treat and decides now is the time to shine.

“I knew it,” he says, triumphant. “My loaf has range.”

Elias groans. “Stop talking.”

Silas isn’t done. “No, no, let me have this. She laughed. You all heard it. I brought joy into a grief space.”

“You brought yeast into a grief space,” Lucien corrects.

Orin sighs like he’s praying for divine intervention.

Silas drops the baguette like it offended him. “Well, fine. Next time, I’ll bring a cursed dagger or something. Something on brand.”

“You are the cursed dagger,” I say without thinking.

Silas beams. “Luna.”

Elias makes a strangled noise.

The house smells like smoke and spite, but they’re already rebuilding. Lucien’s issuing orders. Orin’s speaking to the stones themselves, coaxing the runes to rebind, listening to the old magic in the floor groan back into alignment. Riven’s pacing like if he stops moving, he’ll combust.

And I, I’m standing in the wreckage, trying to convince my bones they’re still mine.

“I swear to the Hollow, if you don’t move your naked ass out of the doorway, I’m going to hex your hairline.” Elias’s voice cuts across the hall, sharp and theatrical.

“I called dibs on the shower!” Silas fires back, arms flung wide in melodramatic offense. “I nearly died getting that bread.”

“You nearly died eating that bread,” Elias retorts, hands on hips. “You choked on your dramatic flour cloud. I had to slap your back like you were a cursed toddler.”

“You slapped me because you liked it,” Silas purrs, tilting his head and blinking slowly. “It’s okay to admit it, Elias. The urge to spank me is strong in many.”

“Oh my god.” Elias presses a palm to his forehead. “You are the reason my libido is a self-sabotaging trash fire.”

“You say that like it’s my fault your coping mechanisms include sarcasm, bondage, and unmedicated lust.”

“I will hex you bald,” Elias hisses. “I’m serious.”

“Please,” Silas says with a grin. “My hair is the only thing keeping me morally anchored. If I lose that, I become unhinged. Like Riven, but with flair.”

“I can hear you,” Riven growls from the corner.

“Good,” Silas chirps. “I project for clarity.”

I lean against what’s left of the hallway frame, watching them like I’m viewing a very beautiful, very cursed stage production.