Page 61 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

“You both smell like blood and dirt,” I say flatly. “And if you don’t stop arguing, I’ll spell you into the shower together.”

Silas brightens. “Oh, don’t threaten me with a good time, ”

Elias groans. “Please. He’ll enjoy it. Don’t give him what he wants.”

“You think I want you in a confined, wet space with me?” Silas gasps. “I have standards, Elias. I only flirt with you because it’s easier than unpacking your emotional repression.”

Elias crosses his arms. “I flirt with you because I think you're secretly a feral spirit possessing a twink’s body.”

“Again,” I say, rubbing my temples, “get out of the hallway and shower before I set you both on fire.”

They scatter like roaches.

Finally.

Orin appears beside me without sound, hands folded behind his back like the destruction around us is a perfectly acceptable backdrop.

“I don’t know how you’ve managed not to curse one of them into a coma yet,” he murmurs.

“I’m playing the long game,” I say. “Waiting until they least expect it.”

“You’ll be a legend.”

“I already am.”

His mouth twitches. “Come with me. We need to talk.”

The words settle under my skin. Because when Orin says that, we’re not just talking. We’re unraveling.

He doesn’t say where we’re going.

Just walks.

And I follow.

It’s not far, but every step pulls a little harder. Like my body remembers where we’re heading before my mind does.

The wall.

That wall.

The one at the edge of the academy courtyard, half-crumbling and always too high to be meant for sitting, except he made it a throne once. A quiet one. A place where magic bloomed from nothing, and his hands pulled roses from the cracked stone just to give me color when the world was too gray.

It feels like walking into a dream I was ripped out of.

The roses are gone now. Their skeletal vines hang blackened and brittle, clinging to the wall like ghosts too stubborn to move on. The courtyard beneath us is cratered, scorched, nothing left but rubble and ash.

A battle was fought here.

I was part of it.

And yet… this moment is still the quietest kind of grief.

Orin doesn’t sit right away. He runs his palm across the stone, brushing away flakes of ruined memory, before lowering himself slowly. Like he’s listening for what the wall remembers.

I join him.

We sit in silence for a moment. A real one.

Then he speaks, low and steady. “We don’t know how she took them.”

“I do,” I whisper. “She wanted to hurt me.”

“She wanted to prove something,” he says. “To you. To us. To herself.”

I turn to him, searching his face. “What could she possibly need to prove?”

“That the bond doesn’t belong to you.”

The words slice.

Orin’s eyes are heavy with something older than time. “Caspian was bound to her once.”

He nods slowly, as if confirming it to himself. “And if she could reclaim him, if she did, then we may be facing something worse than resurrection.”

My voice doesn’t want to work. “You said she was erased.”

“She was.”

“Then how - ”

“I don’t know.” He turns to face me fully now. “But Luna… Lucien and I- ”

He stops.

The air shifts.

He swallows it and tries again.

“We were bound to her too.”

It’s not a confession. It’s a reckoning. My heart doesn’t skip. It slams.

“You and Lucien- ”

“Yes.”

I can’t think. Can’t speak. Because that word, bound, isn’t just magic. It’s blood. It’s memory. It’s something primal and vicious and mine.

And someone else had it first.

Orin watches me without flinching. “She was the first Binder. And she made us hers. Not gently. Not like you. She didn’t offer us peace. She carved it out of us.”

I close my eyes, nausea curling under my ribs. “So she’s not just a threat.”

“No,” he says. “She’s a claim.”

“And she’s coming to reclaim what was hers.”

“Yes.”

My throat’s too dry. “And what happens… if she takes back more than Caspian?”

I feel it now, just under my skin, just deep enough to terrify me, the bond doesn’t know how to forget.

And if she reaches for it, she might pull them all under.

Even Orin.

Even Lucien.

Even the ones who’ve sworn themselves to me.

I stare at the broken courtyard, the roses that never made it.

“If she comes for me and Lucien,” Orin murmurs, “you stay with Riven. Elias. Silas.”

“No,” I say, immediately. Instinct. Spite. Desperation. “That’s not going to happen.”

He exhales, quiet but not tired. Just… sad.

“You don’t understand what the bond means,” he says.

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

I twist toward him, jaw tight. “Then tell me.”

He turns to face me fully. “You think it’s a connection. Something shared. Equal. But the bond, a real bond, wasn’t meant to be fair. It’s a chain dressed as devotion. Power disguised as intimacy. And when it’s unleashed, Luna…”

His voice softens.

“It becomes absolute.”

I stare at him.

And he doesn’t look away.

“You could make them do things they don’t want to,” he says, voice steady. “If you pushed. If you wanted. Riven. Silas. You could pull them inside out and they’d let you, because the bond doesn’t care what they want. It only cares what you will.”

The words land like a bruise I didn’t know I had.

I try to speak. I can’t.

Orin keeps going. “That’s why none of us wanted to be bound. Why we fought it. Because once we’re yours, really yours, we stop belonging to ourselves.”

“But I don’t, ” My voice catches. “I don’t take.”

“No,” he says gently. “You don’t.”

And that, somehow, is worse.

Because the bond is older than my morals. Older than my mercy. And if the first Binder reaches for him, for Lucien.

Orin’s voice cuts through again, quiet and deliberate. “As of right now… if she calls to us, and we’re not anchored… we go.”

I shake my head. “No. I won’t let that happen.”

“You may not have a choice.”

“You think I won’t fight for you?” I snap.

His gaze darkens, not cruel, but ancient.

“I think if she reaches deep enough,” he says, “you’ll finally see what the bond does when it’s no longer love, Luna. When it’s need.”

I go still.

He turns back toward the ruined courtyard, fingers trailing the edge of the stone like he’s asking it to remember the version of us that sat here, once.

“You think the others are safe because they joke. Because they kiss you. Because they sleep beside you and haven’t run. But if she takes me and Lucien, if we’re pulled back to what we once were…”

I stare at him.

Because I haven’t commanded Riven. Haven’t touched Silas’s mind. Haven’t tested how far Elias would go just to make me laugh again.

But I could.

And she will.

Finally, he breathes out, low and weighted. “There shouldn’t be two of you.”

I blink. “What?”

“Two Sin-Binders,” he clarifies, voice a shade quieter. “It’s not just rare. It’s impossible. The bond isn’t meant to split. It was designed to center around one. Singular. Irrefutable.”

I feel something cold brush down my spine. “Then why is she still here?”

He shakes his head once. “We’re in uncharted territory now. We don’t know what it means. Not really. Not yet.”

I look away. The ruined courtyard stretches out beneath us, battle-scarred and still echoing with ghosts that haven’t settled.

“Are you saying this is breaking something?” I ask. “That I’m breaking something?”

“No.” He leans in slightly, voice low and clear. “I’m saying this is bigger than you.”

I don’t flinch. But I feel it in my teeth.

“She can’t force a bond,” he says, steady now. “Not on those who haven’t already submitted. Not fully. But those who were hers once, who carry that mark buried in their bones. ”

He pauses, lets it hit.

“She could use them. Maybe not completely. Maybe not forever. But she could bend them, even if they don’t know it’s happening.”

I grit my teeth. “She won’t.”

He tilts his head. “She already took Caspian.”

“He let her.”

“No.” His voice sharpens, just a flicker. “She found him.”

That lands.

Hard.

“She knew where to look,” Orin continues. “Knew what part of him was still vulnerable. What was left unguarded.”

He turns back to me, eyes darker now. “You have to be careful, Luna.”

“Because she might try the same with you and Lucien.”

“Yes.”

“And you might go.”

“I might,” he admits. “But not because I want to.”

I exhale sharply, the words scraping their way out. “Then fight it.”

“I will,” he says, no hesitation.

But it’s what comes next that matters.

“But Luna, if she calls to what’s still inside me… what was written there first, it won’t feel like possession. It’ll feel like memory.”

I stare at him.

And something inside me fractures. Just a little.

He presses a hand to the wall between us, like he’s offering a kind of anchor I didn’t ask for.

“You don’t take, Luna. That’s your strength. But it’s also your weakness.”

I want to argue. I don’t.

Because I know what he means.

“I’ve bound them with choice,” I say. “With consent.”

“And she’ll bind us with hunger.”

I look away, because I can already feel it, how seductive that kind of power could be. How easy it would be to pull instead of wait. To demand instead of offer.

“She’s not just coming for your bond,” Orin says. “She’s coming for the meaning of it.”

I sit in the silence a little longer.

And when I speak, it’s not a question.

It’s a promise.

“Then we make sure she regrets ever rising again.”