Page 65 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

“Oh no,” Silas says, eyes flicking to me now. “If it were, Lucien would have tripped on his pride by now.”

I level him with a stare that could peel skin.

He grins wider.

But Orin, wise, patient, ever the keeper of balance, speaks before I decide to rip Silas’s tongue out.

“We’re discussing Branwen,” he says, as if that one name is enough to snap them back into reality.

It is.

Silas’s smile falters.

Elias frowns.

“Already?” Elias mutters. “I was hoping to finish breakfast before we went straight to ancient trauma.”

“She’s using the structure,” I reply. “The tether still holds, and she’s moving through it like she never stopped. She took Caspian and Ambrose through this, ” I gesture to the ancient stone, “and she did it without resistance.”

Elias stares at the glowing runes, jaw ticking. “Then she never left. Not really.”

“Exactly,” Orin says, nodding. “Which means Luna may not be the anomaly.”

“She might be the correction,” I finish for him.

That thought settles over all of us like a blade drawn slowly across flesh. Because if Branwen was the original sin binder…Then what the fuck does that make Luna?

Silas is uncharacteristically quiet as he steps closer to the pillar, pacing around it like he might unravel its secrets with sheer proximity.

For once, he doesn’t smile. Doesn’t preen or provoke.

There’s a flicker of wariness in his eyes as he watches the dormant runes pulse faintly under the stone’s surface, like old scars remembering pain.

“How does it work?” he asks, voice low, almost reverent.

Orin is the one who answers first, steady as ever. “Branwen designed it. Likely wove her blood into the foundation. It’s not just a conduit, it’s a claim. A root system of command buried deep beneath the land. It doesn’t move her through space, it moves space to her.”

“Like ripping holes in reality,” Elias adds, voice dry. “Sexy.”

Silas nods slowly, jaw ticking. “And we can’t use it.”

“We’re not meant to,” I say. “She didn’t build this for us. She built it to hold us. Every crest, every rune, every lock, it was structured to keep our power fixed in place. Like binding a god to a leash.”

“She’s been dead for centuries,” Silas mutters. “How the fuck is she still the only one who knows how to make it bleed?”

Elias hums thoughtfully, then smirks. “Speaking of bleeding...”

Oh, fuck.

I already know where he’s going.

Elias turns, eyes narrowing at Silas with mock-theatrical menace. “We should bleed Silas out over the pillar. Maybe it wants blood. Maybe that’ll wake it up.”

Silas flips him off without turning around. “If you’re going to sacrifice someone, at least pick someone pretty.”

“Oh, I would,” Elias deadpans. “But Riven’s not here. And Lucien’s too emotionally constipated to bleed without a monologue first.”

“Enough,” I snap, and they both go quiet.

But not because I told them to.

Because the pillar hums.

Just once. A single vibration, low and soft and sickeningly aware. The air shifts. The stone pulses. And the symbol beneath Orin’s crest glows again. But only for a moment.

And then it’s gone.

Silas takes a step back. Elias doesn’t blink. Orin closes his eyes like he expected it.

“She’s listening,” Orin says quietly.

No one questions who he means.

“That thing is fucking creepy,” Silas mutters, flipping off the pillar like it just insulted his mother.

The gesture is pure Silas, deflection wrapped in humor, but his posture is tighter now, jaw set, shoulders stiff beneath the lazy roll of his sleeves. He’s not joking. Not really. That flicker of pulse from the stone didn’t just startle him, it rattled him.

It rattled all of us. Because the stone shouldn’t have responded. Not to us. Not anymore.

But it did.

“You think it’s creepy now?” Elias says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Wait until it starts talking. Or singing. Maybe we’ll get a haunted lullaby with our trauma.”

Silas snorts but doesn’t look away from the pillar. His fingers twitch like he wants to touch it again just to be sure it won’t bite. I see the moment hesitation gives way to arrogance, he takes a step closer.

“Do not touch it again,” I say, the command slipping out instinctively.

My Dominion hums beneath the words, low and cold.

He freezes, halfway through raising a hand.

Elias whistles. “You’re so hot when you bark orders.”

I ignore him.

Orin, ever the ghost of old wisdom, watches from beside me, arms folded, head tilted slightly toward the pillar. “It’s awakening,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. “Responding to movement. Memory. The bindings here were never entirely erased. They were only... softened.”

Silas mutters under his breath. “Like a bad curse with a soft edge.”

“No such thing,” Orin says quietly. “A curse is a curse. So is a bond.”

I look between them, between the stone that was our prison, and the ones I once called enemies before Luna cracked us open like hollowed bones.

“She’s testing the boundaries,” I say, turning back to the pillar. “Branwen wants us to come to her. She wants to lure us through it. Make us desperate.”

“She’s succeeding,” Elias replies, unusually subdued.

Silas crosses his arms, brow drawn. “So what’s the plan? Wait until we’re bleeding from our bond marks and hope we get an invite?”

I don’t answer right away.

Because the truth is, I don’t have a plan.

Branwen’s alive. She’s using magic no one understands. And worst of all, she’s two moves ahead of us again.

But I won’t say that.

Not out loud.

Instead, I look at the stone. Let it burn into my vision like it holds the map I haven’t found yet.

“She built the cage,” I say slowly. “But she’s not the only one who can pick the lock.”

The others drift back toward the house, their laughter quieter now, dulled by whatever the pillar stirred in their bones. But I stay behind. The stone looms in front of me, old magic and older scars and for a moment, I forget I’m not still wearing the collar she placed on me.

Branwen.

She was strategic, poised, and devastatingly intelligent. She didn’t seduce us with sweetness. She used purpose. Promised order in the chaos of our power. Said she could teach us how to wield it without unraveling. She spoke the language of control, of structure. I mistook it for stability.

But power doesn’t stay clean for long. And it never stays shared.

At first, she was… contained. Bound to me, she was cautious, controlled, and even.

The bond enhanced her abilities, yes, but it also gave her access to my Dominion.

And she wielded it with terrifying grace.

Never too much. Never obviously. Just enough to suggest. To nudge.

Until everyone was moving the way she wanted, and no one questioned why.

But then she took another.

And another.

She said it was for balance. Said one Sin couldn’t anchor her alone, not when the world around us was shifting, hungry, divine.

It was when she took Riven that the cracks started to show. He hated her. Fought her from the moment she touched him. But the bond warped even his fury, turned it into a kind of toxic loyalty. He’d spit venom one minute and defend her the next, snarling at anyone who questioned her decisions.

Then she turned that manipulation on Silas, used his craving for chaos, his need to belong. Twisted it into something obedient. Reckless. Obsessive.

She made us compete for her attention. Fed on the fractures. Let jealousy fester, let doubt rot through whatever connection we had left.

The more of us she bound, the more she changed. Her eyes stopped looking at us. They looked through us. Every bond made her stronger and more detached. Less woman, more weapon. She didn’t want unity. She wanted dominion. Absolute.

And then she went after Ambrose.

He refused.

Even as she whispered to him, even when she bled for him, begged him to see her, to need her, he denied her. Said it wasn’t the way. Said no binder should hold that much. That to be chosen must be a choice freely made.

And when he said no… she snapped.

She tried to force it anyway. But the bond didn’t take. It couldn’t. Because you can’t bind someone who doesn’t want you.

That was the first time I saw fear in her eyes. Not because Ambrose rejected her, but because it meant something. It meant she could be denied. That there were limits to her power.

So she did the only thing she knew how to do. She destroyed him. Bit by bit. Piece by piece.

Until we turned on her. Not all at once. But enough. Enough to fracture what she thought was unbreakable.

And now she’s back.

Not for reconciliation.

Not for redemption.

She’s back for reclamation.

Of what she thinks is still hers.

And I wonder, if Luna’s the opposite of Branwen… or just another variation of the same pattern, hiding behind different eyes.

The worst of it wasn’t how she twisted Riven’s rage into loyalty. It wasn’t how she softened Silas’s chaos just enough to slide her fingers around his throat and call it devotion.

It was Caspian.

She obsessed over him.

From the beginning, Branwen wanted his Lust, not just as a power, but as a weapon.

She used it like a scalpel. Precise. Devastating.

She seduced him with reverence, with the promise of pleasure so consuming it could unmake everything he hated about himself.

And Caspian, Caspian, who had always been the most careful of us when it came to bindings, let her in.

He bound to her.

He swore it was a mistake. That he was drunk on her pull, not in love. That he didn’t choose her, not really. But the bond doesn’t care about choice the way we do. It cares about openness, about submission, about that one moment when your defenses drop and the magic rushes in.

And Branwen took everything in that moment.

She used their bond like a leash, and not just on him.

Sex with Caspian wasn’t just carnal. It was ritual. It fed her, amplified her. Every time she touched him, it sent ripples through the rest of us, small shocks, magnetic. Lust feeding Lust. It disoriented us. Distorted us. Until we couldn’t tell if we hated her or wanted her or both.

I remember walking into a room once, just to find Caspian standing there, shirt torn, looking wrecked and radiant and hollow at the same time. She was behind him, fingers tangled in his hair like she owned him. Her eyes landed on me, and she smiled.

That smile was worse than a wound. Because she knew what she was doing. She made us all feel it. Her power. Her pleasure. And she used it to undermine us. Every decision, every battle plan, every argument, we were off-kilter, distracted, tainted.

Even Ambrose, calm, righteous, unreachable, looked at Caspian like he didn’t recognize him anymore. Like whatever piece of Caspian belonged to the rest of us had been carved out and offered to her on a platter.

And she loved it. She craved that power. The power to divide. To control. To devour.

Caspian tried to leave her once.

She laughed.

Said the bond wasn’t something you could walk away from.

And for a while, it wasn’t.

Not until the rest of us snapped, one by one, fraying at the edges until it wasn’t about love or loyalty or anything human anymore.

It was about survival.

And now she’s returned.

With Caspian gone.

Taken.

Again.

And if she still has him, if she’s still feeding off him, we’re already behind.