Page 20 of The Sin-Binder’s Fate (The Seven Sins Academy #1)

Ambrose is a fucking idiot.

I watch from the shadows, unseen, as he leans into her, his voice a molten thing dripping with promise.

His power laces through his words, curling around her like a noose spun from gold.

Greed incarnate, hungry and relentless. He doesn’t need to lift a blade to ruin her, just his voice, his touch, the inevitability of his nature.

And yet, he plays with her as if he has the luxury of indulgence.

Amateur.

But Ambrose doesn’t bind. He doesn’t belong to anyone. Not to the Academy, not to the rest of us, and sure as hell not to her. He is the safest of us all in that way, because if he had even the slightest inclination toward claiming her, we’d already be lost.

The first binding is always the strongest. It sets the foundation, cements her control, and weakens our resistance. It will make the others more willing, more desperate, to follow. And once that door is cracked open, it never closes again.

That is why I am here .

Not for her. Not for whatever games Ambrose wants to play. But to ensure none of the others do something stupid.

My gaze sharpens on her as she kneels before him, power bearing down on her like a beast with its teeth to her throat.

Yet she holds. Resists. There is something wrong with that, something unnatural.

She should have fallen under his spell the second he laid it over her, should have succumbed to the weight of his desire the way everyone does.

Yet here she is, bartering. Holding his gaze like she belongs in this game.

Like she’s already a part of us.

A muscle in my jaw tics, the whisper of my power curling outward before I pull it back in.

I shift against the ruined stone archway where I stand, unnoticed, watching.

Waiting. I do not doubt that the others are circling like vultures, each with their reasons to stay their hand.

Riven would rather tear her apart than bind her.

Silas would take her just to spite the rest of us.

Orin is too cautious, Elias too lethargic, and Caspian, Caspian, would fuck her into madness before ever letting her have any real control.

But none of them can move first.

Because the first binding… that one will decide everything. And it sure as hell won’t be Ambrose.

I exhale slowly as he leans in, his lips moving close to hers, whispering something low and cutting. Her eyes flicker, her body rigid, but her spine does not bow.

Fascinating.

I don’t give a damn what happens to her, but I refuse to let her have any of us. Yet as I watch, something settles in my chest. A decision. A certainty.

If I have to be the one to stop this from happening, I will. But I won’t make it easy for her.

Ambrose smiles as he steps back, slow and lazy, as if he hasn’t just rewritten the rules of this game. His deal is set, his price locked.

And she took it.

She’s still kneeling, her body rigid with whatever thoughts are screaming through that fragile mind of hers, but I don’t care. Because she just made the worst fucking mistake of her life. Not in owing Ambrose. No, he’s predictable. His greed has limits.

Mine does not.

The second he vanishes, I step forward, closing the distance in a heartbeat. Her head snaps up, green eyes locking onto me with something between defiance and exhaustion.

I let my power drop. Dominion slams into her, invisible and absolute, pressing down on her limbs like unseen chains.

Kneel lower.

Her body reacts before her mind does, her muscles caving as if the weight of the world itself just became unbearable. She barely stifles the sound that leaves her throat, something sharp and caught, but I don’t stop.

She will learn.

I crouch before her, watching her struggle against a command she doesn’t even recognize yet. She isn’t fighting me, not really. She’s fighting the inevitability of what I am .

I could tell her to bow her head, to press her hands to the ground in full submission, and she would. But that would be too easy.

“You made a deal,” I murmur, tilting my head. “That was your first mistake.”

Her hands twitch at her sides. She wants to fight it. I see it in the rigid line of her spine, the flex of her fingers like she might claw her way out of this.

I let my Aura of Supremacy seep in, let it drag through her mind like a blade drawn slowly. The kind of pressure that doesn’t just force submission, it unravels.

I see it the second it hits her. Her eyes widen, her throat bobs, and for the first time since she set foot in this cursed academy, she understands what she’s dealing with.

I’m not like the others. Ambrose plays games with his words. Caspian clouds judgment with lust. Riven destroys because destruction is all he knows.

I don’t need to do any of that. I don’t need to lift a hand. I don’t need to touch her.

She will break because I said so.

“Now leave.” My voice is velvet over steel, quiet but edged.

She flinches. Her whole body recoils, as if something just yanked her from the inside out. Her foot shifts involuntarily, and I know she feels it. The pull. The demand sinking into her bones, twisting into the very fabric of who she is.

Go.

She wants to. She needs to. But, something resists. I see it in the way her lips part, in the ragged breath she takes, in the flicker of something foul beneath her skin. Not magic. Not anything tangible.

Just her.

She is fighting me.

I exhale sharply, my hand snapping out, grabbing her chin between my fingers.

“If you knew what was good for you,” I murmur, tilting her face up so I can watch the war in her eyes, “you’d already be running.”

Because if she doesn’t, I will make her wish she had. I watch the flicker of pain cross her features, the way her breath hitches, how her hands curl into fists against the stone. Her body wants to move, needs to, but she’s fighting it with every fragile, human fiber she has.

I press harder.

Dominion crashes down like a tidal wave, force slamming into her limbs, into the very marrow of her bones. The command isn’t just external anymore, it’s inside her, wrapping tight around every nerve, crushing, suffocating, demanding.

And still, she holds.

My jaw clenches. “You are not special,” I bite out, every syllable laced with raw command.

Her head jerks, like something just struck her. A sharp, guttural sound leaves her lips. I step closer, looming over her as I pull more, more force, more pressure, more of the endless, insurmountable weight of me.

Her body trembles. Her arms buckle.

I’ll make her beg.

I’ll tear the defiance out of her.

Blood spills. It’s small at first, a single drop trailing from her nose. Then another. Then more. A slow, crimson ribbon down her lips, dripping onto the stone beneath her knees.

Something inside me stills.

She wavers, breath shaky, the resistance in her gaze dimming into something else entirely. My command doesn’t falter. But for the first time, I do. Because she doesn’t look afraid.

She looks at me, bleeding, trembling, breaking, and whispers, “Stop.”

And I do.

Just like that.

The command shatters between us, vanishing as if it was never there. The weight lifts, the crushing force evaporating from her limbs, and she sags, gasping as though she’s just surfaced from drowning.

A slow, foreign dread curls in my gut. No one has ever, ever, made me stop before. The weight of my power is absolute. It is law, unyielding and irrevocable. I have bent the strongest of creatures, forced kings to their knees with a whisper, watched gods crumble beneath the gravity of my will.

And yet, she stopped me.

I should leave her here, broken and spent, struggling to breathe after daring to resist me. I should turn my back and let the others do what they will with her.

Instead, I reach for my power again. It’s reckless, petty, but I don’t care.

She has to feel it. Has to bow.

The command slams into her like a fist to the chest, invisible but suffocating, wrapping around her spine and forcing her body into submission. I see the moment she feels it, the way her lips part, how her throat bobs with the effort to swallow down whatever scream is caught there .

But she doesn’t scream.

She blinks up at me, something sharp and assessing in her gaze, something I don’t like.

Then she exhales and says, “Lucien.”

My name drips from her lips like something dangerous, something deliberate, something I should’ve been prepared for.

And just like before, just like before, my command fractures.

Power rips from me in a violent snap, recoiling like a shattered tether. I feel it in my bones, in the deep, guttural wrongness of it, like something has just been taken from me. My body jerks with the force of it, my hands curling into fists at my sides.

I force my expression blank, smooth, unreadable. My jaw tightens as I glare down at her. “How did you do that?”

She swallows hard, wipes at the blood on her face with the back of her hand, then stares at the crimson stain like she isn’t sure if it’s hers.

“I don’t know,” she admits, voice raw. “And if I did, I’d tell you. Not to gloat. Not to throw it in your face. Just because…” She pauses, something flickering behind her expression, something I can’t decipher. “Just because I don’t want this any more than you do.”

I let out a slow, humorless laugh, the sound curling between us like smoke. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.” Her voice is quiet, too steady for my liking. “You think I want to be here? That I wanted to wake up one day and find out I have no choice in any of this? That my entire life was just… leading to this?”

I don’t respond. I just watch her.

She exhales sharply. “I didn’t ask for this, Lucien. Not for me. Not for you. Not for any of you. ”

There’s no deceit in her words. No malice. Just exhaustion.

She presses her hands to the stone beneath her, bracing herself, but she doesn’t try to stand.

“Whatever the hell I just did to you,” she continues, quieter now, “it wasn’t on purpose. But I don’t think I’ll apologize for it.”

Something dark coils in my chest. My head tilts slightly. “No?”

“No,” she says, meeting my gaze. “Because you didn’t stop, Lucien. You wouldn’t have stopped.”

I don’t deny it.

She takes another breath, shoulders rising and falling, then gives a small, humorless laugh. “You know what’s funny?”

I don’t respond.

“I still don’t hate you.” She shakes her head, almost like she hates herself for the admission. “I should. But I don’t.”

She looks away, lips pressing together like she’s already said too much.

And I hate that she won’t look at me now. I hate that I stopped when she told me to. I hate that there’s something in her gaze, something neither submission nor defiance, that makes my chest feel too tight. I hate that I don’t know what to do next.

So I do nothing. I turn on my heel and walk away.

This place is a fucking graveyard. I hate it. Not in the way I hate most things, casually, dismissively, like a passing inconvenience. No, this hate is deep, buried in my bones, carved into the marrow. It festers. Lingers. Every stone, every charred remnant of this ruined building, reeks of it .

Daemon Academy was built over the ashes of the first school, but this place, this forgotten, blackened ruin, was never touched, never rebuilt. They left it here, a carcass of what once was. A monument to failure.

To her failure.

My boots echo over the broken stone floor as I move through the wreckage. I don’t know why I’m walking this path, I never do. Some cursed part of me always brings me here when I get too close to the past, when I let it wrap around my throat like a noose.

When I remember.

This is where she died. The last Sin-Binder. The girl who thought she could control us. The girl who thought she could have us. The girl who had me.

I exhale slowly, forcing the memory back, but it never fully leaves. It lives here, a ghost woven into the cracks of the burned stone, whispering in the silence.

She was supposed to be strong enough. That’s what they told us. That’s what I believed.

But she died here, in his arms.

I step over what’s left of a fallen archway, moving into the courtyard, and stop where I always do.

The ground is uneven beneath my feet, the edges of the stones blackened from fire and time, but I can still see it.

The way she fell. The way Riven knelt with her broken body in his arms, covered in blood, her blood, his hands shaking, his rage so vast it nearly destroyed us all.

I had never seen him like that before. Not Riven. Not Wrath. He was a hurricane of destruction, a force of nature unleashed, but for the first time, it wasn’t mindless. It wasn’t just rage. It was grief .

I remember standing here, watching, my own hands curled into fists, my own body shaking with something I didn’t have a name for. I remember feeling raw. Stripped of everything. Exposed.

Because she was mine first. I was the first to want her. The first to feel the pull. The first to let her in.

And she broke anyway.

The others won’t say it, but we all knew the truth: she wasn’t strong enough. Not for us. Not for what we are.

And now there’s Luna.

I grind my teeth at the thought of her, still kneeling back in that ruined hallway, still breathing when she shouldn’t be. I should’ve left her broken. I should’ve let Ambrose finish what he started.

But I didn’t.

I turn away from the courtyard, from the past, from the remnants of the girl I once let own me.

Luna is not her. She never will be. And I will not let history fucking repeat itself.

Luna doesn’t belong here. Not in this place.

Not in this world. Not with us. But she won’t fucking leave.

I should’ve expected that. The last one didn’t leave either, not until she was ripped apart, until she bled out in the arms of the very monsters she swore she could control.

And Luna? She’s already bleeding, already pushing back in ways she shouldn’t.

I should let her keep fighting. Let her wear herself down until she collapses. But that would mean waiting. And time is a luxury we don’t have.

Not with them watching .

She doesn’t know it yet, how much worse this can get. That's what we’ve done to her, what we will do to her, is nothing compared to what’s coming. To who’s coming.

And she won’t see it until it’s too late.

They always come for the Sin-Binders.

It’s not a matter of if, it’s when. And the moment one of us binds to her, the moment that first chain locks into place, there will be no stopping it. No stopping them.

That’s what she doesn’t understand. It’s not just about us. Not just about what we want, or don’t want. This is about survival, and not hers.

Ours.

She’s standing at the edge of something bigger than she realizes, and if she falls, she’s dragging all of us with her .