Page 42 of The Sin-Binder’s Fate (The Seven Sins Academy #1)

The rose withers between my fingers. Not all at once. Slowly. Petal by petal, the color leeching out, its soft, fragrant life curling into my palm like a whispered secret. The stem shrivels last, twisting against my skin, brittle and weak, before it crumbles entirely.

A trade. Something beautiful, siphoned into nothing. It should feel like a waste, but I don’t care. Because my eyes are already on her.

Luna sits by the pillar, head tilted slightly, staring at nothing.

She doesn’t see me. She doesn’t see anything, really, not the bodies passing by, not the way the academy moves around her like she’s not even there.

She’s lost in whatever storm is tearing through her ribs, and fuck, I hope Riven didn’t break her.

I exhale sharply, curling my fingers around the remnants of the rose. My skin tingles from the lingering pull of its stolen life, the brief, fleeting energy that came and went too fast to settle. I should’ve taken something stronger. Something more potent .

Something I could give her.

I make my way to her, slow and unhurried, like I don’t already feel her pulse from here. Like I don’t already know that something inside her has shifted.

She notices me when I sit down.

Her dark eyes flick toward mine, and the corner of her lips lifts, just barely, just enough for me to call it a smile. Small, hesitant. There.

I hold out the flower.

It’s dry now, just the husk of what it was, but she takes it anyway, turning it over in her fingers, her gaze dropping back to the pillar.

The ridges of the stone catch in the low light, deep carvings weaving ancient words that mean nothing to most of the students here.

But she stares at them like she’s waiting for them to whisper back.

A minute passes. Then another.

I should say something. But I don’t want to. Because there’s something wrong with the way she’s sitting, too stiff, too still. Her breath drags too slow, like she’s listening to something I can’t hear, like something is,

“I feel him inside me.”

Her voice is quiet. Almost distant.

I go completely still.

Her fingers tighten around the ruined flower. Her lips part like she wants to say more, but she doesn’t. Because she doesn’t need to.

I know exactly what she means.

Riven.

My jaw clenches. A slow coil of something ugly winds through my ribs, but I don’t let it show.

Luna exhales, her shoulders shifting like she can shake it off, like that weight pressing into her mind is something she can force away. “It’s like he’s… there. Not watching, not listening, just, ” She swallows. “There.”

It takes everything in me not to move. Not to drag my nails against the pillar and let my power sink into the stone, siphoning from something real, something grounding.

Instead, I tilt my head, studying her. “He’s not inside your head.”

Her brows draw together slightly.

I roll my wrist, motioning vaguely. “Riven’s not a mind reader. None of us are.” I pause, considering. “Well, Silas can pull thoughts if he wants to, but he has to try.” I watch the way her mouth presses into a tight line. “Riven doesn’t need to.”

Luna glances at me, hesitant. “What do you mean?”

I lean back against the stone, dragging a slow breath into my lungs, feeling the burn of energy I haven’t fed on properly all day.

The academy makes sure I don’t starve. The school itself is a living thing, pulsing with old magic, old power.

Enough for me to skim from, if I get desperate.

But right now, my hunger is a quiet hum beneath my skin. Manageable.

I flick my gaze back to hers. “Wrath doesn’t think with words.”

Luna shifts. Her fingers relax slightly, the dried rose petals trembling in her palm.

“He feels,” I continue. “Pain. Rage. Every raw thing his body can hold.” A pause. “That’s what you’re feeling.”

Her breath drags slow. “It doesn’t feel like anger.”

I huff a quiet laugh. “Wrath isn’t just anger.”

She looks at me. “Then what is it?”

I don’t answer.

Because this, this deep, gnawing ache she can’t shake, the way her body is still humming with something she doesn’t have a name for yet, this is Wrath in its truest form. Not fire. Not rage. But hunger. It’s wanting something so badly it takes you apart.

Riven doesn’t do anything halfway. Not violence. Not war. And not this. And now, Luna is feeling it, too.

I watch her for another second, watching the way she sways slightly, her lashes dipping low, her skin still carrying traces of him, of us.

Then I exhale.

“Give it time,” I murmur. “You’ll learn to live with it.”

She doesn’t respond. She keeps staring at the stone. At the sigils carved into its surface. The pillar is old. Older than the academy, older than anything the students here bother to acknowledge.

It breathes in its own way, shifting under the weight of centuries, its surface carved with a language most of the world has long forgotten. A monument to a past that refuses to stay buried.

Luna doesn’t realize where she’s sitting. She just leans against the stone, quiet and lost, running her fingers over the etchings like they don’t mean anything. Like they aren’t the very thing keeping us here.

I watch her fingertips trace the grooves.

A slow drag along the deep ridges of an ancient mark, the sigil of Pride, set high along the pillar’s face. A perfect, sweeping arc cut with sharp edges, its presence commanding even in stillness. A mark of absolute dominion. Lucien’s mark .

Below it, another symbol. A crude, jagged line slicing through the center of the stone, rough and uneven, as if it had been carved by something wild, something untamed. Wrath. Riven’s rage, immortalized in rock.

There are more. Seven in total.

Each one of us, bound to this place by the weight of our sins.

I exhale, stretching my legs out as I watch her. “You don’t want to be near that for too long.”

Luna glances at me, brow furrowing. “Why?”

I tilt my chin toward the pillar. “Because that’s what’s keeping us caged.”

She hesitates, glancing back at the carvings, her fingers hovering just above the surface now. “This?”

I nod. “The Pillar of Binding.”

Luna exhales, gaze flicking over the stone like she’s seeing it for the first time. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Of course you haven’t.” I watch her mouth tighten, her mind working too hard to piece together the answers that no one’s given her. “No one talks about it. Not here. Not in books. The headmaster sure as hell won’t explain it to you.”

She tilts her head slightly, waiting. Expecting me to fill in the blanks. And, against my better judgment, I do.

“It was built to contain us,” I murmur, watching her reactions carefully. “To keep us inside these walls. Keep us from leaving. Keep us from spilling over into the rest of the world.” My lips curl slightly. “Wouldn’t want the Seven Sins running wild, would we?”

Luna’s grip tightens around the withered flower in her palm. “Who built it?”

“The first Binder.”

She inhales sharply, her body going rigid at the word .

Good. She’s catching on.

I press my back against the stone, gaze flicking up toward the highest sigil, where the mark of Greed sits carved into the pillar’s peak. A swirling pattern of sharp curves and spirals, intricate and delicate, unlike Ambrose himself.

“She bled for this,” I continue, keeping my voice low, even. “Spilled her blood into the foundation. Poured every ounce of her power into this place to keep us locked inside.” My fingers tap absently against my knee. “And for centuries, it worked.”

Luna looks at me then. Really looks at me. “You say that like it doesn’t anymore.”

A slow, sharp grin stretches across my lips.

“She was human,” I murmur. “And human things don’t last forever.”

Her throat bobs.

She’s already making the connection. I can see it in the way her eyes darken, in the way her breath comes a little quicker, like she’s bracing herself for whatever answer she’s about to get.

“So what happens when the bond weakens?” she asks, voice quieter now.

I lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees. “We break free.”

I see the ripple of unease travel through her limbs. The way her fingers twitch where they rest on the pillar’s surface.

She doesn’t ask the next question. ButI answer it anyway.

“It won’t happen all at once.” I tilt my head, watching the way her body tenses.

“The bond is old. It’s cracking, not shattering.

Little fractures forming, piece by piece.

” My gaze drops to her lips, then back to her dark, steady eyes.

“And you, sweetheart?” I exhale slowly, savoring the way she sways just slightly.

“You’re a sledgehammer to the foundation. ”

She swallows.

“You’re saying I’m weakening it.”

I smirk. “I’m saying you’re the first Binder to walk through these gates in centuries, and you just bonded with one of us. You tell me what that means.”

Luna’s breathing is shallow now. Her fingers drift over the stone again, softer this time, slower, her touch careful, like she’s afraid to press too hard, to push something over the edge.

“What happens,” she whispers, “when it finally does break?”

I drag my tongue over my teeth, my voice nothing but a rasp.

“We walk.”

And hell follows.

“What happens if you leave?”

Not if the pillar falls. Not if the bond breaks. If they, we, make it past these gates.

I exhale slowly, rolling my shoulders, feeling the weight of that question settle deep in my bones. She doesn’t realize how loaded it is. She doesn’t understand that we’ve thought about it for centuries, dreamed of it, ached for it, only to wake up still caged, still bound.

But now? Now, for the first time, the chains don’t feel so tight.

Because of her.

I let my head tilt back against the stone, stretching out my legs. “Doesn’t matter.”

Her brows pull together. “Of course it matters. ”

“No,” I say simply, dragging my gaze back to hers. “It doesn’t.”

Her lips press together, irritated. “Why not?”