Page 58 of The Sin-Binder’s Fate (The Seven Sins Academy #1)

The wind is a lover’s whisper, soft, deceiving, coaxing something out of the night that should have stayed buried.

I can feel it beneath my skin. The way desire sharpens when laced with bloodlust. A battlefield is no different than a bedroom, both are ruled by need, by who takes first, by who bends and who breaks. And I don’t break.

I shift my grip on the twin daggers strapped to my hips, the hilts molded to my hands like old lovers. Weapons made for seduction, made for sin. Not brute force like Riven’s or calculated devastation like Lucien’s, but something… finer. A kiss with a blade’s edge.

The battlefield sprawls before me like a stage set for tragedy.

The wraiths are still, waiting . A shifting mass of darkness, like a tide at the brink of an inevitable crash.

Shadows coil between their armor, bodies half-there, half-not.

Some wear faces stolen from the dead, hollow-eyed things that don’t fit quite right over their skulls.

Others, the older ones, the real ones, don’t bother with illusion.

They are gaping mouths where faces should be, jagged voids consuming sound, light, life .

And beyond them, beyond the endless rows of monsters waiting to feast, stands Severin.

I lean against the ruined stone wall, keeping myself half in the shadows. I’m not meant to be seen, not yet. Not by them. But I have a good vantage point, the perfect place to watch, to listen.

Lucien steps forward, stopping just shy of the invisible line barring us from the other side. He carries his power like a blade drawn slow from its sheath, deliberate, measured, deadly.

Severin, on the other hand, is already smiling.

"Pride," he drawls, tasting the word like he’s savoring the aftershock of a good fuck. "Come to watch your little world burn?"

Lucien doesn’t rise to the bait. He never does.

I smirk. That’s his problem, really. He’s always trying to be the immovable object when sometimes… it’s more fun to be the unstoppable force.

"You haven’t crossed the barrier," Lucien says smoothly. "You want to talk, so talk."

Severin exhales a laugh. Slow. Indulgent. He takes a step forward, his presence dragging like silk over bare skin, a thing that shouldn’t be pleasant but still makes you shiver.

"Why rush?" he murmurs. "I just got here."

His eyes flicker past Lucien, sweeping over the ruins of Daemon Academy, the sharp silhouettes of the others stationed around the battlefield, then, to her.

Luna.

I see the exact moment his interest sharpens. The way his head tilts just slightly, as if seeing something unexpected.

Lucien doesn’t let the moment stretch .

"Whatever game you think you’re playing, you’re wasting my time."

Severin grins.

"You always were such a bore," he muses. "So… rigid. Always the good little king, so desperate to hold onto a throne that isn’t yours."

Lucien’s fingers flex at his sides.

I don’t have to see his face to know what he’s thinking. I don’t have to hear his thoughts to know what name is rattling in his skull.

Severin knows too. That’s why he leans in, voice velvet-wrapped poison.

"Tell me, Pride. Did you feel it?"

A shift, sharp and subtle, like a blade sliding into place.

Severin’s grin stretches wider.

"When she died," he continues, savoring every syllable, "did it hurt?"

Ah. There it is. I hum low in my throat, adjusting my stance against the wall. If Severin’s trying to draw blood, he’s choosing his cuts well.

"I remember her, you know," he says, dragging the words slow and deliberate . "Maeve. Such a sweet little thing. So, " he clicks his tongue, considering. "Hopeful."

Lucien exhales through his nose. A shift of weight, barely perceptible. His tell .

"She thought you’d save her." A whisper, a razor edge. "She thought you’d come for her."

Severin leans in, the shadows stirring at his back.

"And you didn’t."

I roll my dagger between my fingers, considering how long this little exchange will last before Lucien does something violent. Or worse, before I do.

There’s a moment, a blade's edge humming just before the cut. Severin’s words tainted with old blood and something darker. Something that festers. He stands there, so sure of himself, so certain that his cruelty is enough to unravel Lucien.

I know better. Lucien is not made to unravel. He is stone, he is steel, he is the kind of sharp that doesn’t dull but simply waits for the right moment to cut.

And now? Now, I think he’s done waiting.

Lucien straightens, slow . Measured. And then he laughs. A sharp exhale. Cold. Distant.

Severin tilts his head, amusement flickering in his gaze, but I see the flicker beneath it. The calculation. The smallest misstep of someone who just realized he leaned in too close to the wrong beast.

Lucien steps forward, not rushed, not reckless. Just enough. Just to let Severin feel it.

“Are we done?” Lucien’s voice is silk-wrapped steel, devoid of anything soft. Anything human. “Or did you come here just to drag her corpse into your mouth like a dog gnawing old bones?”

Severin’s smile doesn’t falter, but something in his posture does.

“Because that’s all you are, aren’t you?” Lucien continues, voice an icy drawl, sharper than any of my blades. “A starving, mangy thing sniffing at what you’ll never have.”

Severin hums, low. Thoughtful. A bluff.

Lucien doesn’t let him settle into it.

“You think throwing Maeve’s name into the dirt will break me?” He scoffs. “I buried her myself. I don’t need you to remind me of what was stolen.”

The wraiths beyond the barrier shift, unsettled. The weight of the battlefield tilts, the invisible scales of power sliding just slightly in Lucien’s favor.

Lucien takes another step, gaze dripping disdain. “You want to rattle my bones, brother? You want to whisper ghosts in my ears like it will make you matter?” He tilts his head, expression unreadable. Dangerous. “It won’t.”

Severin exhales through his nose. “Prideful to the very end.”

Lucien smiles, but there’s no warmth. No amusement. Just the kind of cold that knows how to burn.

“Yes.” Then he leans in, voice dropping lower. Sharper. “And I will watch you fall beneath me again.”

Severin goes still.

Lucien holds.

He has already won this round.

Severin knows it. And that? That is what will make him reckless.

It happens fast. One moment, Severin is still, his amusement curdling into something darker, something sharp. His grin fades, not completely, but enough, just a flicker of teeth without humor.

Then Lucien tilts his head, lips parting around words I already know will light the match .

“You always were impulsive.” His voice is bored, almost casual. “That’s why you lost last time. That’s why you’ll lose again.”

Severin’s body tenses. That’s it. The moment before the blade falls.

The breath before the wreckage. And then, the wraiths move.

They surge forward like a black tide spilling over the edges of the world.

No sound. No battle cry. Just an unnatural, horrible silence as they come, slipping through the shadows, their shapes shifting, fluid, wrong, crawling from the dark like things that were never meant to exist.

Lucien just stands there, watching, waiting, as if he planned this exact moment.

I, on the other hand, don’t have the patience for dramatics. A wraith reaches for me, its body smoke-wrapped bone, its fingers curling like a promise, and I smile. Then I let it touch me. Its hand presses against my skin, its unnatural cold latching on, and, I pull.

Lust is hunger, is taking, is never having enough. And the wraith? It is made of power.

So I consume.

The wraith shrieks, its body writhing as its essence bleeds into me, coils through my veins, and I shudder at the taste of it, bitter, old, something forgotten. It collapses. Withers into dust. And I exhale, smiling as the magic hums through me, thrumming against my bones like a lover’s touch.

More .

Another wraith lunges, and I don’t just kill it.

I devour.

My body moves faster than thought, fluid as sin. I weave between shadows, let them brush against me, let them try. Every time they reach, I take, steal, pull them apart from the inside out.

They are endless. And yet, I am still here.

Across the battlefield, Lucien and Severin clash, a storm against a wildfire, pride against fury. Riven isn’t fighting wraiths, he’s tearing through them. Silas is laughing like this is a game, his magic twisting the air into warped illusions that turn wraiths against each other.

And Luna, I catch a glimpse of her, blade in hand, her eyes burning like something divine and monstrous at once.

She’s not ready. And yet, I watch as a wraith comes for her, as she moves too slow, and then suddenly, she isn’t. She turns, swings, not just with the blade, but with something deeper, something that makes the earth itself crack beneath her feet, raw, untamed power twisting the world around her.

And for a moment, I don’t see a girl. I see a force.

A beginning. A ruin waiting to happen. I am not a soldier.

I don’t fight like Riven, like a storm of violence given form.

I don’t fight like Lucien, all cold calculation and precision.

My skill is something else entirely, seduction, manipulation, control. But I was made for war all the same.

The air pulses with magic, with hunger, with bloodlust that isn’t mine, but gods, I want it to be.

My body moves on instinct, power thrumming just beneath my skin.

I step forward, and the wraith that lunges for me freezes before it even reaches me.

The wraith’s body shudders, its movements slowing, its fingers twitching mid-air.

Its breath, if it even breathes, comes out in a harsh, rattling sound, like it doesn’t understand why it suddenly wants.

I grin.

“Go ahead,” I murmur, tilting my head as I press into its mind, push into the very thing that keeps it moving, twisting its desires like a blade in the ribs. “Come closer.”

It does. It leans forward, trembling, caught in something it doesn’t understand, and I snap its neck before it realizes it should have resisted.

Another wraith lunges. Another pauses. The moment its mind so much as flinches, I reach for it, flood it with something primal, something that overrides its command to kill.

It hesitates. And that hesitation is all I need. I drag my dagger across its throat and move to the next one before it even collapses.

All around me, chaos reigns. Lucien and Severin’s fight has reached a crescendo, power clashing like two celestial bodies set on a collision course. Silas’s illusions twist the battlefield into something impossible, cruel, crueler still because they work.

And then the earth shifts. Not like before. Not like the smaller cracks Luna made when she swung her sword. This is something else. The ground roars. It doesn’t just tremble, it shudders, buckles inward, as if the entire world is preparing to break apart.

And then I hear it. The bellow. Not human. Not wraith. Something older. I turn just in time to see a troll step onto the battlefield, massive, lumbering, covered in jagged obsidian-like armor that makes it look carved from the bones of the earth itself.

And Riven is already moving toward it. His blade erupts in fire, the heat radiating off him as he charges, unrelenting, as if the thing standing before him isn’t three times his size, as if its fists alone couldn’t crush him in an instant.

The troll swings. The force of it alone rips through the battlefield, sends a wave of dust and debris scattering like shattered glass.

Riven dodges, barely, rolling beneath the attack, his own blade slicing across the troll’s arm.

The wound sizzles. The troll roars. And the moment its focus snaps to Riven, wraiths surge forward, emboldened, like the shifting of the earth itself has called them to action.

I grit my teeth. The wraiths should be the worst of it. They aren’t. They were just the beginning. Something new slithers from the shadows, something that moves like liquid but takes shape like smoke. At first, I think it’s another wraith, but then it rises, too tall, too fluid, too unnatural.

Not a wraith. Not a demon. Something between.

It has no face, just an absence of features, its head a hollow void that seems to pull at the air itself. Long, clawed fingers unfurl, and where its body should end, it doesn’t. It keeps going, tendrils of darkness spilling from its form like smoke seeking a vessel to infect.

And there are dozens of them. They move soundlessly. The wraiths shriek, the trolls bellow, but these things, they just glide forward, untouched by the noise, untouched by the chaos, existing in a separate plane of ruin altogether.

Lovely.

A wraith lunges for me, and I don’t even hesitate, I sink my power into it, twisting its will until it no longer knows what it wants, what it is. The moment it falters, I drive my blade into its gut, twisting until it vanishes in a plume of smoke.

But the faceless things? They don’t hesitate. One reaches for me, its fingers elongating, stretching unnaturally fast. I pivot, avoiding its grasp, but the movement feels... wrong.

The air around me shifts, bends, warps. Like reality itself is being pulled apart. And that’s when I realize, they’re not just faceless. They’re void-born. Created from the same abyss that birthed wraiths, but worse. Because while wraiths hunger for souls, these things devour existence itself.

I don’t have time to strategize.

Another one lashes out, and I barely manage to dodge, but where it touches the earth, the ground withers, decays, collapses inward like it was never there at all.

Fucking fantastic.

A flicker of movement catches my eye, Riven, still locked in combat with the troll, his blade slicing through its thick hide as the beast roars in fury. But more are coming. Beyond the battlefield, past the writhing mass of wraiths and faceless horrors, the army is still growing.

More figures emerge from the gloom, some massive and hulking, with stone-like skin and glowing red eyes. Others crawl on all fours, their bodies stitched together from what looks like sinew and bone.

And in the distance, standing at the heart of it all, Severin watches.

Amused.

Waiting.

I grit my teeth. Fine. If he wants a show, I’ll give him one.

I roll my shoulders, flex my fingers, and let my power expand outward, not just seduction this time, but dominance. Not just hunger, but control. Because Lust isn’t just about wanting. It’s about taking. And I am going to take everything .