Page 11 of The Sin Binder's (The Seven Sins Academy #4)

Sometimes, I forget how to breathe inside this house.

Not because it’s haunted—though it is, with our sins, with memories, with the echo of Lucien’s silence—but because the walls remember me. And worse, they remind me.

It’s the nights that hit hardest. The stillness. The absence of Luna beside me. I used to pretend I preferred solitude. Now it feels like punishment.

I wake gasping, sheets twisted around my legs like bindings I can't shake. My chest tight, slick with sweat that smells wrong, like the Hollow, like that damn column of Branwen’s rot. My hands tremble before I even realize I’ve moved them, searching blindly for her. For warmth. For comfort. For proof I’m not back there.

But I always wake up alone.

And it makes it harder. Because I am the king of dreams. The monarch of desire. I slip into people's minds with ease, reshape their fantasies like clay, leave them wrecked and whispering my name. I’ve turned gods to fools with a look. I’ve made warlords sob for a taste of my skin.

And I can’t fucking sleep through a night without Branwen’s voice slithering through my skull like a blade in velvet.

She crawls over me in the dream. Every time. Her lips curl with that mock-sweet cruelty she’s perfected. Her hands trail down my ribs like she owns every inch of them—because for a while, she did. She leans down, whispers things I don’t want to remember. She calls me pretty thing and pet, and I want to vomit but I can’t move. Can’t scream. Can’t even wake myself.

The worst ones are when she uses my power against me. When she forces it through me. Forces me to feel the very craving I’m known for, weaponizes it until I’m begging for a release I didn’t ask for. Until I’m laughing and sobbing at the same time, like a beautiful tragedy staged for no one.

She made me lust for her pain. That’s the part I hate most. That I felt good in hell.

And now?

Now I avoid sleep. Now I drink things Riven tells me not to touch and take silences from Ambrose like medicine. Now I pace the halls like a ghost while Luna sleeps three doors down and I don’t knock because I’m scared if I do, I’ll pull her into the pit with me. Because if she touches me, I don’t know if it’ll heal me… or burn me worse.

Because this bond isn’t quiet anymore. It pulls. Not gently. Not sweetly. It claws down my spine when she’s near, dragging my gaze to her throat, her hands, her mouth. It aches in me when she passes, when she laughs, when she looks tired and doesn’t ask me why I’m not sleeping.

She always looks at me like she sees it—the cracks, the filth, the bruises I can’t cover. And she doesn’t run. That’s the problem. She never runs.

But gods, I want her to.

Because one day I won’t be able to stop myself. One day the craving will win. And if I touch her, if I use the gift that Branwen turned into a curse, I’ll twist something inside her I can’t undo. The bond reacts to desire. And Luna is desire.

If I slip into her dream, even by accident—what then?

What if I want to?

What if she asks me to?

What if I never come out?

The fountain doesn’t sound like water should. It whispers instead—thin, slithering notes that slip between the cracks of my skull and settle there like mold. It’s too quiet. Too soft. The kind of silence that amplifies what’s inside you instead of muting it. I hate it. Hate how still everything is. How the ripples spread out across the surface like they mean something. Like they’re trying to say look how easy it is to be moved.

I press my fingers into the water anyway. Watch the distortion. It warps my reflection—blurs the sharpness of my jaw, smears the exhaustion beneath my eyes. It almost makes me look human. Almost.

It’s late. Everyone else is asleep or pretending to be. I should be pretending too. But I can’t breathe in that room. I can’t breathe inside me. Every second I spend still, I spiral deeper. So I walk. I think about finding Elias, about begging him to put me under, even if it’s risky, even if Orin would call it reckless. I just need one night—just one—where Branwen doesn’t wrap her hands around my throat in my sleep and make me call her mistress.

The thought of going to Elias feels shameful. I don’t want to owe him that. But I’m close. Too close. My control’s fraying.

I stare into the water, into the warped shape of my own eyes, and whisper, “You’re supposed to be the god of dreams. So why the fuck can’t you have one that doesn’t end in screaming?”

A soft touch lands between my shoulder blades, and for one second—just one—I think I’m back in the Hollow. That Branwen’s found me again. That she’s crawled out of my mind and into the waking world.

But then—

“,”

Luna says, quiet and warm and far too real for a dream.

I freeze.

Her hand stays where it is. Light. Steady. She doesn’t press. Doesn’t flinch. She’s just… there. Like she’s always been there. Like it makes sense for her to find me this broken and still want to touch me.

“Don’t you sleep?”

I ask instead, and I hate how hoarse I sound. How much it gives away.

“Not when you’re hurting like this,”

she says, no hesitation. And gods, she means it.

I want to say something snarky, something flippant. A joke about her stalking me, or how she’s lucky I’m the pretty kind of broken. But I can’t find the words. They’ve drowned somewhere in the reflection, and all I have left is the truth I don’t want her to hear.

“I think about asking Elias to drug me,”

I admit, voice low. “To put me down like a wild animal until it passes.”

She doesn’t recoil. She doesn’t offer platitudes or promises that it will pass, because she knows better. She just steps closer, her palm sliding up my spine like she’s trying to remind me this body still belongs to me. That it’s mine again.

“Don’t,”

she whispers. “Don’t hand your mind to anyone else. Not again. Not after what she did.”

I laugh—sharp and bitter. “You say that like I’ve got a choice.”

“You do,”

she says. “You came here instead of his room. That’s a choice.”

That lands hard. Right in the center of me. I swallow against it. My throat tightens, and I wish she’d stop touching me because I’m starting to lean into it without meaning to.

“You’re too good at this,”

I murmur, finally turning my head to look at her. “Too soft. You should’ve let me rot.”

Her expression doesn’t falter. She just lifts a brow and says, “I’m not soft. You just make me stupid.”

And that—fuck, that almost makes me smile.

“I’m sorry I’m a mess,”

I murmur, the words thick and broken like something half-swallowed, half-confessed. I hate how they sound in my own mouth. Pathetic. Weak. And still not nearly enough to cover what’s rotting underneath.

She doesn’t answer right away. Doesn’t fill the space with false comfort or force a fix that doesn’t exist. Instead, she just exhales softly—like she feels it too—and then wraps her arms around me without a second’s hesitation.

It should feel like pressure. Like weight. But it doesn’t. It’s warm. Steady. Her body presses to mine without demand, without intent. Not seductive. Not lustful. Just Luna.

And gods, I nearly shatter for it.

My hands hover at her waist, unsure of what I’m allowed to take from this. I want to bury my face in her neck. I want to breathe her in until the ghost of Branwen is chased out of my lungs. But I can’t. I won’t.

My body tightens, jaw clenched against the rising urge to fall apart in her arms. I don’t deserve the kind of comfort she’s offering. I’m not clean enough for this. Not healed enough. Not even me enough, most days. So I push her back, just a little. Just enough to stop myself from needing too much.

“You don’t have to touch me,”

I say, voice low and hoarse and all wrong. My hands are trembling where they’ve settled on her arms, and I let them drop before she can notice.

Her brows knit—not in confusion, but in quiet protest. “I know I don’t have to,”

she replies softly. “I want to.”

That wrecks me more than it should. She says it so casually, like it’s nothing. Like I’m not scarred and fucked up and waking up most nights afraid of my own power. Like she wants this version of me—the broken, jagged mess that can’t even fall asleep without choking on memory. And it would be easier to hate her for that. Easier to twist it into manipulation. Into pity. But it’s not. I can feel it. She means it.

“You shouldn’t,”

I whisper, more to myself than to her.

She tilts her head, watching me with those impossibly steady eyes. “Maybe not. But I do. And I’m not going to let you rewrite what you are because of what she did to you.”

My breath hitches.

And then she takes my hand—gently, deliberately—and laces her fingers through mine. Not to seduce. Not to lead me somewhere I’m not ready to go. Just to be there. To anchor me without chains. We stay like that. Fingers tangled. Her touch grounded. My thoughts louder than I want them to be. But quieter now, somehow, too.

Because for once, I don’t feel like I have to run from the silence.

She doesn’t try to touch me again.

Instead, she sits beside me, close enough that our knees almost brush, but she doesn’t close the gap. Doesn’t force comfort or ask for more. Her gaze stays on the fountain—like she’s giving me the space to speak or not speak, but she’ll stay either way.

Then her voice cuts through the stillness, quiet but steady. “Statistically, it’s more often women,”

she says. “But it happens to men too. A lot more than people want to admit.”

My stomach tightens. She’s not looking at me, but I can feel the words settle between us like weights. Like truths neither of us want to wear out loud.

“I was seventeen,”

she continues, matter-of-fact but not detached. “It was a party. Someone I trusted. I didn’t even fight him. I just froze. And afterward I... I hated sleeping alone. Not because I thought someone would come back for me. But because my mind wouldn’t shut up.”

I don’t breathe. I don’t blink. I don’t know how to hear this and not reach for her, but I keep still.

She glances at me then, eyes cutting sharp through the night. “You’re not the only one who’s had something stolen.”

The words are simple. Not meant to comfort. Not pity. Just truth. And somehow, that’s worse. That she knows. That she’s been there. That this thing I don’t talk about is something she’s survived.

“I didn’t even think it counted,”

I whisper, the admission clawing its way out of me. “I wasn’t... I didn’t say yes. But I wasn’t allowed to say no. I wasn’t even me.”

“You were you enough,”

she says firmly. “You didn’t have to say no. You didn’t get a choice.”

My hands are shaking, clenched in my lap like I can hold myself together if I just keep them tight enough.

Then she says, “Do you want me to stay with you tonight?”

And it’s not soft or fragile or couched in seduction. It’s not an offer of sex. It’s not even about comfort, not really. It’s about the silence I can’t handle and the ghosts I can’t outrun and the fact that she sees all of that and still wants to stay.

I nod before I can stop myself.

She doesn’t smile, just threads her fingers through mine like she did earlier, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and stands. “Come on, . Let’s make the nightmares share their space with something else.”

She doesn’t lead me.

She walks beside me.

And I let her.

She cracks some stupid joke about how I better not snore or she’ll put a pillow over my face. I shoot her a look, dry and skeptical, but she just grins like she hasn’t already peeled back too many layers of me tonight. Like the air between us hasn’t been carved out by things we didn’t mean to say.

We walk back in step, her shoulder brushing mine like an accidental rhythm. But nothing about Luna is ever accidental. That’s what makes her dangerous. That’s what makes me weak.

My hand hovers near the door handle to my room, and I hesitate. Not because I don’t want her there—but because I do. Because it’s not about sex tonight, and somehow that makes it worse. I can fuck her. I’ve done it. It’s in the deal, written in sweat and unspoken rules. But wanting her like this—quiet and close and in my space just to be—that’s what makes me feel skinless.

She kicks my ankle gently. “You forget how doors work?”

I open it. “No. Just forgot how sleeping next to someone without a contractual orgasm clause goes.”

She snorts, ducking under my arm and into the room like she’s lived here a hundred nights before. “Not every visit comes with a climax, . Shocking, I know.”

I shut the door behind us and lean back against it. “You sure? I can put in a request for mediocre sex and emotional detachment if it makes this less awkward.”

She throws one of my pillows at my face.

I catch it midair but still smirk like she landed a hit. That’s the thing about Luna. She doesn’t try to fix the broken pieces. She just sits beside them like they’re part of the scenery. Her version of help doesn’t come in soft tones and pitying eyes. It comes in sarcasm and casual proximity. A warm body and a barbed tongue that somehow says: you’re not alone without needing the words.

I sit on the edge of the bed while she pulls off her hoodie and drops it carelessly on the floor. She moves like she’s not afraid of me. Like she doesn’t think I’m still infected by what Branwen did to me. That illusion is dangerously comforting.

I glance over my shoulder. “You want more than sleep?”

It comes out flat. Mechanical. Not desire, not tease—just obligation. If she wants it, I’ll give it.

Luna doesn’t even pause. She rolls her eyes and climbs into bed. “Jesus, . No. Not everything’s a seduction.”

I exhale, part relief, part shame. I don’t even know which part’s louder.

She pats the space beside her, then mutters, “You’re overthinking again.”

I slip in next to her, stiff at first. Her hand finds mine under the blanket. No pressure. No pull. Just warm fingers sliding into mine like it’s normal, like it’s nothing.

But it is everything.

And it might just be the first time I sleep without dreaming of Branwen.

And like the utter fucking embarrassment I am, I start crying again. Not the pretty kind, not the cinematic single tear rolling down a chiseled cheek. No. This is the kind of crying that slips out before I even realize it’s happening. The kind that burns its way up from the inside out, like whatever Branwen carved into me hasn’t healed, just scabbed—and Luna’s kindness, her softness, her being here—rips that scab off in one clean pull.

I turn my face into the pillow, pressing hard like I can smother the sound, like I can trap the hurt there and pretend I’m still the Sin of Lust, not whatever cracked thing she’s cradling. My shoulders shake, and it pisses me off even more. I hate this. I hate that she’s seeing it.

And then she does the worst possible thing.

She holds me.

Not like I’m fragile. Not like I’m broken. Just like she knows. Like this is a place she’s been before. She doesn’t say anything. She just wraps her arms around me from behind and tucks her chin against my spine like I’m something worth steadying.

And I laugh.

It’s not graceful. It’s wet and raw and hiccupped into the pillow, and I fucking laugh. Because this? This is ridiculous. This entire scene is some twisted version of a therapy ad. Vale—naked, emotionally unhinged, crying into a pillow while his lover holds him like a broken violin and hums under her breath like she’s tuning me back to life.

“Shut up,”

I mumble, still laughing, still sniffling like a child.

“I didn’t say anything,”

she says gently, though her voice is warm with a smile. “But you’re really selling the whole vulnerable sex god thing right now.”

I roll over just enough to see her, her eyes soft, her cheeks smudged with sleep, and her stupid little smirk that makes everything worse and better at the same time. I wipe my face with the sheet, like that can erase the moment, like I haven’t already dissolved everything I pretend to be in front of her.

“You’re going to use this against me, aren’t you?” I mutter.

“Oh, absolutely. This is blackmail gold. Expect memes.”

I groan, dragging a hand over my face. “I fucking hate you.”

“Liar.”

And she’s right. Gods, she’s right.

Because I’ve never loved anyone who didn’t ruin me. But Luna? She ruins me soft. Quiet. With patience and humor and hands that don’t flinch. And maybe—maybe I can survive that kind of ruin. Maybe I want to.