Page 14 of The Sin Binder's (The Seven Sins Academy #4)

We hit the bottom of the stairs like a goddamn circus parade, Silas still narrating Ambrose’s imaginary accolades like he’s selling him off to the highest bidder. I can feel Ambrose’s fury bleeding off him like steam, sharp and silent. He hates being watched, hates losing the upper hand, and right now, Silas is strip-mining his dignity in front of the one person he can’t manipulate.

Good.

Let him stew in it.

I know what Silas is doing—under all that idiocy, there's a method, a reason—but that doesn’t mean I’m stepping in to save Ambrose’s pride. He dug this hole with Luna himself. Lied with his hands, played her like a wager, and then acted surprised when she stopped betting on him. So no, I don’t throw him a rope. I let him drown.

Luna’s ahead of me, her boots soft against the stone floor. Her hair brushes the back of her shoulders with every step, and I know exactly how it smells when it’s tangled in my fingers, how she tastes when she’s still laughing from something Silas said, trying to swat him away even as her mouth curves. She doesn’t look back at Ambrose. That’s what eats at him the most.

Beside me, Silas is finally winding down. “—but really, the depth of his soul is just so tragic, you know? I cry just looking at him. He’s basically poetry. Dark poetry. Like… haikus, but with abs.”

“Oh my gods,”

Luna mutters, dragging her hand down her face.

I smirk, and for once, Silas catches it and grins at me like we’ve just set fire to a cathedral. Which, knowing us, wouldn’t be the worst thing we’ve done.

Elias claps Ambrose on the back with a little too much force as they follow behind. “Hey, maybe she’ll ask you to recite sonnets next. Got any lines about how your soul is a withered leaf in autumn or whatever?”

Ambrose doesn’t answer. He just keeps walking, his jaw carved in stone.

Caspian drifts behind all of them, quiet, hands tucked in his pockets like he’s trying to disappear. I see the way Luna glances over her shoulder at him—gentle, careful, like she’s checking if a wound’s still bleeding. She slows her step until he catches up, then touches his arm. Just a small thing. A pat. A kindness.

Ambrose sees it. I know he does. I don’t even have to look at him to feel how that moment sinks its claws into him. The way she doesn’t offer him the same softness. The way she doesn’t even glance back.

He’s always been the type who wants what he can’t have.

I fall in beside Luna, brushing her shoulder. “You really going to let Silas talk you into believing Ambrose is a soft-hearted kitten poet?”

She grins, low and wicked. “Oh, I know exactly what Ambrose is.”

I hum. “And what’s that?”

She doesn’t answer right away, just gives me a look that says everything. Ambrose is the edge of a knife she doesn’t trust—but can’t stop circling.

I glance back again.

Ambrose is still silent. Still watching. And even now, he doesn’t realize he’s already bleeding.

The chamber opens like a yawning throat—three narrow hallways peeling off into pitch-black corridors, the scent of old magic clinging to the stone like smoke that never aired out. There’s nothing in here but shadows and choice, and I’m already sick of it.

“We split up,”

I say. My voice echoes, low and certain. “We’ll cover more ground faster.”

No one argues. Not aloud, anyway.

Silas latches onto Elias like a tick with too much caffeine, dragging him toward the hallway on the left with a conspiratorial gleam in his eyes and the whisper of something about ghost orgies and exorcism foreplay. Elias groans, but lets himself be dragged. He always does. They're chaos in stereo—cringe and snark chasing each other into ruin.

Caspian shifts, uncertain. Luna turns to him—soft, attentive—and murmurs something too low for the rest of us to hear. Whatever it is makes his posture ease a fraction, just enough that I let them drift off toward the right corridor, alone.

I could let it happen. I could pretend I don’t care. But I do.

So I grab Ambrose by the back of his neck like a goddamn mutt, fingers tight and unforgiving. He stiffens, low growl curling in his throat, but I’m already walking, dragging him with me down the middle hall.

“You need a leash,”

I mutter, not bothering to glance back.

He doesn’t fight it, but he doesn’t follow easily either. That would be too simple. Ambrose doesn’t know how to exist without posturing.

“You gonna manhandle all of us, or am I special?”

he says under his breath, every word polished in that blade-edged calm he wears like armor.

“Special’s not the word I’d use.”

I release him once we’re far enough in, once the corridor has swallowed the echo of the others’ voices. “But if it helps your bruised ego, sure.”

His jaw flexes. “Let me guess—this is about Luna?”

“No,”

I snap, too fast. Too sharp. “This is about you being a moody bastard with a martyr complex who thinks he's the only one not getting what he wants.”

He stops walking. “She’s throwing affection around like breadcrumbs. Caspian gets a soft smile, you get that look she saves for gods and war crimes, and I get nothing. Not even contempt.”

I stalk toward him, close enough he could taste my next words if I let them drip from my tongue. “You get nothing because you give nothing. You think you’re untouchable, above it. You’re not. You’re just late.”

He stares at me, gaze flicking past me for a second, like he’s calculating—how fast he could end this conversation, how far he could push me. Then he laughs. It’s low and humorless, like the sound of something splitting apart beneath too much weight.

“You jealous, ?”

“I’m bonded to her,”

I snarl. “What the fuck do I have to be jealous of?”

He smirks. “Bonded. But she doesn’t love you the way she loves them.”

I don’t let him see how close that cuts. I just close the space between us until the heat of my fury pulses against him like a second heartbeat.

“Say that again,”

I growl, voice razor-thin, “and I’ll show you how much of me she carries in her veins.”

We stand there, toe to toe, the hall heavy around us with things unsaid. But then something shifts. The stone beneath our feet hums—faint, barely there, but unmistakable.

Ambrose’s eyes flick up. “Did you feel that?”

I nod once. Whatever this hallway leads to, it’s not just empty corridors and old Council secrets. There’s something waking up beneath the surface.

“Come on,”

I say, walking forward without waiting for him. “Let’s see what they buried in the dark.”

The further we move down the corridor, the colder it gets—not a chill from stone or old air, but something sharp, residual. The kind of cold that remembers screams. I don’t mention it. Ambrose won’t either. He’s too busy cataloguing what I already see: the way the walls curve inward, like the hallway’s closing its ribs around us, pressing tighter with each step.

The glowstones overhead flicker. Faint. Untrustworthy.

And then we reach it.

The hallway ends abruptly at a door that doesn’t belong here—sleek, black as onyx, no visible handle. The stone around it ripples with subtle, shifting glyphs, the kind that move only when you aren’t looking directly at them. The arch above the door bears no plaque, no name, just a carved sigil that burns faintly gold then sinks back into silence. I know it. I've seen it before. But not here. Not in this world.

Ambrose exhales beside me, a sound that’s too even, too neutral to mean nothing. “Well. That’s not ominous at all.”

I glance at him, jaw tight. “Don’t touch it.”

He arches a brow. “You say that like I was about to.”

“You were about to,”

I snap. “You think because you can make things yours, it means nothing owns you back.”

His eyes flash, but he doesn’t argue. That’s the trick with Ambrose. He doesn’t rise to provocation—not until he’s ready to burn the whole room down with it.

The door doesn’t need a key. It reacts to presence—just not ours. I can feel it, locked on some lingering echo, a signature in blood or memory. I step closer, and the glyphs twitch.

Ambrose leans against the wall, arms crossed like this is all just mildly amusing. “Do you feel that?”

“Like something's behind it?”

I ask. “Watching?”

“No,”

he murmurs. “Like it remembers being opened before.”

The glyphs flare once—just enough to make me step back. Whatever’s behind that door… it isn’t a file. It isn’t a book. It’s not knowledge in the form we came for.

It’s history.

Buried. Bound. Hidden by someone who didn’t want it found.

“Blackwell,”

I mutter, not meaning to say it aloud. The name feels wrong on my tongue.

Ambrose shifts. “What?”

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

He studies me for a beat, something too knowing in his eyes, and then—mercifully—drops it.

“We should get the others,”

I say. “This… isn't for just us.”

He doesn’t move. “Or we go in now. And decide what they need to know.”

I glare at him. “That how it works in your world? You decide who deserves truth?”

“That’s how it’s always worked,”

he says softly, and this time, his voice isn’t sharp—it’s old. “You just never wanted to admit it.”

I want to punch him. I want to slam him into the wall and demand why he’s always five fucking steps ahead and never shares the map. But the door flares again—and this time, the glyphs stay lit.

I check the frame first, fingers skimming the outline of the door, careful not to brush the carved sigil pressed into its center. It’s dormant—silent in the way ancient things go quiet when they’re no longer worshipped. There’s no hum. No warning. And that, more than anything, makes my pulse rise.

It doesn’t feel alive. Not like the ghosts that came from the chapel. This isn’t haunted.

It’s waiting.

Ambrose doesn’t speak as I move back a step. He knows better. And when I tell him to be ready, he doesn’t argue—he just shifts, slow and practiced, drawing those twin blades from the ether like a magician with secrets instead of cards. The way he crouches slightly, weight on the balls of his feet, reminds me that he was a weapon long before he was ever a man.

And we’ve both been here before. Maybe not in this hallway. Maybe not in this school.

But we’ve opened doors we shouldn’t have.

I grip the edge, press my palm flat to the wood, and shove it open.

The hinges groan, loud enough to echo. Dust spills in light, but the inside… the inside isn’t abandoned.

It’s a room.

Wide, oval-shaped, with stained glass windows that shouldn’t glow this late, but they do—casting color across the polished black floor. No furniture. No desk. Just an altar at the far end, low and unadorned, and a symbol etched into the stone beneath it that looks too much like a binding circle.

I feel Ambrose step in behind me. His breath barely shifts.

“This is…”

he trails off, his voice quieter than I expect. “This wasn’t Blackwell’s.”

“No.”

I scan the symbols. “Older.”

He nods. “Much older.”

And we’d know. Because we were there.

Not here, specifically. But others like it. Before the Academy had this name. Before the Council built walls to contain power and passed it off as teaching. Before they made men like us into myths, and locked away what didn’t serve their order.

This was a place for ritual. Not for learning.

Ambrose crouches beside the circle, trailing one gloved finger along its edge. “It’s not complete.”

“It was,”

I say. “Someone broke it.”

He glances up, eyes catching the fractured section like he’s already piecing together what was once carved there. “Intentionally.”

I nod. “To stop something. Or let something out.”

He rises, slow and deliberate, watching the altar the way predators watch one another—curious, wary, and barely keeping their claws to themselves.

I don’t like how it smells in here. Not decay. Not dust.

Old magic. Bitter. Violent.

“I want the others to see this,” I murmur.

Ambrose doesn’t move. “Do you?”

I turn to him. “What?”

His gaze cuts to mine, unreadable. “Do you want them to see it, or do you want her to see it?”

The silence stretches. My bond to Luna flares, low in my chest, the way it always does when she’s too far.

I grit my teeth. “Shut up.”

He smirks.

I let the bond stretch between us like muscle flexing beneath skin—intentional, restrained, but strong enough she’ll feel it. My side opens first. Not a tug, not a demand. Just presence. A pulse in the hollow of her chest, echoing down her spine, the way mine hums when she thinks of me.

She answers before I even finish the thought.

We found something, she tells me, her voice threading through the link. Not words, not really. Just meaning. Books. Hidden. Caspian says he’s never seen them before. They’re not catalogued.

I close my eyes, drag in a breath, and exhale through the rising heat in my chest. Bring them to me, I send back, sharper than I mean to. Then softer, before she can twist it. And grab Silas and Elias. I want them here too.

There’s a flicker of amusement from her. Then warmth.

I love you, I tell her. Not a whisper. Not hidden.

I love you too, she says, and the bond sings.

The corners of my mouth lift—barely. Enough.

Then I feel it. That other weight.

Ambrose.

He’s leaning against the far wall like he’s part of it. Arms crossed. That storm cloud of superiority and self-loathing brewing so loud I don’t need a bond to hear it.

I snap my head toward him. “You done sulking?”

His jaw tightens.

“I’m serious,”

I growl. “This tortured antihero routine? It’s fucking old. You want her? Take a fucking step. Bond her. Kiss her. Look at her without pretending she’s just another goddamn piece on a board.”

His eyes narrow. “You think I haven’t thought about it?”

“I think you’re the only one here playing at detachment while she bleeds for all of us. She gave you a place in this. You’ve done nothing but stand outside and watch.”

Ambrose’s voice drops. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“No,”

I say, stepping closer, “but she does. And she still wants you. That alone should fucking terrify you.”

I feel Luna getting closer now. Her light breaking through whatever darkness lingers in this room, in this old blood-soaked altar. She’s always coming for us—even when she shouldn’t have to.

So I turn away from him. Because if he wants to miss it, that’s on him.

But Luna?

She’ll always have me.

Silas strolls in shirt flapping open like he's in a damn romance novel, boots scuffing ancient stone, and absolutely no sense of reverence in his body. He stops dead when he sees it—etched into the floor with that kind of brutal precision that doesn’t fade. A binding circle. Not the pretty kind. Not the Council’s ceremonial, veiled-in-gold kind.

No, this one is raw. Unfinished. Cut into the floor like whoever carved it was trying to trap something that didn’t want to stay.

His eyes go wide like a kid unwrapping explosives on their birthday. And then he’s moving—too fast, too eager. Drops down cross-legged at the edge of the thing and pulls out—of course—black eyeliner from his back pocket.

“Silas,” I growl.

He doesn’t even look at me. “Don’t worry. I’m only going to finish it a little.”

“You don’t finish a circle like that a little.”

“I just want to see what happens,”

he says, completely unbothered, already sketching an arc where the line was severed. “It’s probably nothing.”

“That’s what people say right before they die screaming.”

He hums, not denying it. Not stopping either. The lines he draws aren’t random. That’s the worst part. He knows what he's doing. His hand moves with practiced ease, like he’s done this before. Like some part of him—beneath the chaos and cringe—is quietly cataloguing forbidden shit he should’ve never touched in the first place.

I step closer, casting my gaze over the runes. They're old. Twisted. Some of them aren’t from this world. This wasn’t just a binding. This was a warning. A containment. Maybe both.

“Silas,”

I say again, lower this time. Controlled.

Still nothing. Until he looks up at me, all faux innocence and a grin that belongs in a padded room.

“I’m not saying I want to resurrect Blackwell,”

he says, smudging a rune with his thumb, “but if I had to pick someone to haunt the headmaster’s wine cellar...”

“I’ll bury you right here,” I snap.

Luna steps in behind me, and that damn bond flares like it always does when she’s near. Sharp, bright, maddening. She sees Silas on the floor, eyeliner halfway to conjuring hell, and her expression folds between exasperation and poorly-hidden amusement.

“Silas,”

she says slowly, walking toward him, “who exactly are you trying to bring back?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Murder Mittens.”

“Murder...what?”

“The cat. You remember. The one that used to live in the dorms. Feral as fuck. Bit Elias once. Still walks better than Ambrose.”

Ambrose mutters a curse behind us.

“I liked that cat,”

Silas continues. “It scratched Lucien and never even tried to run. Iconic behavior.”

“He’s not buried here,”

Elias deadpans.

Silas shrugs. “Then I guess we’ll just see who does come back.”

Caspian finally strolls in, looking vaguely alarmed until Luna tugs his hand and murmurs something soft. He leans into her, quiet, haunted—but not pulling away.

And me?

I stare at the circle. At the chaos that always comes wrapped in Silas-shaped skin. At the magic in this room that’s shifting like it remembers it was meant to wake.

And I wonder—just how much worse this is about to get.