Page 29 of The Sin Binder's (The Seven Sins Academy #4)

The night settles heavy on my shoulders, the cold slicing clean through the ale still burning in my blood. I leave the creaking floors of the tavern behind, the muffled snores and restless shifting of the others like ghosts in the walls. Out here, the quiet isn’t soft—it’s a blade.

The village center is empty at this hour, save for the rickety benches and the flicker of lantern light spilling from shuttered windows. The stones beneath my boots are slick with dew, the air sharp enough to remind me I’m alive.

Barely.

I drop onto a bench like I’m made of lead, lean back, and stare up at the cracked, bruised sky. The stars don’t look right here. Everything in Branwen’s world feels…off. Twisted. Even the gods here bleed differently.

Tomorrow, we walk into hell. I’ll see her again—Branwen. I’ll hear that voice. That voice that once folded around me like silk while she wound her leash tighter, laughing at the way I begged and didn’t know it.

And no matter how far I’ve come, how much distance there is between her and me now, the thought of her voice makes my skin crawl. Because I remember how she used to whisper sweet things, poison wrapped in honey. How I’d fall for it, again and again, until I didn’t know which pieces of me were mine and which were hers.

I drag a hand down my face, jaw locked so tight it aches.

Lucien’s still in her grasp. I know it. She wouldn’t have let him go unless she’d already broken something important inside him. And I wonder—when we find him, will he look like me? Empty-eyed. Shattered. Will he hate himself the way I did? Or worse, will he believe her the way I did?

The knot in my chest tightens, dark and ugly, because I want to think Lucien’s stronger. That he’ll fight harder than I did. But I know what Branwen is capable of. I know how she gets inside you without you even realizing she’s there. And I don’t know if anyone walks away from her untouched.

The wind cuts low through the village square, rattling loose shutters. My fingers twitch against the splintered wood of the bench. I breathe out, a ragged sound, and tilt my head back to the stars.

A door creaks somewhere behind me.

The footsteps behind me aren’t hesitant. They’re heavy, deliberate, the weight of them pressing into the cobbled street like the night itself is folding around the sound.

I don’t bother glancing over my shoulder. There’s only one of us who moves like he’s carved out of cold stone and expensive regret.

Ambrose doesn’t say a word at first. He lowers himself onto the bench beside me without preamble, posture loose but sharp at the edges, like a man who never quite learned how to rest even when he’s trying.

For a minute, we sit there in the dark, staring out at the hollow village square like it might offer us something worth holding onto.

It won’t.

"Couldn’t sleep?" he asks finally, voice low, careful. Too careful.

I snort quietly, thumb brushing the rim of my knee. "Wasn’t trying to."

The corners of his mouth twitch, not quite a smile. "You’re a shit liar."

I cut him a glance, dry. "You’re not here for a heart-to-heart, Dalmar. What is it?"

He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he studies me the way he always does—like he’s cataloging every fracture, every flaw, every inch of my broken skin. His gaze settles like a weight.

"You remember what she said?" he asks eventually. "The clone."

My stomach knots. I swallow against the sour taste of it. The prophecy.

The sexy, seductive Luna-copy with sharp teeth and honeyed words, conjured out of Silas’s idiotic chaos magic, had whispered it into the air like it was a curse meant only for him.

"For a while, I thought it meant you," I say quietly. "That she was going to kill you. That you were going to let her."

Ambrose hums under his breath, gaze still forward. "Maybe she did."

I glance at him then, frowning. "You're not dead."

"No," he agrees, voice soft, thoughtful. "But I’m not who I was either, Vale."

There’s a thread of something strange in his tone, something brittle beneath the cool calculation. Like he’s peeling back a layer I wasn’t supposed to see.

"You think binding to her was your death."

His lips quirk, bitter and knowing. "It was the closest thing to it."

We both fall quiet again, the weight of those words settling like ash between us. The thing neither of us wants to say out loud—he bound himself to her, and it killed something in him. Something he thought he needed to survive.

Maybe it’s the same thing that’s been rotting in me since Branwen.

"You know she’s going to rewrite it," I say after a beat, voice rough. "The prophecy. She’s going to tear it apart and make something new."

Ambrose finally looks at me then, and for the first time, there’s something almost soft in his eyes.

"I know," he says. "That’s why I stayed."

His words settle deep in my chest, a quiet, brutal truth. I stare out at the empty village, the shadow of the cathedral on the horizon like a wound against the night.

And for the first time in weeks, I don’t feel alone.

“She gutted you,”

he says, like he’s commenting on the weather. No pity, no softness. Just fact. “Not physically. That would’ve been easier.”

I huff a humorless laugh, glancing sideways at him. “You always were good at small talk.”

His lips twitch, a ghost of something that almost resembles a smile. Almost. “I don't do small talk. Waste of air.”

My throat tightens, and I look back toward the cathedral on the horizon, its silhouette jagged against the sky. “It wasn’t just the binding. It was everything. The way she looked at me like I was her weapon and nothing else. Like every piece of me belonged to her because of the mark on my soul.”

Ambrose shifts, one arm resting casually along the back of the bench, but there’s nothing casual about the way he’s watching me.

“You let her hollow you out,”

he says quietly. “And now you’re trying to figure out how to fill it.”

I scoff, shaking my head. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t have done the same.”

That earns me a glance, sharp and cutting. “I wouldn’t have.”

I know it’s true. He never belonged to her. Never gave her a piece of himself. He was too careful, too ruthless. Ambrose doesn’t give unless there’s something worth taking back.

“She never had a hold on you,”

I murmur. “Not like me. Not like Lucien.”

Ambrose’s jaw ticks, a muscle feathering beneath his skin. He doesn’t deny it.

“She wanted to bind me,”

he says after a moment. “Tried. But you know me, Vale—I don’t let anyone chain me.”

I laugh, bitter, rubbing the back of my neck. “Except Luna.”

His eyes flick to me, dark and knowing. “That’s not a chain. That’s a fucking noose.”

We fall quiet again, but there’s something heavier now between us. Something sharp-edged and unspoken.

“You think she’s done the same to Lucien?”

I ask eventually, my voice barely above a whisper.

Ambrose doesn’t answer right away. He watches me like he’s weighing the truth, deciding how much I can survive.

“She’ll have broken him differently,”

he says finally. “She knows how to tailor the ruin.”

The words settle like stones in my chest.

“I’m not strong enough for this,”

I admit quietly, voice raw. “Not to face her. Not to face them.”

Ambrose snorts, dark and sharp. “Bullshit.”

I glance at him, brow raised.

“You’re Lust, Vale,”

he says, voice like smoke and steel. “You were never supposed to be strong. You were supposed to make everyone else weak.”

That hits harder than it should.

He leans back, head tipped toward the sky, eyes half-lidded like he’s seeing something far away. “The worst thing she did to you wasn’t binding you. It was making you think you’re fragile.”

For a moment, I can’t breathe. Can’t move. And then he looks at me again, something dangerously close to real concern buried under all that cold calculation.

“Tomorrow, when we walk through those cathedral doors,”

he says, voice low, “she’s going to try to pull you apart. She’s going to sink her claws into the cracks she left in you.”

He leans in, voice a rasp. “You don’t let her.”

I meet his gaze, throat tight, and nod once.

Because he’s right.

She can’t hollow me out again.

“How’s it going,”

I say quietly, voice rasped around too many things I can’t quite say, “with her?”

His sigh comes slow, careful, like everything about him. A breath heavier than he’d want me to notice. He tips his head back against the edge of the bench, eyes on the hollow sky above.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,”

he says, like it’s nothing.

But nothing with Ambrose is ever just nothing.

I scoff, turning my head toward him. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Ambrose’s mouth curves, but it isn’t a smile. It’s something older, heavier, something brittle at the edges. “Means I spent months preparing to hate every second of this. Of her.”

“And?”

He exhales again, shaking his head like the weight of it’s starting to settle in his bones. “And I don’t.”

That lands like a punch to the ribs because it’s so simple, so honest, and I know how much it costs him to admit something without dressing it up in sharp edges and barbed wire.

“You don’t hate being bound to her,”

I say slowly, voice rough. “You thought it would ruin you.”

Ambrose huffs a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “It did.”

I frown, about to argue, but he cuts me a look that silences me before I can speak.

“Just not in the way I expected,”

he adds, voice low, a thread of something unreadable curling beneath it. “I thought she’d tear me apart. Thought I’d lose who I was the second the bond snapped into place. That I’d bend to her the way the rest of you have.”

“That’s not what’s happening?”

I challenge, arching a brow.

Ambrose’s mouth twists. “Oh, I’m bent, Vale. Just not in the way she thinks.”

I lean back, letting my head hit the wood behind me. “You’re not as immune to her as you pretend.”

“No one is,”

he answers too easily, like it’s a fact carved into stone. “That’s the thing about her. She’s not trying to control any of us. She just… exists. And it ruins everything.”

I glance at him then, studying him sideways, the way his fingers tap a restless rhythm against his knee, how his jaw keeps flexing like he’s chewing on something heavier than he wants to swallow.

“You like her,”

I murmur, not as accusation but truth.

Ambrose goes still. His fingers pause mid-tap, eyes darkening.

“I hate how much I do,”

he says quietly.

It’s not soft. It’s not a confession. It’s a sentence, carved with precision, and it hits harder because it’s real.

“She’s the first thing in centuries I couldn’t negotiate my way around. Couldn’t bargain, couldn’t outthink. She doesn’t care about my rules.”

He finally looks at me, and it’s a look that feels like he’s cutting himself open without flinching.

“She doesn’t want anything from me,”

he adds. “Not my power, not my money, not my name.”

I nod slowly, because that’s the thing about Luna. She wants all of us—but not the pieces we usually give away so easily.

“She just wants you,”

I say quietly.

Ambrose’s mouth curves into something bitter. “And I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.”

I laugh, broken and rough, because I know exactly how he feels.

“She’s going to wreck us all,” I mutter.

He hums, the sound low and sharp. “She already has.”

We lapse into quiet again, but it’s easier now. Not lighter, but something close to understanding resting between us.

And after a moment, Ambrose glances sideways at me again, voice a low rasp. “You know you’re the only one who ever asks me shit like this, right?”

I shrug, the corner of my mouth twitching. “You’re welcome.”

Another huff of a laugh, but it’s real this time. It curls warm in my chest like I’ve cracked something open I wasn’t supposed to.

And neither of us says it, but it’s there—

We’re both hers, in our own goddamned ways.

I lean forward, forearms braced on my knees, listening to Ambrose breathe beside me like this conversation’s heavier than it should be. Like he’s carrying something he hasn’t said yet.

And then, a pulse—a soft tug at the back of my mind, warm and familiar, stitched straight into the marrow of me.

Where are you?

Her voice, sleepy and soft, slips like silk through the bond. Heavy with exhaustion but still looking for me in the dark.

I exhale slow, closing my eyes for a moment.

I’m fine, little moon. Outside. Talking with Ambrose.

There’s a beat of quiet across the bond before she presses again, soft but insistent.

Do you need me?

Something cracks open in my chest at that. The way she asks, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to offer herself when she’s half asleep. No hesitation, no conditions. She’d be out here in bare feet and sleep-mussed hair if I so much as breathed wrong.

No, I send back, gentle and warm. I’m really okay tonight.

But I can feel her still lingering there, hovering at the edges of me, half-waiting.

So I add, because I can’t help myself—

Though if you want something to think about while you fall back asleep… Ambrose has a massive, soul-crippling crush on you.

There’s a pause long enough to make me grin, because I know she’s blinking up at the ceiling, trying to decide if I’m serious or if this is me being an ass again.

Then, through the bond, her laugh unfurls—low and wicked and sleepy sweet.

Liar.

I glance sideways at Ambrose, who’s glaring at the horizon like it owes him money.

Ask him yourself, I reply. He’s sitting here pretending he’s too cool to care while dying quietly inside every time you smile.

She hums, soft and pleased.

Good. He should.

My grin stretches sharp across my face because even half-asleep, she’s a menace.

Ambrose shifts beside me, rolling his eyes like he can hear every word and maybe he can—he’s perceptive enough, even if he pretends not to be.

“You telling her all my secrets?”

he mutters.

“Only the good ones,”

I say, leaning back again.

“You’re an ass,”

he replies without heat.

“She likes me that way.”

He snorts under his breath and shakes his head, but there’s no venom in it. No barbs. Just two men who shouldn’t be friends, sitting together in the dark because somehow everything’s tangled them up in this mess.

And her.

Always her.