Page 33 of The Sin Binder's (The Seven Sins Academy #4)

Her voice slithers through the cathedral like rot beneath marble, sliding up my spine and curling cold fingers around my throat.

“.”

My name is a prayer on her tongue, saccharine and poisonous. Like I’m the prodigal sin returned to her altar. I hate how easily it hits me—the shape of it in her mouth, how sweetly she dresses the venom.

I want to flinch. Gods, I want to recoil like a whipped dog, but I lock my knees and clench my jaw so hard my molars threaten to crack.

Branwen smiles, that smile. The one I used to bleed myself dry to earn. The one I used to think meant something. It doesn’t reach her eyes. It never did.

“Look at you,”

she purrs, chin tilting, gaze sweeping over me like she’s cataloguing every piece she used to own. “I thought you’d stay lost forever.”

I feel her words trying to slide under my skin, trying to settle in the cracks she left. I know that voice. I know how soft she can make it, how effortlessly she can carve you down until you’re nothing but need.

And for a heartbeat, I want to hide behind Luna. Tuck myself in the curve of her warmth and let her keep me steady.

But before I can so much as blink, Ambrose steps forward like a blade unsheathed, his voice cracking the spell in two.

“Fuck off, Branwen.”

There’s no venom in it. No snarl. It’s calm, detached, like he’s pointing out a stain on the wall. Like she’s beneath his time. And that cuts sharper than any threat.

Branwen’s smile falters, a twitch at the corner of her mouth, but she recovers fast, lashes lowering as she shifts her attention to him.

“Ambrose Dalmar,”

she says smoothly, like she’s savoring the syllables. “Didn’t you used to enjoy playing the long game?”

“I’m not playing,”

Ambrose replies without missing a beat, folding his arms across his chest like he’s settling in to negotiate the cost of her corpse. “I came to kill you.”

The air in the cathedral hums, a low vibration beneath our feet, the very stones of this place remembering centuries of blood and betrayal. Branwen’s throne, carved from crumbling bone and tarnished gold, looms behind her, but she doesn’t look like a queen. She looks like the remains of one.

“And yet,”

she says softly, gaze flicking back to me like she can’t help herself, “you brought my favorite little thing back to me.”

I feel her eyes trace every part of me like she’s peeling me open. Like she can still taste me.

Ambrose’s jaw ticks once. “He’s not yours.”

Her smile sharpens, predator-slick. “Everyone’s something, darling. You should know that better than anyone.”

“Don’t,”

I rasp, and my own voice scrapes raw in my throat. I hate how much effort it takes to get the word out, to make it sound like I don’t care. “Don’t talk like you ever knew me.”

Branwen’s gaze cuts to me, and for a second, something flickers there. Not power. Not seduction. Something uglier—emptiness.

“I built you,”

she murmurs.

I want to laugh. I want to scream. Instead, I lift my chin and smile, sharp as glass. “And I tore that shit down.”

Ambrose hums beside me, amused like this is the most entertaining negotiation he’s been in all year. “You’re looking a little hollow, Branwen. I thought this cathedral was supposed to be your crown jewel.”

Her expression fractures then—just a breath, but I catch it. The crack. The exhaustion.

“I will have what’s mine,”

she says, voice razor-thin.

“You already lost it,”

I say quietly, and when I glance back, I know the others are there. I can feel Luna’s gaze on me, steady, anchoring. I say it for her. “You lost me.”

Branwen’s mouth opens, her retort poised— And the cathedral groans beneath us, the magic fraying like it’s been waiting for someone to finally say the words.

Branwen stands.

Or at least she tries to. It isn’t graceful, not like she used to be, when she’d sweep into a room and make everyone in it kneel without ever saying a word. Now she rises like something brittle, something that’s been hollowed out and sewn back together wrong. The hem of her dress scrapes the stone beneath her, black fabric frayed at the edges like she’s been burning from the inside out.

Her smile is a ghost of itself, painted too wide across her face.

I drag my gaze away from her and glance at Orin.

He’s still as stone, but his focus is razor-sharp, like every muscle in him is wound too tight. Those veins—those damn vein tattoos of his—are lit up under his skin, pulsing like something alive, threading black-blue through his throat, his jaw, down to his fingertips. His eyes are fixed on Branwen, not in hatred, not in hunger, but in something darker.

It doesn’t look right. It looks like something eating him from the inside.

But Branwen breathes in, drawing the room back to her like she’s the axis of this crumbling world, and when she speaks, it’s all sugar and sharpened knives.

“You could’ve had it all,”

she croons, gaze flicking between me, Ambrose, Riven, all of us. “You could’ve knelt at my feet, and this wouldn’t have ended here.”

Silas’s slow clap is a thunder crack in the cathedral, echoing off the cracked stone and hollow arches. He steps forward, grin sharp and vicious.

“We really don’t need to hear your backstory, Branwen,”

he drawls, dragging out her name like it’s a curse and a joke at once. “No one cares about your villain monologue.”

She turns her eyes to him like she might set him on fire. But even that spark isn’t what it once was. It’s dulled. Dying. I drag my eyes back to Orin, pulse pounding louder now, because his veins aren’t fading. They’re flaring brighter.

Branwen’s fingers curl around the arm of her throne, knuckles whitening, like she can’t quite bear the weight of herself. “You think this is a performance?”

she says quietly, her voice sliding sharp as broken glass. “You think I’m standing here for theatrics?”

Silas laughs, broad and loud, like he’s daring her to do something about it. “Oh, sweetheart,”

he says. “I think you’re standing here because we walked into your cathedral, and you don’t know how to stop bleeding.”

Ambrose folds his arms beside me, cold as stone. “This isn’t a performance,”

he murmurs, voice like ice sliding under skin. “It’s a death march.”

Branwen's smile breaks then, shattering at the edges. But her eyes dart back to Orin—and that’s when something cold curls deep in my stomach.

Orin’s feeding her something. Draining, bleeding, siphoning whatever piece of himself she’s still leeching off of. His jaw is locked. His gaze hollow.

But I don’t understand what. I drag a breath into my lungs and meet Branwen’s gaze again, her monologue cracking at the seams.

“You’re weaker,”

I say softly, stepping forward, voice pitched low enough to slice between us. “But not because of us.”

Branwen’s smile is a fissure—spreading, splitting, something hungry behind it. And when her gaze hooks back to me, it isn’t soft. It’s surgical.

"You always were the weakest link, ," she murmurs, like it’s a secret meant just for me, though the entire cathedral could hear it. "You wore it well, though. All that charm. That pretty mouth." She tilts her head, voice dipping to something softer, almost pitying. "But you fold every time."

I want to sneer at her, spit something vicious, something cutting—but my throat’s locked. Because it’s true. I folded once. Over and over. And she knows how to dig the knife right there, beneath the rib.

Riven cuts through it.

His voice is low, sharp, slicing clean through the rot she’s spinning.

"Enough."

It isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be. There’s something in that word, the way it snaps through the cathedral like iron slamming shut.

Branwen shifts her gaze to him like it’s a weight, but there’s a flicker in her eyes. Recognition. That look she always gave Riven, like she was the storm that wanted to devour him and hated that he’d never flinch when she struck.

"Riven," she purrs now, almost sweet, almost mournful. "You used to look at me differently."

He doesn’t even blink. "You used to be someone different."

"I could fix this," she says softly, letting the words stretch, baiting the hook. "All of it. The way it was. Before her."

Riven’s jaw tics, but he doesn’t rise to it.

She smiles wider, the corners of her lips slicing like razors. "If I kill her," she says, almost casual, eyes sliding lazily to Luna, who hasn't moved, "you’ll all come back to me. That’s how this ends. That’s the only way it can."

Silas mutters something under his breath that sounds like, "She’s lost the plot," but it’s too quiet to cut the tension.

Branwen keeps going, voice syrup-sweet. "She bound you, corrupted you. Ripped you from me, from yourselves. But I can fix it, if she’s gone."

And now she’s looking at me again, like I’m the one who’ll crack first. Like she can smell the fracture in me.

But it’s Riven who moves. He steps forward, slow, deliberate, until he’s standing in front of all of us—blocking her view of Luna entirely, like he’s the wall she’ll never tear down.

"You never broke us," Riven says, voice a growl that lives beneath his skin. "You never owned us. You carved pieces out of us and called it love."

His eyes harden, the full weight of him settling like a blade at her throat without ever touching her.

"She doesn’t bind us," he says. "We chose her."

Branwen’s smile fractures, something sharp flashing behind her eyes, but she keeps standing like she’s holding herself together with nothing but her rage.

I glance at Orin again—and whatever he’s doing, it’s pulling at her, at the threads holding her upright.

But she’s still smiling.

"Then watch how easily I can unmake what she’s built."

Her gaze lands on me like a death sentence, and I know—she’s going to try to start with me.

That threat, her threat, doesn’t just hang in the cathedral like some idle promise. It burns. Like acid on my skin. My stomach coils because it’s not just what she said. It’s how she said it, like Luna was a thing she could remove and everything would slide back into place—like we were possessions that belonged to her, like we were ever hers at all.

The room doesn’t move. No one breathes. I can feel every bond in me stretched taut, Silas vibrating beside me like a live wire, Riven’s rage pressing against my ribs from across the cathedral, Luna steady in that terrifying way she always is when she’s about to dismantle something.

But it’s Ambrose who steps into the quiet.

He moves like it costs him nothing—like the weight of her doesn’t even graze him—and I know that’s a lie because I know Ambrose. I know the way power sits on him like shackles, the way he holds everything together so no one can see the cracks.

He smiles now, and it’s a vicious thing.

"That's cute," Ambrose says, voice silk-laced steel. "You think you can threaten her like it means something."

Branwen's gaze sharpens, predatory, flicking to him like a tongue licking across sharp teeth.

"You came here to die, Dalmar," she replies, soft and sweet, like she’s savoring his name. "You always thought you were smarter than me."

Ambrose tilts his head slightly, that smile of his widening, dangerous. "I don’t think, darling. I know."

He lifts his hand lazily, like he's brushing dust off his coat. "Because here’s the part you’re missing. You think we came here for Lucien and Orin." He lets that sink, then adds, voice razor-edged, "But the truth is—we came here to watch you die."

"You can’t kill me," she says, voice rising now, the threadbare edge of her unraveling. "You idiot boys, playing at being kings in a ruin. I’ve already died. That’s what you don’t understand." Her gaze slices across all of us like a whip. "This is my grave. My kingdom. There’s nothing you can take from me."

Riven’s voice cuts clean, rough stone dragged over glass. "You’re wrong."

But she isn’t looking at him now.

She’s looking at Ambrose, because Ambrose has always been the one who never bent, never gave her the reaction she wanted. And it’s killing her now, because even here, facing her, Ambrose looks amused.

"You keep saying you’re already dead," Ambrose says, voice quiet but lethal. "But you’re still here."

He takes a step closer, smile shifting—less cruel now, more surgical.

"And that’s your mistake. Dead things don’t bleed."

Branwen's eyes narrow, the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth.

"If we drag Lucien and Orin out of here, you’ll still come?" Ambrose asks, tone almost conversational.

Her smile returns, sharp and hollow. "Wherever you run, I’ll follow."

Ambrose’s voice drops to something cold, something that makes the back of my neck prickle. "Good."

He shifts, hands loose at his sides, like he’s not about to dismantle her with words alone.

"Because when this is done," he says, "you’ll wish you’d stayed dead."

Branwen’s lips curve like she’s about to laugh again—but there’s a fracture in her eyes now. She knows. She knows she’s losing, even if she hasn’t figured out how yet.

And I swear, in that moment, the whole cathedral leans in, waiting to see who is going to start the fire.

The thing is, she can die.

That’s the part no one’s said aloud—but I can feel it sitting heavy in the bones of this place, humming in the walls like a secret begging to be spoken. Branwen's voice, her theatrics, her hollow smile—all of it is meant to distract us from the truth.

Behind her throne, tucked in the shadows like a monument to every fucked-up thing she’s done, stands the pillar. Identical to the one in our world, obsidian marbled with veins of silver light, like something divine and rotten at once. A fracture line through reality. It isn’t just stone. It’s her tether, her anchor, her only way to keep existing here. If we destroy that, she doesn’t crawl out of this place again.

She’ll unravel. Be erased.

She knows it, too.

It’s there in the way her shoulders stiffen every time one of us glances past her throne. She doesn’t want us to look at it too long. Doesn’t want us to remember.

But it’s not that simple.

Lucien and Orin stand at her flanks like sentinels, both of them statuesque, silent, but it’s more than just standing guard. Their veins glow faintly, black threaded with gold, pulsing in rhythm with the pillar. I’ve seen that look before—in the mirror, when I was hers.

Branwen isn’t just feeding off them. She’s using them to hold that thing in place, to keep herself stitched into this dead, hollow realm.

I glance sideways and catch Riven’s jaw tight, his gaze darting between Orin and the pillar like he’s already calculating how hard it’ll be to cut them loose without tearing himself open. Silas is fidgeting, for once not saying a damn word. Elias’ expression is stone-cold but his fingers twitch, ready to slow time if he has to.

My skin crawls. Because I know exactly how deep she’s in them. I know how she layered herself inside their bones. And I know what will happen the second they get too close to Luna.

They’ll snap.

The way I snapped.

The way I broke, until Luna’s magic shoved all of Branwen’s rot out of me.

Branwen’s voice slices back through the heavy silence. "I see you looking, ." Her smile is a knife. "Thinking you’ve finally figured it out. But you’re too late. You’ll never reach it."

Ambrose steps forward again, lazy and lethal. "You’ve never been good at math, Branwen. There are six of us. Three of you."

Her smile widens like he’s offered her the punchline to a joke. "You think numbers matter?" She laughs, and the sound echoes like a curse. "You think they’ll lift their blades against me?"

Her gaze flicks to Lucien, then Orin, softening for just a heartbeat. "They’d tear themselves apart first."

She’s counting on them. On the way their bonds to her have carved them hollow. On the way she’s made them hers. But what she doesn’t understand is that the thing she built inside me—the thing I shattered—is still sharp and jagged in my hands.

"You’re wrong," I tell her, stepping forward now, pulse rattling in my throat.

She lifts a brow, almost amused. "Am I?"

"You don’t get to keep them." I flick a glance at Orin, at Lucien, who still hasn’t met my eyes. "You don’t get to keep any of us."

Her gaze slides back to me like a caress and a curse. "I already do."

Riven’s voice cuts low beside me. "Not for long."

Branwen’s smile is razored, her spine straightening as she looks past us, back at the pillar, and I see the moment she realizes we know.

The moment she realizes we’re not here to kill her.

We’re here to end her.