Page 27 of The Sin Binder’s Vow (The Seven Sins Academy #3)

This is the way it should be. Except it’s not. We’re down three. Lucien. Orin. Caspian.

Their absence sits heavy in the booth with us, like the ghost of a fist pressed to my ribs. But Silas is making obscene slurping sounds across from me, and Elias is muttering about germs while sipping from a cup he refuses to admit is half-whiskey. Ambrose is silent, brooding beside Luna like his very presence is a strategic threat. And Luna—gods, Luna—she’s sitting beside me, her thigh brushing mine under the table, acting like she doesn't notice that I'm vibrating with the effort it takes not to drag her out of here and into the shadows just so I can breathe.

“This one’s cherry,”

Silas announces, switching straws like it’s some kind of milkshake orgy.

“You gotta try this one, . It’s got bite.”

I glare at him.

“You used my straw.”

“Sharing is caring, Kain.”

He wiggles his brows.

Luna tries not to laugh. Her lips twitch, and I want to scowl at her for encouraging him, but I don’t. Not when she’s glowing like that under the flickering diner light. She’s in a hoodie again— mine, though she stole it so long ago it’s practically hers now. Her hair’s pulled up, loose strands curling down the nape of her neck. She smells like vanilla and ash and something else—something dangerous, like fate wearing lipstick.

“You’ve had three,”

Ambrose says without looking up, voice like glass.

“You’re going to crash.”

“I live crashed,”

Silas says brightly.

“It’s my aesthetic.”

Elias slides a straw wrapper down the table and flicks it at Silas’s face.

“You live feral. There's a difference.”

Silas catches it in his teeth and grins.

“Don’t act like you wouldn’t kiss me right now.”

“I’d rather gargle bleach.”

“Liar,”

Silas sings, but he turns back to Luna like she’s gravity.

“You haven’t tried this one yet, sweetheart.”

“She’s got her own,”

I growl before I can stop myself.

She turns to me slowly, eyes narrowing just slightly like she hears something deeper in my voice than she’s supposed to.

“You don’t want to share your straw?”

“I don’t want you catching whatever disease Silas has.”

Silas gasps dramatically.

“My diseases are luxury, thank you very much. Artisan-crafted. Small batch.”

Elias chokes on his drink. Ambrose exhales something close to a laugh, but it’s so clipped I can’t tell if it’s real or just a mechanical release of pressure.

Luna nudges my foot under the table. A nudge that feels like fire.

“So you’d rather I used your straw?”

she murmurs, voice like silk laced with a dare.

She knows what she’s doing. Of course she does.

I grab her shake and take a sip, watching her over the rim. Her lips part slightly, like she wasn’t expecting that answer. Like she expected me to fold.

But I don’t fold.

Ever.

“That’s mine now,” I say.

Silas sighs.

“Gods, the sexual repression in this booth could power the Hollow for a century.”

Luna’s eyes flick to me again, and this time the look is different. Heavier. She doesn’t smile. Because this isn’t a joke.

We’re sitting in a booth with plastic seats and chipped table corners. There’s ketchup on the wall and a flickering neon sign outside that hums like it’s singing to the void. And she’s here. Next to me. Wearing my hoodie. Letting me be close when I don’t deserve it.

This should be enough.

But it’s not.

Because the booth has space for three more. And I’m still watching the door like if I look hard enough, one of them might walk through it.

I’ve torn apart every book that’s survived the Hollow’s corruption. Pried open hidden archives, forced answers out of trembling mouths, bled sigils across the floor until they burned black—but nothing. The Pillar won’t speak to me. Not anymore. Whatever Lucien did to it... it’s sealed. Silent. Like it’s already mourned them and moved on.

But I haven’t.

I won’t.

Lucien, Orin, Caspian—gone, but not dead. Not exactly. I’d feel it. So why the fuck did Lucien close the portal?

He knows what Branwen is. What she’s done. What she will do if left unchecked. She’s not a queen—she’s a parasite. Feeding off reverence, manipulating the past like it’s a crown. And still, somehow, they’ve chosen to stay in her orbit. The most brilliant tactician I’ve ever known, the most ruthless strategist in a thousand years—and his best idea was to shut the door on us?

It doesn’t make sense. Unless… unless he’s buying time.

Unless killing her isn’t just impossible—it’s the point.

Lucien doesn’t do things halfway. If he’s cut us off, it’s because he thinks we’re a liability. Or bait. Or worse—he thinks this is his war to win without us.

I haven’t told Luna any of this. I don’t know how. It’s not that I don’t trust her—I do. More than anyone. Which is exactly why I can’t drop this at her feet. Not when she already has the weight of every choice pressing down on her chest. Not when she looks at me like I’m still capable of pulling us out of this, like I’m not just trying to keep from splintering into pieces that can’t be remade.

She doesn’t know I wake up hearing Orin’s voice, clipped and calm and damning—you hesitated. She doesn’t know I see Caspian’s smirk in every reflection, and Lucien’s glare whenever I close my eyes.

And she can’t know that part of me wonders if they meant for us to stop looking. If they chose this. If they’ve decided that she and I and the others are safer apart.

But that’s not how this works.

I grip the edge of the table hard enough to crack the wood. That’s not how this ends.

They are ours. Mine. No magic binds me to Lucien’s commands, not anymore. He may be the crown in exile, but I never followed him for his strategy. I followed him because we were built to win together. We burn together or not at all.

So whatever Branwen has planned, whatever sick theater she’s directing behind those golden walls, it ends. She ends.

Because I don’t care what it takes. I will rip apart the Hollow with my bare fucking hands if I have to. I will drag them back, spine by spine if I must. Lucien might think this is checkmate, that he's sacrificing himself for some larger move.

But I never learned to play by his rules. And I don't care who I have to bleed to break them.

The fries hit the table like an afterthought—golden, crisp, steaming. Silas makes this exaggerated gasp like someone just delivered the crown jewels on porcelain plates, and not four baskets of fried starch we didn’t ask for. He claps, actually claps, and the waitress shoots him a look like she’s not sure whether to roll her eyes or ask for his number.

“Okay,”

he says, already reaching across the table like a damn gremlin.

“everyone gets their own, but communal fry culture is sacred, and I will be policing it. You fry thieves have been warned.”

I glare at him, but I still take one. It’s habit by now—surrendering to Silas' chaos before he gets louder. I dip it into the edge of my milkshake like he showed us ten times already, even though we all know how it works. My fingers flip him off as I eat it, middle finger high, elbow on the table like I’ve got all the time in the world to be pissed.

And the worst part?

It’s good.

Of course it’s good. Salty, sweet, that ridiculous crunch giving way to cold vanilla that shouldn’t work together but somehow does. I chew slowly, like if I pretend to hate it long enough, I might actually convince myself I do.

Silas beams at me.

“Told you so,”

he says, and it’s smug and obnoxious and somehow affectionate.

“You flipped me off, but I felt the love in it.”

I grunt.

“It’s edible. Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late. Already writing your approval into my will. You get the motorcycle jacket. Elias gets the glitter helmet.”

Elias—who’s currently doing a dramatic reenactment of death-by-fry, head back, tongue out, eyes rolled—mumbles.

“Finally. Something sexy for me to wear in the afterlife.”

“Babe,”

Silas says, leaning across Luna to grin at him.

“I’m going to bedazzle your casket. It’ll be the most fabulous funeral anyone’s ever cried at.”

Luna giggles around her straw, elbowing Silas as he tries to nudge closer to her side of the booth. It’s a sound I haven’t heard enough lately—light, real, not haunted by strategy or what-ifs. And somehow, it makes the knot in my chest tighten instead of loosen.

I watch her eyes, the way they flick between all of us—how she tracks each smile, every sarcastic jab, like she’s memorizing it. Maybe she is. Maybe we all are.

Because this? This is rare. Fries and milkshakes in a diner that’s too bright, with music that hums through the old speakers overhead and nothing hunting us—for now.

I chew another fry, dunk it again, this time deeper, and Silas lets out a ridiculous squeak like I’ve just given him a kiss. I growl low in my throat and toss a crumpled napkin at him. He catches it in his mouth.

Fucking dog.

But he’s our dog.

And for a minute, just one, the war doesn’t exist. The Hollow feels far away. Branwen’s name doesn’t taste like ash. And we’re not fractured. We’re here.

Fries. Milkshakes. Chaos.

Almost whole.

Ambrose wears grief like it’s tailored—pressed and silent and almost regal in the way it clings to him. He’s always been composed, but lately, the edges are too sharp, the pauses between his words too long, as if he’s chewing glass before speaking. I watch him now, his mouth set in that familiar flat line as Silas rattles on about his flavor-ranking system for the milkshakes, complete with dramatic reenactments and suspicious math.

Luna flicks Silas in the forehead mid-sentence. It’s a quick movement, half-annoyance, half-affection. Silas recoils like she’s shattered his dignity.

“My brain!”

he gasps, grabbing his head with both hands like he’s been mortally wounded.

Ambrose smiles.

It’s faint, almost hidden, like the man’s afraid it might betray him. But I see it. Hell, I feel it. The way the expression pulls at something long-frozen in his face—how it loosens his shoulders, just for a second. He doesn't look at Luna when he smiles, but I know she caused it.

She doesn’t push. Doesn’t pry. She never once asked me what the Hollow did to me when I came back half-dead and feral and barely holding it together. She just sat with me in silence, let me rage when I needed to, let me exist without expectation. And that’s what Ambrose needs too. Someone who doesn’t demand his broken pieces be fit back together in a certain way. She lets people come to her like a tide, patient and inevitable. That’s her magic, really—not just what lives in her blood or her hands or whatever cosmic trick the Hollow gave her—but this quiet, relentless gravity. She pulls people in, but never traps them.

And Ambrose… he’s moving. Not fast. Not loudly. But he’s moving toward her. In his way.

I could hate him for it. I really could.

But I don’t.

Because I see the way she looks at all of us—how it’s different for each one, but never less. She’s not splitting herself between us. She’s giving something whole to each of us in a way only she knows how to manage. It doesn’t make sense, but then again, nothing about her ever has. That’s probably why I can’t fucking stay away.

I shift in my seat, watching as Silas dips two fries at once into his milkshake and tries to feed them to both Elias and Luna at the same time. Elias rolls his eyes so hard they might detach, but he opens his mouth like the indulgent idiot he is. Luna dodges the fry and uses the opportunity to steal Silas’s entire milkshake like a damn gremlin. She drinks it while staring him down. He wails like she just slapped his grandmother.

Ambrose is watching too. And his smile grows.

It’s not love yet. Not the way it is for me, for Silas, for Elias. But something in him is turning. He’s thawing. And Luna… she’s giving him the space to do it. No pressure. No manipulation. Just a quiet offer to stay, if he wants to.

She’s more than my bond. More than the girl fate tethered to me in the dark.

She’s the only real friend I’ve had in a long, long time.

And I’d kill for her all over again. Just to make sure she never loses that smile. The one that makes Ambrose forget he’s still bleeding. The one that makes me forget I ever was.

Silas starts giggling before I even know what the hell he's looking at. It’s the kind of laugh that comes from somewhere too deep to be harmless—shoulders shaking, hand slapped dramatically over his mouth like he’s trying to contain a crime. And because it's Silas, the crime is probably unfolding in real-time.

I follow his gaze and immediately regret it.

Two goth teens walk into the diner like they just crawled out of a B-horror movie set. Black mesh, chains that clink too loud, eyeliner thick enough to qualify as a weapon. One of them has a coffin-shaped purse. The other has fangs. Not metaphorical ones. Actual, molded, plastic vampire fangs.

Silas lets out a high-pitched squeak behind his fingers, and I snap my leg forward under the table, nailing his shin with a satisfying thud.

He chokes. Literally. Milkshake explodes out of his mouth and dribbles down his chin, the sound he makes somewhere between a dying goose and a child being denied candy. “!”

he gasps, clutching his chest like I gave him cardiac arrest.

“You kicked me. I was mid-sip!”

“You deserved it.”

“I was appreciating local culture!”

he hisses, dabbing at his mouth with the edge of a napkin like he's delicate and dignified and not covered in strawberry milkshake.

“You should support the youth.”

“I support shutting the fuck up,”

I mutter, grabbing another fry and dunking it with a lot more violence than necessary. Across the booth, Luna tries to keep a straight face, but her lips twitch, betraying her. She doesn’t look at Silas. She doesn’t need to. She’s just waiting for the next explosion.

And Elias, the bastard, leans in with the laziest grin.

“I think the one with the corset made eye contact with Silas. You two have a future.”

“Don’t tempt me,”

Silas whispers dramatically.

“I’ve always wanted to be someone’s tragic backstory.”

Elias gives him a slow blink.

“You are my tragic backstory.”

“I knew it!”

Silas looks triumphant.

“That’s why you won’t stop dreaming about me.”

“I don’t dream about you. I wake up screaming and assume it’s residual trauma.”

“You’re so into me.”

“Please die.”

Ambrose is still quiet beside her, but I catch the flicker of his eyes toward her when she laughs. He doesn't smile this time. But he watches her like she's something rare. Something maybe he didn’t think he’d get to see again.

I shift in my seat and look back at the goth kids. They're at the counter now, ordering coffee and fries. I should probably be worried. About the pillar. About Lucien and Orin. About what happens next when the Hollow inevitably rears its head again.

But for now?

I kick Silas again, just because I can.

And I eat another milkshake-drenched fry. Because the fucker was right. It’s good. And for once, everything feels like it’s not falling apart.

Silas leans in like he’s about to confess a murder or a hidden crush, voice pitched low and reverent like this is sacred knowledge and not just another brain-rotting moment of whatever the hell goes on inside his skull.

“,”

he whispers.

“Can I get fangs?”

I don’t even bother looking at him. I keep chewing. “No.”

Silas presses a hand to his chest like I’ve just mortally wounded him.

“You don’t understand. Those teens are living my truth. I saw myself in them.”

“You saw fangs and a purse that can hold two regrets and a lip gloss. That’s not an identity crisis, it’s Tuesday at Daemon Academy.”

“But I need them.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do,”

he insists, pressing both palms flat against the table like this is some kind of formal debate.

“And a coffin purse. Also black eyeliner. I tried to steal Luna’s for a costume—”

“She slapped you,”

I finish flatly, because of course she did.

He sighs, wounded.

“She slapped me, . Open palm. No hesitation. And then she told me she was keeping it in case you needed to touch up your soul.”

That gets a snort out of Elias, who hasn’t looked up from his fries but clearly caught every word.

“He’s not goth enough for that eyeliner. He’s more... cursed stepbrother trying to summon a demon to fight his emotional issues.”

Silas gasps.

“That is so rude. And also accurate. But rude!”

“Why the fangs, Silas?”

I ask, finally giving him a glare I hope burns the impulse out of his body before it becomes permanent.

“What part of you thinks you’re qualified to carry that aesthetic?”

“I want to make new friends,”

he says simply, gesturing toward the goth kids at the counter, who are now taking selfies with their milkshakes like it’s a ritual offering.

“They’re my people.”

“You are not their people,”

I mutter, and Elias groans beside me, dragging a hand down his face.

Silas ignores us both.

“I just feel like... if I had a bat necklace, some lace gloves, and a name like Mortem—”

“Stop.”

“—or, like, Lilith Junior—”

“Stop.”

“—they’d invite me to their weird nocturnal gatherings and let me perform emotional poetry under moonlight.”

“Silas,”

I growl, but he turns to me like he’s genuinely confused about why this conversation isn’t going his way.

“I’m versatile, . I contain multitudes.”

“You contain delusions.”

“They’re aesthetic!”

He throws a fry into his mouth with dramatic flair, chewing like it’s a punishment. Elias reaches across and slowly plucks Silas’s milkshake from his hand.

“This is why I drink,”

Elias mutters, sipping it with exaggerated disdain.

“Because you make me question every good decision I’ve ever made.”

Silas gasps again, horrified.

“That’s my strawberry bomb swirl!”

“It tastes like regret and glitter.”

“You’re regret and glitter!”

Luna’s whole face is pink now, shoulders trembling as she tries and fails to rein herself in.

I lean back against the booth, letting the chaos simmer around me. It’s fucking stupid. It’s Silas. And I’d probably kill him if he weren’t also the reason she smiles like that—like the world hasn’t ended yet.

But if he comes near me with black eyeliner or fake fangs, I will put him in the ground. Probably gently. Probably.