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

Ambrose

I don’t know if it’s day or night in this place.

The room has no windows. Just stone walls that pulse like they were grown instead of built—black-veined and slick with magic that hums at the edge of hearing. There’s no sun. No moon. No shadows, either, because light doesn’t exist here. It’s more like... awareness. Like the space itself watches, remembers. Judges.

I’ve lost count of how long I’ve been here.

A day? A week?

Time doesn’t behave here. It coils, loops, stops. Sometimes I close my eyes for what feels like minutes and wake up with more bruises than I had before. Sometimes I blink and think I’ve skipped hours, only to find the candle beside my bed hasn’t burned down at all.

The bed. That’s generous. It’s a slab of blackstone warmed by something beneath the surface, just soft enough to pretend it's comfortable. There are no sheets. Just a blanket that smells like absence.

Branwen doesn’t visit often. She doesn’t need to. Her Dominion seeps through every crevice of this place like rot. You don’t forget she owns it, not even when she’s gone.

Caspian was here. Once. Maybe twice. Time makes liars of us all, but I remember his silhouette—taller than mine, less wrecked. The way he stood in the door like he might be able to pull me out just by looking. But there’s a leash around his neck now. Invisible, cruel. Tied to Branwen’s wrist.

He gets to roam. Gets summoned when she’s lonely. I can’t decide if that’s a gift or a punishment. Maybe both. He looks worse every time. More undone. Like her claws are under his skin, not just in it.

Lust, and the puppet strings that come with it.

I’m Greed. I don’t bend like he does.

That’s what I tell myself.

But I still count the steps in this room like they’re currency. Still measure the weight of each silence like it’s a negotiation. I still dream about doors. Not escape. Leverage.

There’s a basin in the corner, fed by a trickle of water that tastes like it remembers my name. I wash there. Cold and quick. The mirror above it doesn’t reflect anything unless Branwen wants it to. Sometimes I see her. Sometimes I see myself. Sometimes I see things I’m not ready to name.

She left a book last time.

Not a threat. Not a gift. Just a reminder.

"You know what you are."

I flipped through the pages anyway. Maps. Names. Sigils I haven’t seen since Daemon. The ones etched into the ceilings of the oldest chambers. The ones they said were buried after the first Binder failed.

I’m starting to think this whole realm is built on failures.

She wants me to turn. That’s the point of this. Break me down. Leave me with silence long enough that I start to fill it with her voice. Let the space chew me up so that when she calls, I run.

But I was born from want. Starvation. You can’t starve Greed. You just sharpen it.

The door opens without warning. It doesn’t creak. It doesn’t groan. It just... appears. Like it never wasn’t part of the wall.

Caspian enters.

And for a moment, I almost don’t recognize him.

His shirt is half-buttoned, wrinkled and stained. His collarbone is marked with deep red imprints—fingertips, maybe. Maybe teeth. His eyes are glazed, too bright. Not high. Not exactly. Just used.

His mouth twitches when he sees me. Not a smile. An apology.

“Morning,”

he says, even though there’s no morning here.

I arch a brow. “Is it?”

He shrugs and slumps into the corner chair like it’s the only place his body still works. He looks worse than last time. Paler. Like Branwen drained something vital and filled it with static.

“She let you out again,” I murmur.

“She always lets me out,”

he replies. “After.”

There’s no need to ask after what. The air clings to him, thick with sex and magic and something colder. A brand, invisible, but no less permanent. I can smell it on him.

“She obsessed with you now?”

I ask. Flat. Detached.

He doesn’t answer for a long time.

Then, quietly.

“She always was.”

I lean back against the cold wall.

“Must be nice.”

“Is it?”

I look at him. Really look. He’s not Caspian anymore. Not entirely. Something of him still lingers—the quiet intelligence, the slow-burning certainty—but it’s buried beneath layers of compulsion and guilt and whatever thrill she rips out of him when he forgets to resist.

“You still fight her?” I ask.

He nods once.

Then.

“But I lose.”

There’s silence. Not empty. Loaded.

I study the cracks in the ceiling.

“I’m glad it’s not me,” I admit.

He snorts.

“That’s fair.”

“I mean, it still might be.”

Caspian glances at me.

“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

The door closes behind him. And I realize, too late—

He didn’t open it. Which means it wasn’t his choice to come in. Which means she’s still watching.

And maybe... she’s waiting for me to want it.

Too bad.

Because I don’t bend.

I buy.

And when I leave this place, I won’t crawl.

I’ll take it.

I don’t hear the footsteps. That’s the first clue. Branwen’s dominion doesn’t announce itself—it slithers in, threads itself through the seams of reality and waits. But when Caspian puts his head in his hands, when his shoulders slump like something invisible just sank its claws into his spine, I know she’s touched him again.

He’s not crying. Caspian doesn’t cry. But the sound he makes is worse.

A sigh, slow and gutted. Like he's trying to exhale her out of his lungs.

He scrubs a hand through his hair, rough, leaving it more disheveled than before. His jaw clenches. Opens. Then shuts again.

Finally—barely above a whisper—he says.

“She’s never going to forgive me.”

There’s no need to ask who. The moment’s too delicate. Brittle in a way that feels dangerous. Caspian’s not a man who confesses often. And when he does, it’s never to absolve himself.

He shifts on the bench, elbows braced on his knees. He looks like he’s holding himself together with grit and spite alone. His knuckles are pale where they press into his temples.

“I tried to say no.”

The words are bitter. Hollowed out.

“Gods know I tried.”

And that—right there—is the tragedy. Not that he didn’t succeed. But that he still thinks it should’ve been a choice.

“Branwen doesn’t give permission,”

I say, voice low, even.

“She gives illusion.”

Caspian huffs a laugh that has nothing to do with humor.

“Yeah, well, illusion doesn’t keep your hands clean. Doesn’t stop your body from betraying you when she’s whispering what she wants in your ear like it’s something sacred.”

He drops his hands. Looks up at me. There’s a red line down the side of his throat. Not a scratch. Not a cut. A claim.

“She calls me like I’m something she owns,”

he says.

“And I go. I fucking go, .”

I study him carefully. He’s unraveling—quietly, methodically, like a man counting the cracks instead of holding them shut.

“She’s built you into a weapon,”

I say.

“You’re Lust. She sharpens you every time she makes you beg for the edge.”

Caspian swallows hard. His voice dips, thick and raw.

“And I think I let her. Because it’s easier than admitting I don’t get to want anyone else.”

The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s heavy. Ripe with a name neither of us say.

But I feel it. The pull behind his words.

Luna.

Caspian closes his eyes. Just for a second. But it’s enough.

“I’m not in love with her,”

he mutters.

“But gods, I wanted to be the one she trusted. Not Silas. Not Elias. Not even you.”

My lips curve. Not a smile. Just recognition.

“You’re not the only one,” I reply.

He laughs again. It’s short. Ugly.

“And that’s the problem, isn’t it? We all want her. And none of us know what she’ll become if she lets us in.”

I let that hang.

He leans back, bones creaking like they’re tired of being strong.

“She’s going to hate me when this is over.”

I arch a brow.

“She’s not as righteous as she wants to be. She’ll understand.”

“No,”

Caspian says quietly.

“She’ll understand. But she won’t forgive.”

He says it with such certainty, I almost believe it.

Until I see the way his hands shake. Not from fear. From restraint. He wants to go to her. But Branwen won’t let him.

And I—

I watch him break in increments. Watch the cracks turn to fractures. And I wonder if maybe this is exactly what Branwen wanted. Not his submission.

His shame.

I rise, walk to the basin. The water there stirs on its own—ripples that don’t come from wind or movement, but magic. A reflection shimmers across its surface.

Not mine.

Luna’s.

Somewhere, she’s alive. Still fighting. Still choosing.

And that—gods help us—is what scares Branwen most.

I look back at Caspian.

“You’re not lost yet,” I say.

But if he goes back to her again—if Branwen calls one more time and he answers—

He will be.

And the worst part?

He’ll let it happen.

Because even Greed knows when it’s watching something it can’t save.

It begins in the marrow. Not a sound, not a tremor—just that insidious slither in the bone, like something ancient waking up inside me that I haven’t fed in centuries. Caspian stiffens before the sound even touches the air, which means he feels it too. The curse doesn’t need a doorway to enter. It’s older than that. Smarter. It seeps through stone and skin, winding its way through the cracks she left behind. His back goes rigid, but not like a man bracing for battle. More like someone recognizing their own reflection in the eyes of the beast.

He doesn’t lift his head right away. I know what’s coming before her voice spills into the room like spoiled honey—too sweet, too deliberate. The kind of sound that lingers even after it stops. Caspian, she murmurs, slow and indulgent, and I watch the breath leave his body like he’s just been branded again.

He tries to resist. I’ll give him that. His fingers curl into the edge of the stone bench like he can anchor himself there, like it’ll save him from the pull she’s woven through his spine. But I know how this ends. So does he. Resistance doesn’t matter when the magic is older than memory. When it was sewn into the core of him so long ago that his blood hums in time with her voice whether he wants it to or not.

“Don’t,”

I say, and I’m not sure if it’s for him or me. The word hangs there, useless, because we both know it’s too late. He doesn’t move, not yet, but I can see it in the set of his jaw, the way his gaze flickers like a man watching the last thread snap. There’s no war to fight when the leash is invisible and already pulled taut.

“She’s inside me,”

he mutters, so quietly it almost doesn’t register. His voice isn’t full of panic. It’s something worse. Acceptance, maybe. Or despair. Like he’s finally admitted what we all feared—that whatever she did to him, however long ago it was, never left. Not completely.

“She was supposed to be dead,”

he adds, and it’s not a question. It’s an accusation. Against her. Against me. Against himself.

“She was,”

I say, voice low and even, more ritual than comfort.

“But death isn’t final here. You know that.”

Caspian lifts his gaze, and for the first time since he entered, I see it—real fear. Not for himself. For what he might do next. For what he already has done. His face is drawn, hollowed out by something far more cruel than pain. Shame. A deep, quiet rot that starts in the soul and festers in the silences left behind.

“She’s calling,”

he whispers.

“If I don’t go to her, she’ll come.”

He doesn’t say what that would mean. We’ve both seen what Branwen becomes when she’s denied something she thinks belongs to her. The bond between them wasn’t supposed to last. It was a weapon forged during a war we barely survived, a tie of necessity, not desire. But necessity has a way of growing roots when it’s fed by blood and desperation.

“She’s using you,”

I tell him, and I’m not offering reassurance. Just clarity.

“That bond was never meant to survive what she became.”

Caspian’s lips twitch, but it isn’t a smile. It’s the ghost of one—sarcastic, bitter.

“But it did,”

he replies, and that’s the truth neither of us can argue with. The bond should’ve rotted with her body. But she didn’t die. Not really. She was fractured. Cast into this Hollowed version of Daemon, locked behind wards and blood and ancient bindings. And we—Luna and Riven, with all their righteous fury and raw magic—broke her free.

Caspian stands slowly, deliberately. Every movement precise, controlled. But I see the way his hands tremble when he thinks I’m not watching. He’s unraveling, and he knows it. And still, he walks toward the door like a man summoned by something older than fate.

“She wants to feed,”

he says.

“And I’m the fucking offering.”

The door doesn’t creak open. It slides, seamless, like the stone itself knows to obey her. The light beyond isn’t light at all. It’s her magic. Dense. Golden. Sweet in the way poison is—enticing right until it kills you. She’s waiting. And Caspian? Caspian is already halfway gone.

“She thinks you’re still hers,”

I say, watching his silhouette start to fade into the passage.

His voice comes back to me, raw and aching.

“Maybe I am.”

And then he’s gone.

The door seals behind him, leaving nothing but stone and the faint whisper of her magic clinging to the corners of the room. I press my hand to the wall, feel the hum of something old and sentient pulsing beneath the surface. Not a warning. A reminder.

She’s still watching.

She always is.

And if Caspian gives in again—if she makes him beg, and he breaks beneath her touch—he won’t come back the same.

That should concern me.

Instead, I wonder what she’d do if Luna was the one who came for him.

I wonder if Branwen would finally bleed.

The stone whispers her voice again—not loud, not forceful. Just... insistent. Like a thought you can’t shake. Like memory dressed in silk and pretending it isn’t poison. It curls beneath my skin, wraps around the backs of my teeth, and dares me to answer.

, she purrs, but the sound doesn’t come from the door this time. It comes from everywhere. From the slab I sleep on, from the veins in the walls, from the water in the basin that now ripples without movement.

She’s trying to seduce me. Again.

As if I’d ever choose her.

The sheer arrogance of it almost makes me laugh.

She’s fucking delusional if she thinks I’ve forgotten who she is. What she is.

Caspian may have bent. Lucien might have wavered. Even Riven, for all his blood-drenched loyalty, bore her influence once. Orin too, in his ancient silence—he served her once, even if he never speaks of it now.

But not me.

Never me.

I saw her clearly the first time she smiled like a saint and offered ruin like it was salvation. Branwen was death from the beginning—painted in allure, perfumed with submission, but it was always rot underneath. The kind that promises pleasure just long enough to hollow you out and wear your skin like proof.

And yet, she still wants what she can’t have.

“You’ve always resisted me,”

her voice sighs through the cracks in the floor.

“Why, ? You of all creatures were made for greed. Don’t you want to know what I taste like now?”

The walls pulse once. Just once. Like breath. And it’s revolting.

I push off the slab and pace slowly to the basin. The water glows faintly gold now—her color. Lust’s color. She’s steeping this place in it, steeping me in it, as if I might be corrupted the way Caspian was. As if I haven’t spent centuries cataloguing every lie she ever told in that sweet, deadly tone.

“You mistake resistance for disinterest,”

I murmur, low and calm.

“I want plenty of things, Branwen. But I don’t want anything that wants me for what it can feed on.”

Her laughter answers me, soft and decadent.

“Still pretending you’re not like the others. But you are. Even worse, perhaps. You’d rather starve than kneel.”

I glance at the wall and catch my own reflection in the water. Only it’s not mine—not exactly. My eyes are too bright. My mouth too cruel.

She’s trying to rewrite me.

She can’t.

Because I am Greed. And I do not kneel. I trade. I take. I own. And Branwen is a contract I never signed because I don’t accept terms I can’t renegotiate.

“You sent Caspian,”

I say quietly, deliberately.

“To rattle me. To remind me what happens to those who give in.”

There’s no answer. Not this time. Just the steady pulse of the stone beneath my feet. Like a heartbeat, but slower. Hungrier.

She’s watching. Listening. And if she’s silent, it means she’s pivoting. Already shifting her strategy. That’s what she does—she adapts to whatever you want most, and then offers it in just the right shape to get you to bite.

Too bad.

I already know what I want.

And it’s not her.

It never was.

“One day,”

she breathes again, voice fainter, like the last note of a dying song.

“you’ll come to me, . They always do.”

“Then I guess I’ll be the one who doesn’t,”

I mutter, and I slam my palm against the stone.

It vibrates beneath my hand. Rejects the touch. I feel her recoil—just a flicker. But it’s enough.

And just like that, the walls go still again.

Her voice retreats.

But it’s not over.

She’ll try again. And next time, she’ll come as something else. Something I used to want. Maybe something I still do.

That’s what makes her dangerous.

Not the power. The persistence.

And the knowledge that no matter how many times I say no, she’ll always make it sound like I already said yes.

Lucien

The second my boots hit the stone, the bond lashes. It doesn’t warn, doesn’t build. It grips. Coils around the base of my spine like a snare pulled tight, dragging my lungs into my throat. I freeze—just long enough for Orin to notice. His eyes meet mine across the overgrown path, steady as always, but grim. He nods once. And it’s not reassurance.

It’s confirmation.

The moment we stepped onto these grounds, she felt us.

Branwen.

And she’s pulling.

I clamp down on the bond immediately, hurling every inch of Dominion I have into locking it out. My power usually slices through resistance like a hot blade. But this? This isn't resistance. This is a fucking echo of something ancient—etched into my marrow by a curse I never agreed to but let happen anyway. I can close the door. I can press it down like a lid over boiling water. But I can’t sever it.

She’s alive.

And she knows I’m here.

The worst part? I can feel how glad she is.

We should’ve never come back to this place.

The Daemon Academy I remember was already a lie, already soaked in secrets and blood. But this version? The one we’ve been dropped into? It’s older. Wilder. Built from a time before even the Hollow fractured. Magic stitches the stone walls like veins—pulsing faintly, glowing softly beneath the ivy that shouldn’t be this green. Nothing decays here. Everything is preserved. Not by time, but obsession.

And the paths... gods, the paths.

They stretch too far in directions that don’t exist anymore. Halls curve where they used to end. Towers rise that haven’t stood in centuries. It’s not just the past. It’s the memory of the place reanimating itself—piecemeal, fevered, as if trying to remember who we were when it still owned us.

I keep my distance from the others as we move. Let Riven stay closest to Luna—of course he does. His bond with her pulsing steady, anchoring him in ways I refuse to admit I envy. He was bound to Branwen once too. But Luna severed it.

She saved him.

And I didn’t let her save me.

I see her ahead of us—her figure half-lit in the strange half-light this place produces. Not sunlight. Something else. Something old and sentient. The Academy breathes her in like a familiar scent, and doors open. Floors soften. Walls lean, almost reverent.

She doesn’t see the way I faltered when the bond surged. The way I had to steady myself against the trunk of a gnarled tree that wasn’t there seconds ago. Doesn’t see the way my fingers tremble before I curl them into fists. Because I refused her.

And now I get to rot.

Riven walks untouched. Not even a flicker of discomfort. And why would he? He’s hers. Claimed. Bound in a way that erased Branwen’s reach. I scoff under my breath. Not bitter. Not exactly. But I feel the rot pushing up through my ribs again and think: maybe I should’ve let her do the same to me.

But I didn’t.

And now, as the academy reforms itself around her, I feel Branwen’s fingers stroking the underside of my ribs like a violin bow, soft and lingering. Like a lover I once spurned, reminding me she never needed permission to take.

I breathe through the static in my veins and fall into step behind the group, not close enough to be noticed, but not far enough to be forgotten. Dominion crackles at my fingertips, barely leashed, but it does nothing here. The magic in this place isn’t mine.

It’s hers.

Hers.

“How bad is it?”

Silas asks, low and quick, falling into step beside me like he hasn’t just emerged from whatever nonsense he was doing two minutes ago. His tone is flippant—always is—but there’s something under it. Something sharp. He’s paying attention, even if he doesn’t want me to know it.

I don’t answer right away. Mostly because I can’t. My throat’s tight, the bond still coiled like a blade beneath the surface, and I’m too fucking proud to show how much effort it takes to keep Branwen’s reach at bay. I focus instead on the path in front of us. The stone is too clean. Too new. It curves unnaturally, like the academy is reshaping itself around our presence, sculpted from a memory no one alive should still have access to.

Silas doesn’t fill the silence. He never does when it matters. That’s the thing about him—he plays the fool, but he’s always watching. Always waiting for someone else to crack first.

Finally, I murmur.

“It’s not nothing.”

He lets out a low whistle.

“And here I thought you’d finally learned how to lie to yourself.”

The corner of my mouth twitches. Not a smile. Just habit. I don’t have the energy to slap him down. Not right now. Not when my entire ribcage feels like it’s humming with a melody Branwen left in my bones centuries ago.

“I closed it off,”

I say.

“She can’t pull me through.”

Silas snorts.

“No, she can’t. But she’s still humming a little love song in your chest, isn’t she?”

I glance at him, and for once, his grin falters. Briefly. His green eyes narrow, flicking across my face like he’s searching for signs of a deeper fracture.

“I’m not Caspian,”

I say, voice low and cold.

“I don’t bend. And I don’t get bound unless I choose it.”

Silas raises both hands in mock surrender, but there’s nothing funny about the way he looks at me.

“Hey, I believe you. I mean, yeah, she’s whispering through centuries of cursed flesh like a psychotic ex with no concept of boundaries, but you’ve got the whole ruthless dictator aesthetic going for you. If anyone can resist getting magically railed by the undead queen of sex and soul rot, it’s you.”

“Do you want something?”

I ask, finally giving him a full look.

He grins.

“No. I just wanted to see if your jaw would crack from all the clenching.”

I look away, focus on the cathedral ruins ahead of us. The old hall—the heart of Daemon Academy when it was still something sacred—is pulling itself upright from the ash like it remembers what it was and doesn’t know it’s dead. Spires stretch into a sky that shouldn’t exist. The air tastes of ash and perfume, like Branwen kissed every stone before it turned to ruin.

Luna is already halfway up the steps. And the building parts for her.

Silas follows my gaze and whistles again, lower this time.

“She’s getting stronger.”

“She’s changing everything,”

I reply.

“Even this.”

“Do you think she could fix you?”

Silas asks, not looking at me.

I grind my teeth.

“She’s not a solution.”

“Maybe not,”

he shrugs.

“But she’s an option. Which is more than Branwen ever gave us.”

The bond pulses again—faint but insistent.

And I realize Branwen feels that too. She knows we’re near Luna. That Luna’s stronger now than she was. That her influence spreads like wildfire and the longer we stay in this twisted, resurrected place, the more likely it is that the Sins begin to shift toward her instead of Branwen.

That should terrify me.

Instead, I feel something worse.

Hope.

Orin appears on my other side like the fucking ghost he is—quiet, unreadable, older than most of the stone in this place. His steps don’t echo. They don’t even disturb the dust. And still, I feel him before I see him. Not because he’s loud. But because he’s present in a way no one else dares to be when I’m unraveling.

“She’s pushing,”

he says, his voice as calm as it always is, even when he’s talking about a woman who nearly destroyed the world.

“Hard. Right in the chest.”

I keep walking.

He falls into step.

“It’s like pressure, building between the ribs,”

he adds.

“You know the feeling.”

I do. I hate that he’s right. I hate it more that he thinks we need to talk about it. But he’s not wrong—Branwen’s push isn’t a whisper anymore. It’s weight. Slow. Heavy. Relentless. Like water behind a cracking dam. And if we don’t seal the breach, it will drown us.

I exhale through my nose, slow and razor-thin.

“Shut it off.”

He turns to look at me, his expression heavy with something I don’t want to name. Pity, maybe. Or worse—understanding.

“That’s not a solution,”

he says softly.

“That’s a delay.”

“I didn’t ask for a solution,”

I snap.

“I gave you a command.”

The words sting the air between us. But Orin doesn’t flinch. He never does. That’s the thing about ancient creatures. They don’t respond to dominance. They remember it.

His eyes—those bottomless, pulsing voids threaded with flickers of something not quite human—hold mine for a long moment. Not in defiance. In quiet sorrow.

“You’re bleeding at the seams,”

he murmurs, and for a second, I think he means it metaphorically. Until I look down and see a thin streak of red trailing from beneath my sleeve. My palm must’ve split where I clenched my fist too tight.

Branwen’s influence is more than a pull now.

It’s a dig.

She’s clawing at the inside of me, hunting for the parts I’ve tried to bury. The pieces she once kissed with power and promises before twisting them into weapons I didn’t recognize until it was too late. If she really wanted, she could do more than summon. She could take. Rip obedience from my throat like a leash I didn’t agree to wear.

But she hasn’t.

Yet.

“I said I don’t want to talk about it,”

I bite, more quietly now, more dangerous.

“I know,”

Orin replies.

“But you will.”

The thing about Orin is that he doesn’t need to raise his voice to win a conversation. He just waits. He lets you walk your logic to its grave. Lets you hear your own breath quicken and your defenses peel off, one layer at a time, until you realize he was never trying to win. He already knew.

I press a bloodied palm to the stone pillar as we pass it. The Academy shivers under my touch—like it recognizes me, but not kindly. I was never meant to return here. Not like this. Not in Branwen’s shadow. The stone beneath my hand pulses once. It’s faint. Deliberate. Ancient.

And I know—without Orin needing to say it—that it’s not Branwen anymore.

It’s Luna.

She’s waking the Academy in ways none of us understand.

And if I don’t get this rot out of me soon, I won’t survive what she’s building.

I pull my hand back, flex it once, watching the blood bead along the seam of my palm. Orin watches too but says nothing. He already knows I’m unraveling. Already knows I’m pretending I’m not.

And that’s the worst part.

Not that I’m falling apart.

That they can all fucking see it.

She stops.

Just ahead, at the steps of the old cathedral, Luna freezes mid-step like something invisible has brushed the back of her neck. It’s not Branwen she’s reacting to—I would feel that. No, this is something else. Something about the air. The stone. Maybe the way the shadows don’t stretch the way they should. She turns, slow and deliberate, scanning the group behind her.

And then she looks at me.

I try to straighten, to lock everything down behind the armor I’ve worn for centuries. But I’m caught mid-shift. My spine not fully raised, my expression a shade too open. And Luna—of course Luna—catches it. Her eyes narrow slightly. Not suspicious. Curious. Like she’s noticed a crack in glass and can’t help but press her finger to it.

She walks back toward me.

Every step she takes does something to the stone beneath her. The ground doesn’t just accept her presence—it adapts. The moss pulls back. The air stirs. The old academy seems to recognize her as both threat and heir. And still, she moves like nothing here could ever hurt her.

Gods, I wish she was wrong about that.

She stops a pace from me. Too close. Always too close. I don’t move.

Her hand hovers mid-air, inches from my chest, frozen in the act of reaching out. Her brows knit, just slightly. She’s piecing it together, and I don’t want her to. Gods, I don’t want her to see me like this. Pulled. Shaking. Bound.

I try to speak, to force something out—anything. A word. A warning. Even just her name. But the moment my throat flexes, nothing comes. The words lodge somewhere behind my teeth, clawing to get out, but Branwen's power seals my mouth shut with a cruel precision that feels too intimate to be accidental. There’s no physical force—no hand, no pressure. Just a command whispered into my bones from a woman who should be long dead but isn’t. It clamps around my voice like a collar and locks it down from the inside.

It’s not just power. It’s humiliation.

Panic rises—sharp and immediate, not the kind I can reason with or command into submission. It spreads like ice through my veins, cold and sharp, and I know—I know—I look like I’m unraveling. My jaw is clenched, my throat refuses to open, and the bond pulses with Branwen’s sick pleasure, her rage humming just beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. I want to curse. I want to move. I want to run. But all I can do is stand there, locked in place while Luna watches me die in slow, incremental inches.

And she’s still reaching for me.

Her hand hovers in the air between us—hesitant but not afraid. That’s the part that undoes me. The lack of fear. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t falter. She looks at me like I’m something she could steady if I’d just let her touch me. And maybe she could. Maybe one brush of her fingers against my skin would be enough to sever this sickness Branwen left in me. But I can’t let her do that. I can’t let her be the one who saves me. Not here. Not now. Not when I don’t even have the dignity of language.

Blood drips from my nose. I don’t feel it until Luna’s eyes narrow and she says my name again—softly, carefully.

“Lucien… your nose is bleeding.”

My hand lifts reflexively. Wet. Warm. Red.

Shit.

I didn’t even feel it start. Just pressure. Just static. But now it’s dripping down my lip, and I can’t hide it. Her eyes sharpen, not afraid, but alert.

The moment she speaks, the bond spasms.

It doesn’t just pull. It yanks. Hard. Brutal. A full-body lurch that nearly tears me forward like I’ve been tethered to something massive and unseen. My head jerks back, not of my own accord, but hers. My spine arches slightly, and I have to plant my feet hard into the stone beneath us just to keep from being dragged like a marionette toward a mouth I escaped centuries ago.

And through it all, she’s still looking at me like I’m more puzzle than threat. Like I’m something she could fix.

Gods, I want to let her.

Even now, with Branwen trying to claw me back through the bond and my body turning against itself, I want to grab Luna’s wrist and anchor myself to whatever the hell she is. Let her burn the sickness out of me. Let her see the thing I buried. Let her touch what I’ve never let anyone near. But if she touches me—if she reaches—Branwen will feel it.

And she will tear me apart.

My chest aches from the effort of staying still. From resisting. From being silent when everything in me wants to beg.

And that’s when Riven moves. I feel it before I see it. That still, precise violence he carries in his stride. One step, then another. No rush. No hesitation. But final. I glance sideways—and there he is, cutting through the static between Luna and me without so much as a word.

He doesn’t look at me. His focus is on her. Luna doesn’t notice him at first. She’s too locked on me, too wrapped up in whatever she thinks she’s seeing. But when Riven steps in front of her, shielding her with his body, her gaze snaps up. She doesn’t protest. Doesn’t ask why. She just lowers her hand slowly, like instinct is telling her to trust him even before reason catches up.

My lungs finally expand. Just barely. Enough to breathe.

I hate him for it.

And I’m grateful.

Because if she had touched me…

I wouldn’t be here.