Page 15 of The Syndicate’s Shadow Heiress (Branche de Lune Syndicate #1)

THE PRICE OF CONTROL

Kali’s Emotional State: Grounded but raw. Magic still buzzing under her skin. Her walls didn’t drop, but they shifted. And that shift was dangerous.

T he fire was ash now. Kali lay beneath velvet throws, every muscle aching with post-flare fatigue—and something heavier. Something claimed.

She hadn’t slept like that in years.

Lev was still there.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, sharpening a blade by hand. Silent. Steady. As if his presence alone kept the nightmares at bay.

He wasn’t peace, but he was the wall that kept her ruins standing just long enough to fight again.

“You stayed,” she whispered.

“I said I would.”

Astraeus stirred behind her ribs, low and sharp. "He steadies your storms. But don’t confuse that with safety."

Kali exhaled. “I’m never safe. ”

Lev turned, his eyes hard as tempered steel. “You need to see this.” He passed her a tablet. Kali scanned and froze. A Mirror Sigil. Drawn last night. East End portal. Corrupted.

Her magic surged, static snapping across her skin. It flared uncontrolled, briefly, enough to spark off the comfort ward woven into the mattress. She bit back a wince.

“Where’s Irina?” she asked, voice razor-thin.

“Already on-site. Waiting for your order.”

Kali moved.

Fast. Focused.

Dressed in black. Boots. Blades. Coat.

Each layer, a ritual of war. Each buckle cinched a piece of her back together.

She staggered once, mid-step, just for a heartbeat. Her knees almost gave, the lingering flare reminding her she wasn’t whole yet. But Lev was there, steadying her, his hand at her lower back without comment.

Lev helped her strap in. Wordless. Grounded.

“I’m going with you,” he said.

Her breath caught. Not from shame. Not from pride. Just the raw, impossible truth of wanting something she couldn’t even name. She should’ve felt guilt. Instead, she felt claimed. And the worst part? A part of her wanted to be.

Desire curled behind her ribs, ugly and sacred all at once. She was a queen—but she was still a woman. Still breakable. Still burning .

“I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Twilight bled across the city when they arrived.

The East End portal—an ancient scar—breathed rot into the air, hungry and remembering.

Ash coated the ground.

Sigils burned into the stone, sickly green and wrong, pulsing like open veins.

One enforcer had already vomited. Another’s skin cracked like cursed porcelain. The runes on his forearm flared bright red, pulsing like a warning, then cracked like glass cooling too fast.

Kali crouched low, gloved fingers brushing the largest glyph.

It pulsed under her touch.

Alive. Hungry.

But not for her.

For him.

It recoiled from her skin at first, the contact sparking like venom against her shadows. Her magic snarled. It pushed back, writhing beneath her glove before snapping into alignment like it had recognized something it hated.

Confusion twisted in her chest, but underneath it, the unnamed desire stirred. Kali clenched her jaw, pushing the feelings back down. This wasn’t about Thorne. It was about control. It was about her—fighting to stay in control. ”

“Astraeus,” she whispered.

The dragon flared inside her, scales grinding against her bones. A low snarl echoed through her blood.

"Threadwoven," he snarled. "Not just Spiral. His mark."

Her stomach dropped.

Cold. Final.

“Who? ” she asked.

Silence thickened.

Then—“Thorne,” Astraeus hissed, like a curse broken free.

Kali’s chest tightened, a breath locked in her throat.

The name sliced through her composure. Memory stung like salt across a fresh wound—Threadspace, the sigil, the vision he forced her to see.

Her body remembered before her mind did: the fire in her blood, the pull of something she never asked for but couldn’t deny.

Far away, beneath ancient stone and a sky that had long since forgotten how to dream, Thorne Soren Draeven opened his eyes.

The bond had stirred.

The thread had pulled.

And Kali?

She had already crossed the line.

And fate?

It waited for her with blood-slicked hands—and a crown made of broken promises, and a ledger of debts still unpaid.

Thorne’s POV — What the Thread Remembers

The moment she touched the glyph, he felt it.

Not across distance. Not across magic.

Through the thread.

It burned beneath his skin—sharp, insistent, intimate. Her magic had pushed back, recoiled, and fought him.

And still, it reached.

Thorne opened his eyes in the dark. Not darkness like night. Darkness like the void between names, between choices, and between worlds.

The Spiral roared low behind his ribs. Hungry.

“She woke the Vault.”

He didn’t speak aloud. Didn’t need to. The Spiral wasn’t a thing he summoned. It was a wound he bled with.

He moved through the quiet of his sanctum—barefoot, unarmored, unwelcome even in his own mind. The sigil on his palm had stopped pulsing, but his bones still ached like memory had teeth.

Kali.

He whispered her name like it could cut something open. Like it already had.

He hadn’t meant to leave the mark.

But the thread had chosen .

And Thorne Soren Draeven had never known how to disobey a prophecy. Only reshape it.

The air in his chamber trembled. Somewhere—too close—reality frayed again.

“She’s changing,” he murmured. “Good.”

Because if she were becoming what he feared—

Then maybe she was the only one who could stop what he’d already begun or finish it.

Either way, the Spiral Mouth didn’t want her destroyed.

It wanted her crowned.

And God's help them all—

If she said yes.