Page 27 of The Syndicate’s Shadow Heiress (Branche de Lune Syndicate #1)
BLOOD TITHES AND BAIT
Kali’s Emotional State: Kali is cold and exacting. Every action is a test, every word a blade. She’s not interested in mercy, only outcomes. Her shadows follow not out of loyalty, but fear of what happens if they fall behind.
T
he courtyard of the Crimson Thorns compound was slick with blood.
Kali stood in the center, smoke curling around her boots, the silence loud as judgment.
The attack had lasted seventeen minutes, seventeen screams, seventeen seconds of mercy denied.
Shadows had descended like wolves off-leash.
Magic had shattered bodies, ripped through wards, and cracked bones like kindling.
Kali hadn't lifted her sword. She hadn't needed to.
One survivor still knelt in the dirt, a junior lieutenant, soaked in gore, shivering in the crater left behind by his fallen comrades.
“You’re going to let me live?” he gasped, voice cracked, disbelief sharp as panic.
Kali crouched before him, shadows rippling off her shoulders like sentient serpents starved of prey.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“Why? ”
She smiled, slow, glacial, beautiful in the way a blade gleams before it falls.
“Because I want you to tell them something.”
He nodded too fast. “Anything.”
“Tell them I’m fractured. I’m doubting my alliances. That Solen has refused to bond. That Irina’s loyalty is thinning.”
His brow furrowed. “But—”
She pressed one blackened finger to his trembling lips. “Just enough truth to make the lie believable.”
Then she flicked her wrist. A burst of shadow launched him backward through the perimeter wards, bruised but alive, her message in blood and bone.
Irina appeared beside her, blood on her cheek and calm in her stare. “You sure about that?”
Kali didn’t blink. “No. That’s what makes it bait.”
Smoke curled upward into the night sky. A breeze stirred through the ruined compound, revealing the stars, and something else.
She felt him before she saw him.
Solen.
He emerged from the wreckage like a god carved in dusk. Tall, still, draped in moonlight. His skin bore sigils that pulsed like living prophecy, his eyes molten dusk and storm. He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. The air bent around him like a bowstring pulled taut.
“You weren’t summoned,” Kali said without turning.
“I came anyway,” Solen replied, voice like silk wrapped around steel.
Kali’s attention shifted to him, her eyes steady. “You watched the whole thing?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I see you now.”
Kali tilted her head, her gaze unreadable. “What do you see?”
He took a single step forward, and the air between them shifted, crackling with faint magic.
“The Queen of Shadows and Bone,” he said, reverent.
The title hung heavy in the air, a new oath, a recognition, a dare.
But Kali didn’t blink. She wasn’t interested in titles.
“You’re late,” she said, voice cool and steady. “That name’s already old.”
Solen’s brows rose slightly, but his gaze never wavered.
“I am,” she continued, “the Syndicate’s Crownless Queen. The Queen Without Mercy. Marked by magic. Ruled by none. ”
Irina stepped forward slightly, her posture defensive, but the air was still charged with tension. “You didn’t know? And you’re supposed to be her mate? Some mate you are.”
Solen’s jaw tightened, but his expression remained calculated, not angry. He didn’t rise to the challenge. Instead, he took in the situation like a strategist studying the battlefield.
Astraeus, perched on the charred wall behind her, let out a low warning growl. His silver-blue eyes narrowed, wings coiled tight in distrust. Vaerkyn prowled at the far edge of the rubble, ears pinned, hackles raised. He didn’t bark or growl, but his posture was one of pure wariness.
Kali’s gaze flicked to her companions, but she didn’t call them back. She saw their postures, felt their tension, and trusted them to stay where they were.
Solen was unbothered by their watchfulness.
He stepped toward her again, and Kali could feel the pull of something ancient, something inevitable, stirring in the shadows between them.
Finally, Kali allowed herself to acknowledge it. Her mask cracked for just a second, the corner of her mouth twitching, not a smile, but something dangerous, something real.
“Then you’ve seen too much,” she whispered. But her voice lacked its usual bite. There was no command in it, just a quiet warning.
But she didn’t stop him from closing the distance between them .
And Solen didn’t stop looking at her like he’d once chosen death just to meet her again.
A thread, not seen, not spoken, pulled taut between them. Thinner than breath. Sharper than fate. Neither Kali nor Solen acknowledged it, but the shadows twitched, sensing the inevitability neither dared name.
The shadows shivered. The air thickened. And Kali smiled like she’d just remembered which piece to sacrifice to win the game.