Page 35 of The Syndicate’s Shadow Heiress (Branche de Lune Syndicate #1)

THREADS OF STARFIRE

Kali’s Emotional State: Shaken, stirred, and scorched. Her shadows are twitching. Her blood is a war drum. She’s trying to hold the line between destiny and desire—but Solen just broke the map.

K

ali blinked hard. Her magic thrummed louder now, , deeper, heavier, like a war drum punching against her ribs.

She’d seen him before. Felt his gravity.

But she had never looked. Not like this.

Not with the world still. Not with the Hollow Gate bleeding twilight behind him and her shields cracked wide enough to feel everything.

Now she saw him—

Not as a threat.

Not as prophecy.

But as a man carved from something older than desire.

And that made it worse.

Solen stood at the center of the Gate’s pulse, fractured light bending behind him like a halo forged in war.

His robes hung loose over his frame, parted just enough to reveal a body etched in cosmic arrogance, skin kissed by starlight, constellations tattooed down sinewy arms, broad shoulders, a sharp clavicle, tight hips.

His Adonis belt, shadow-dipped and merciless, disappeared into low-slung pants like a dare written in prophecy.

Kali’s shadows twitched. Not defensive. Hungry .

Solen’s chest rose slowly, like he didn’t dare disturb the air between them. Like he felt it too. He wasn’t chaotic. He was precise. A thread drawn taut across the fabric of fate, and it was her pulling it. He was the end of something. And the beginning of everything.

Lev stepped forward, slightly shielding her, a low growl thrumming in his chest. “Back the fuck up,” Lev snarled, body coiled for a fight. “I don’t care what Gate spat you out.”

Solen’s gaze shifted to Lev. Calm. Unshaken. The way you look at a storm—not impressed, but aware. “I’m not here to take her,” Solen said. “I’m here because she called me.”

“I didn’t call anyone,” Kali snapped, though her magic betrayed her, already coiling toward Solen like it recognized something her mind refused to name.

Behind her, Astraeus growled. The sound scraped reality itself.

“She’s Threadmarked,” Solen said. “And the Hollow Gate is reacting because the prophecy is in motion.”

Kali’s voice dropped into something sharper than steel. “What prophecy?”

Solen didn’t flinch. “The one where the Keeper wakes—and the world either follows… or burns.”

A pulse cracked behind her eyes. The Hollow Gate howled. Her magic ripped toward him. Astraeus stepped closer, tension in every line of his body.

“You need to rest, little shadow,” he growled .

“No,” she rasped. “I need answers.”

Irina, ever the chaos bringer, stepped into the circle of madness, her daggers already sheathed but her smirk lethal. “Goddamn, girl. Can you save one apocalyptic hottie for me?”

Her eyes flicked over Solen, calculating kiss potential and kill speed in the same breath.

“But nooo. You just keep collecting them like end-of-the-world Pokémon.”

Kali cracked the faintest smirk. Then her body buckled.

It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t gentle. It was savage.

Arms snapping around Kali’s waist like iron bands, Irina hauled her close, shielding her with her own body as if the very air might finish what exhaustion had started.

“You don't fall alone,” Irina hissed into her ear. “Not while I’m breathing.”

Kali sagged against her, too weak to answer, but the shadows flared around them, latching onto Irina’s armor like black flame, as if even her magic trusted her not to let go.

Solen didn’t move. Lev didn’t either. Astraeus was stone.

“You drop, I drag you back. Heffa, I’m not surviving this hellscape alone while you nap. I’m not staying here with all these apocalyptic assholes by myself.”

And through it all, Kali heard it, A whisper across the bond, threaded in starlight: “You are the thread. And the blade.”

Darkness swallowed her whole. The last thread snapped, and the Gate began to open.

And the prophecy began to stir.