Page 7 of The Syndicate’s Shadow Heiress (Branche de Lune Syndicate #1)

FALLOUT AND FUR

Kali’s Emotional State: Anxious. Haunted. Her magic is shifting, the shadows watching. Controlled on the outside. She’s unraveling beneath. Just enough to sense what’s coming—but not enough to stop it.

Flashback: The War Was Taught Early

T he sound of her boots on the stone floor echoed like a heartbeat she didn’t trust. Some nights, the shadows didn’t whisper; they remembered.

She found herself in the training room before she knew she’d walked there. The mats were still rolled up. The wooden weapons were tucked neatly in the wall rack. But the scent lingered—cedar, sweat, blood, and peppermint tobacco.

Her grandfather’s scent.

Her throat tightened.

It was here, at eight years old, that she first broke her wrist. Silas had shouted.

Not at her. At the man who’d knocked her down—a merc who’d underestimated her size, not her skill.

Her grandfather had dragged her outside after.

Not to comfort her. To teach her. “You can cry when you win. Not before. Not during,” he had said, wrapping her wrist with military precision.

“Every bone you break is a promise. That you won’t break the same way twice. ”

Kali sat on the edge of the sparring mat, her fingers ghosting over the faded scar on her forearm.

Ten years old. The day he taught her how to disarm a man twice her size with only a fork and a wine bottle.

Twelve. He caught her eavesdropping on a political deal in the parlor. Instead of scolding her, he handed her a glass of bourbon and asked, “What did you learn?”

“Never trust a man who smiles with his mouth but not his eyes.”

He laughed for a full minute. Then told her to pack. They were going to Moscow.

Kali smiled faintly. The kind of smile that hurt more than it helped.

Because Silas had never raised his voice unless someone else was hurting her.

He wasn’t soft. He was steel. But he wielded that steel like a blade designed for her protection. And the day he called her “My shadowborn queen” was the first day she believed she might survive.

Now?

Now she couldn’t find him.

The house was too quiet. The shadows too still.

She didn’t need blood to confirm her fear.

The training room dissolved from her mind as the war called her back .

But grief was a ghost she couldn't chase. It clung, but it didn’t command. And the present was bleeding faster than memory could mend.

The club was silent now. Blood had been scrubbed. Screams had faded. The playroom stood immaculate again, as if torture wasn’t still soaking into the walls, as if truth hadn’t just bled itself out across velvet and steel.

Kali stood by the reinforced glass of her private observation alcove, high above the club floor. The city lights shimmered below like stars trembling under tension. Her fingers curled around the edge of the glass.

She was still.

But not at peace.

Irina entered without knocking, a tablet in one hand and a blood-red file folder in the other.

“Lucian hasn’t resurfaced,” she said. “But we found his last transfer. Eastern Syndicate holdings. Vampire-owned shell company.”

Kali didn’t turn. “And the sigil theft?”

Irina flipped open the folder. “Confirmed. They’re mirroring the cursed bloodline glyphs. We cross-referenced them against your grandfather’s black ledger. It’s Spiral-coded. They’re trying to break in from the outside—no key needed. Just sacrifice.”

Kali’s jaw clenched, and her shadow magic flickered. “Then we break the seal,” she said with a deadly calm .

Astraeus' warning rang through her mind, but it was too late. The path had already been set in motion. The Spiral Mouth had made its move.

Kali finally turned, the room shadowing around her. Her coat was gone, sleeves rolled to the elbow. Her shadows curled tighter than usual, agitated. She hadn’t slept. Her joints throbbed with quiet fire, and still she stood.

“They want a war,” Kali murmured. “Let’s show them what happens when they open doors they can’t close.”

Irina handed over a small blood-sealed scroll. “Intercepted message. From the Crimson Thorns. Looks like they’re planning a move too.”

“Perfect,” Kali muttered. “Why have one enemy when I can juggle three?”

The door opened again—Lev.

Freshly showered. Blood gone. But not calm. Not even close.

He stood in the doorway without speaking. The tension in his shoulders spoke enough. He was wound tight, jaw set, eyes like glacial steel beneath a dark curl of wet hair.

“You didn’t flinch once,” he said. “During the whole thing.”

Kali met his gaze. “I don’t get to flinch.”

He crossed the room in two long strides. “You shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

She smiled, crooked and tired. “You think this is me alone?”

Shadows swirled. Astraeus stirred .

“Little shadow,” he murmured inside her mind, sharper than before. “Your body is cracking. Your mind frays. The Spiral wakes.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, a single breath dragged through clenched teeth.

“I know,” she whispered.

Irina stepped between them with the tablet. “We have a new problem.”

She angled it slightly, tilting the screen toward Kali with a subtle flick of her wrist—just enough so Kali wouldn't have to grab it from her to see it, because her hands were shaky from the earlier power surge and the constant drag of her illness. She said nothing about it. She never would.

Kali opened her eyes. “Anomaly at the East End portal. Magic surge is unlike anything we’ve seen. The sigils are changing on their own. It’s not just Spiral magic. It’s Thread-touched.”

Kali’s blood went cold.

Thorne.

She didn’t say it aloud. But she felt him.

A whisper of him against her magic, like silver thread pulling across an old scar. A warning. Or a beckoning.

Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. “What do we know about the Spiral Mouth? The real version. Not just the rumors.”

Irina hesitated, then handed over a second file.

“We decrypted the rest of your grandfather’s ledgers.

The Spiral Mouth doesn’t open doors,” Irina said grimly.

“It eats worlds and spits out bones. A sentient spell construct. Ancient, maybe older than dragonkind. It doesn’t just open a door.

It infects reality. Rotates the ley lines like a whirlpool. Makes magic lose shape.”

Kali’s heart pounded.

“And it can be cast from the outside?”

“Only by bloodline keys. Or bonded dragons.”

Her blood turned to ice.

“And Thorne has one of those,” she whispered.

She turned to Irina. “Lock the portals. Lock the city. Bring the council to me. And find me the bastard who’s thread-walking in my backyard.”

Irina nodded once, tapping the side of the tablet with her thumb—a silent I got you. Then she turned on her heel and disappeared into the hall like a dagger thrown from a trusted hand.

Lev stepped forward again, eyes narrowed. “You’re not well.” His whole body was tight with restrained violence—like he wanted to tear the pain out of her himself.

The nausea hit first. Then the joint aches, slow and slicing. Her body trembled once beneath the weight of her own magic—psoriatic arthritis gnawing at the edges of her endurance like a curse she could never quite sever. A disease no amount of power could erase. Only endure.

She was used to it now. The flares came and went like tides. She ignored it like she ignored fear—by moving forward harder, faster, meaner.

She didn’t lie. She just stepped into him, laid a hand flat against his chest .

The heat of him burned through her gloves—steady, savage, alive. A pulse she could shatter but never own.

For a heartbeat, he stilled—like he could feel the fracture inside her—and chose to steady it instead of claiming it.

"I don’t need to be well, Lev. I need to win," she said softly.

He didn’t answer.

The Spiral Mouth was stirring.

And Kali’s war had just begun.