“And if I refuse?” he asked, voice barely more than a whisper.
Her tone turned lethal, all pretense stripped away. “Then I’ll take everything you have left. I’ll haunt you at every step, hunt down anyone you’ve ever cared about, and make your life a waking nightmare. You don’t get to back out, Wolfgang. Not now.”
His answer was a shaky exhale. Cassia knew surrender when she heard it.
“Half an hour,” she said softly, her voice a velvet promise of doom. “Make the call.”
She killed the line, her smile lingering in the darkness like a bruise, and Wolfgang was left alone with nothing but the echo of her words and the knowledge that, sometimes, the worst monsters don’t need to be in the room to ruin you. Sometimes, all it takes is a voice in the dark.
Maddie had never understood what it meant to be wanted—not truly, at least not by anyone other than her mother. Not in theway that unspooled her soul and set it ablaze. The boys she’d dated before, the ones who’d whispered promises in her ear and traced trembling lines down her skin, seemed like distant shadows now. They were boys fumbling in the dark, looking for a switch, never realizing she was the light they couldn’t hold. They’d touched her with hands that trembled with uncertainty, with minds too small to wrap around what she could give. But Roan? Roan was a force of nature, and with him, the world itself tilted. He hadn’t even touched her and yet she felt the sheer electric pulse between them.
Even now, bound by venomous silk, fear licking at the edges of her mind, she felt the pull between them—a gravitational hunger. It felt both ancient and insistent. It was more than chemistry, more than longing. It was a bond written on her heart in a language she didn’t understand, the one spoken before words, before time. She felt it in the marrow of her bones, in the staccato of her heart. She felt as if Roan tried to keep his passion caged, but fate didn’t care for cages. The magic humming between them was older than both their bloodlines—set in motion by Visata, the Creator. This, she knew, was not chance. They were not a casual byproduct of Callon and Lola’s crossing paths, not an accidental echo of someone else’s love story. They were the point. The axis. The spark meant to set their world on fire.
Roan’s gaze met hers, and she saw the truth there: hunger, fear, hope, and something that thrummed beyond words. She felt his every breath as if it were hers, and when he leaned in, close enough that their foreheads nearly touched, the world seemed to hold its breath with them.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said again, and his voice was a storm—low, urgent, reverberating through every hidden part of her. “This isn’t for us.” He sounded as if he was trying toconvince himself of the ridiculous idea. She knew different, and so did he. “We need the magic strong enough for Athena to feel.”
Maddie’s lips curved, defiant and sweet. “Keep telling yourself that, shaman,” she whispered, tasting the heat in his denial. But she knew—oh, she knew—he couldn’t hide from this. Not from fate. Not from her.
He hovered, trembling with a thousand years of restraint. “Last chance to say no.”
She didn’t. She couldn’t. She simply tipped her chin up, heart pounding out a war drum rhythm that dared him to back down, and let the universe answer for her.
His mouth met hers, and the world shattered. All the silk, the venom, the cold stone cell—they fell away, nothing but dust in the wake of that collision. His lips were fire, command, surrender. She felt him lose himself, felt the centuries of control slip and fracture, felt him cling to her as if she were the only anchor left in a world gone mad. Arms replaced the webs that had bound her and pulled her even tighter than those trappings had been.
The bond between them was a living thing, wild and electric. This new magic inside of her surged, like the tide pulled by the moon, a storm breaking through every wall she’d ever built. Power flared in her veins—sunlight and thunder, wind and rain. She felt him, every pulse of his need, every ache and hope and secret shame. He wanted her—not as a trophy, not as a conquest, but as an equal, a force, a partner in the world Visata had designed.
More of the silk on her wrists burned away, not with pain, but with possibility. She felt the venom’s poison sizzle, overwhelmed by the riot of magic. The wards Cassia had spun—insidious, primordial, cruel—began to splinter, unable to withstand the storm of their union. The very foundations of the Kingdom of Silk groaned with the force of it. Maddie gasped into his mouth,and the sound was a spell—invocation and invitation, a call to the Creator and to every watching spirit. She felt the ripple of their magic radiate outward, a shockwave tearing through the web meant to hold them.
Roan broke the kiss, his breath ragged, eyes wild. For a moment, he just stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. As if she were the only thing that had ever mattered.
“Madeline . . .” His voice was hoarse, reverent, broken open and made new. Her name became a vow, a plea, a promise.
Roan had lived a thousand lifetimes, been a savior and a survivor, but nothing—nothing—had ever undone him like this. The magic that roared between them was not a gentle tide, but a cataclysm. He felt her—her fury, her fear, her wild hope—pour into him, burning away the centuries of solitude he’d worn like armor. For the first time, his soul reached not for duty, but for desire, for possibility.
The bond snapped taut, brighter than a sunrise, more devastating than a hurricane. He pressed his forehead to hers, letting the aftershocks rock through him, letting her magic fill the hollows he’d forgotten were empty.
He whispered again, softer, more desperate. “Madeline . . .”
The silk around his wrists burst into flame, the venom inside him incinerated by their combined power. He felt Athena’s distant presence—shimmering, then growing stronger, drawn to the beacon of their bond. But more than that, he felt Maddie’s defiance, her refusal to be a pawn or a victim. Their connection was a lifeline, a rallying cry, a star igniting in the dark.
Roan felt Maddie tremble, felt every nerve ending sparking, every cell alive with sensation. He let her see in his eyes she was more than acknowledged—she was celebrated, revered. She was not a burden, not a secret to be hidden, but a storm unleashed.The fire in her heart was matched only by the awe he felt on his face.
She tried to speak, but her voice was a whisper, raw and true. “If that’s what magic feels like, you should’ve warned me.”
Roan’s answering smile was shaky, humbled. “If I’d known, I would have.”
The silk bindings continued to smolder, falling away in ash. Maddie flexed her fingers. Roan half expected to see sparks, to see the world remade in the wake of what they’d unleashed.
“Did it work?” she asked, voice trembling with hope and fear. “Did she feel us?”
From the shadows, Lyric’s voice broke through—awed and unsteady. “Yes. And not just Athena.”
Roan turned, blinking away the remnants of the magic. Lyric’s face was pale, eyes wide, hands trembling. She looked as if she’d touched a live wire and couldn’t let go.
Lyric’s shamanic senses reeled. She’d witnessed bonds before, seen power ripple through the world, but nothing—nothing—like this. The kiss between Roan and Maddie was a supernova, a golden cord shooting upward, through stone, silk, and ward, flaring in the magical ether so bright it nearly blinded her. This was more than a mating bond. It was a prophecy, a breaking of all the old rules. Athena would feel it—so would Cassia, and every other power in Silk.
Lyric’s own magic shrank back, awed and a little afraid. There was something about Maddie, something not quite human, not quite shaman—something that Roan’s magic had shaped but could never contain.
