Chapter 1: Astoria - Bound to Ruin

PERIPETEIA BOOKSHOP, HAVENPORT, DELORNIA

Peripeteia Bookshop is silent, but my mind is an echoing, black pit of screaming pain.

My hands can’t stop their trembling while I behold the mutilated man lying in the center of my shop’s foyer. Like an igniter that refuses to catch, I spark over and over, light flashing across my skin as I attempt to summon my flames back. This shouldn’t be so hard. I am the Heir to Antonia. Power thrums through my veins. Yet it falters as I look at the body before me. Red drips down the walls of my precious shop in long rivulets, the wood floors unrecognizable beneath the congealing blood.

A cold sickness ripples down my spine that has nothing to do with my flames. This shouldn’t be happening. I’m in Peripetia. This is my safe haven. My stronghold. It’s impenetrable. I should be safe. Lucas should be safe.

I curl in on myself against this nightmare I can’t wake up from. My skin ripples, and I can’t catch my rasping breath. Bile surges and my eyes swell, for the reality is that I don’t need my flames to get a better look at the body to identify it; I know it’s Lucas. There is no one else it could be. The Weave has taken everything precious from me. First Viola and now… I choke on a sob and shake my head mindlessly side to side, my tangled hair a heavy curtain around me. Lucas. The sob echoes in the silence.

Lucas.

I fall to my side into the blood, not caring if my white silk robe is utterly ruined. I close my dull green eyes that miss their usual glow of magic. There’s no energy left within me. I, Astoria Rose Androclaria, Heir to the deceased Archweaver Antonia, am utterly alone in this cruel existence. Valen left me for the Order. Lucas is gone. I stop attempting to ignite my flames, and pitch darkness descends upon me.

The chill from the night air seeps into my flesh, numbing me slowly. The shop rings with silence until a familiar rustling echoes along the stacks. The grimoires are whispering, passing a message between themselves until their voices grow loud enough to penetrate the fugue state I’ve plummeted into.

My head lifts. Instinct guides me as I turn towards the stacks in the blackness. Blood-coated copper strands stick to my face and neck, my robe falling from my shoulder.

A shift in the air lifts my fog of despair, awakening my senses and bathing the darkness in the green light that comes back to life in my warming eyes. Shadows stretch high above, reminding me of the moving silhouette that startled me when I first left my loft.

Terror jolts through me. There is someone else inside my sanctuary tonight. A shadowy figure who stood at the base of my spiraling iron stairs. An intruder who slipped through my wards and waited to witness my despair. A being filled with cruelty, who slaughtered the living embodiment of half my heart. Someone who touched what is mine. Violated what is mine.

And that butcher is still here, hiding in the shadows.

A dark, twisted voice hisses from within my soul, a familiar oily film oozing along my insides.

Make them pay…

My heart thuds, a steady drum that pulses purpose through my veins. My eyelids peel back wide as magic sizzles hot and cold across my skin. I slowly roll my body up to my full height, my bare feet tracking blood.

My lips part, and smoke curls forth as I hiss in a warped, low tone to the grimoires lining the stacks, “Where is the intruder?”

The books still, their whispers dying. They shrink towards the pocket of reality where they hide during the daylight hours, but they don’t disappear—they’re blocked. The store refuses to switch to its legal, innocent bookshop form, and it keeps the grimoires trapped here with me.

My skin is sticky with drying blood. Blood of the man who held me together for four years. A man who can never hold me again.

I choke, tears falling into my mouth. That searing in my heart, along my soul, grows until it spreads, sending a sludge-like substance through my veins, which my heart pumps in painful convulsions.

The darkness shifts as I shake with an otherworldly screech, “Tell me. NOW!” and lash my arm out. My vision flashes, my head spinning with the surge of power that prickles down my limbs.

My power twists into a gold and black flame that cracks like a whip through the air. The lacquered wood along the shelves hisses as a burn scar scores it. Ash falls to the ground, delicately dancing in the whirl of power. My swollen veins pulsate with the same bright light and shadows as my whip. My stained white robe slips from my other shoulder and parts down my body to my elbows, red coating my bare chest like plated armor. The darkness of my magic gleams with an oily sheen.

“I will not ask again.”

A tremble of fear through my inventory does not move me. I have nothing left but this cold purpose that floods me. Like shedding chains that weighed me down, I stand before the grimoires, transformed. My fingers flex and curl in a wave, flames dancing along them, the crack of each knuckle loud in the silence.

A soft whisper brushes my ear. I turn my head sharply to the left. A barely visible silhouette stands just outside my halo of light, disappearing when I blink. My lips peel back in a snarl. The blood at my feet bubbles as my anger reaches a fever pitch, steam filling my nose, and a wave of nausea sways me as Lucas’ name echoes in the far recesses of my mind in a wail of despair.

All sense of self-preservation wipes from me, and I roar, throwing my arm out. The Flame of Creation bursts forth and thunders down rows of stacks to collide with the back wall, where the shadow last appeared. A painting of the harbor at sunset I’d hung there ignites, flames crackling loudly, and I whip my arm away, my fire sucking back within me so only the embers remain.

The intruder is not getting away. I will burn this whole place to the ground if it flushes this bastard out like a rabbit from its burrow.

I bolt after the shadow, my Creation Flame sizzling in one hand and Entropy Flame stinging my other with ice-cold black flames. The pain I inflict on this intruder will make what was done to Lucas appear a child’s game in comparison. I will drag them down to my basement and hang them from the stone ceiling. I will tear thin strips of flesh from their bones while making sure they never die. I will turn into a weaver’s nightmare to avenge my love.

But first I need to catch the intruder.

My feet thud against the wood floor, scorching footprints into the lacquer. But my books rustle and flinch, and the sounds echoing through the arching stacks confuse my hunt.

Then, a creak of floorboards sounds in the distance and stills my hand. I smile, my face stretching unnaturally with it.

Found you.

I burst from the stack near my iron stairs. Flames roar around me like a twisting tornado as I scream. Fire explodes to collide into a shield that is thrown up to envelop my target.

I breathe through bared teeth, my chest heaving, as I turn my arm in an arc. Flames lick the high ceiling before slamming down. The shield shatters, and a shiver of satisfaction shakes me.

I move fast, my flames blinding me with the flashes of light and darkness. Spots fill my vision, but I do not stop my assault. The intruder’s back slams against the iron stairs’ railing, and he dives out of the way. The iron extinguishes the magical flames instantly upon impact, and I roar my frustration, gathering more fire until it builds behind me in a lethal wave.

The intruder is speaking, but I cannot hear him over the thunder of my pumping blood, over the echoing whispers and shrieks of the grimoires. A stack tumbles over, the crash rattling my teeth. Books erupt from it, some slithering and stalking away, others attacking the weakened, damaged ones.

A surge of power nearly steals my attention as one grimoire convulses, leather binding splitting as it shifts into a monstrous, papery beast. It distracts the intruder, and he bolts towards the grimoire to strike it back into submission.

And in that instant, he gives me an opening.

Fire crackles, snapping at his heels but missing him by a hair’s width when he dodges at the last moment. I pull back my flames sharply to leave claw marks gouged along the peeling wax coating of the floor.

He’s tiring, and I am only getting started. My smile is wide, my eyes icy cold. I laugh, the sound bouncing off the walls. My right hand bubbles red while my left turns gray as balls of flames swirl around me, growing larger and larger.

Something yanks my right foot. The world tips and my back slams into the unforgiving ground. I wheeze painfully, my firestorm dousing as I fight the tight discomfort in my chest. I clutch my sternum, and suddenly, bindings tighten around me. I suck in an agonizing breath and roar, flames crackling from my lips.

Then something slaps against my mouth, and the sound muffles. My arm tingles like it’s going to sleep where the bindings hold me. My teeth grit, my eyes shutting as I strain to break the bindings. I must not let the intruder get away.

Sound. Muted from a great distance away. A single word, yelled over and over, until it slices through my mind like a sharpened blade through paper.

“TOR!”

My eyes snap open.

Glittering gold threads ripple around the bindings that pin my arms and legs together. They illuminate a familiar face inches above mine.

My breath shivers as my eyes burn with a wave of tears that flood them. I squeak out, “Lucas,” and it is dampened by the large hand pressed against my lips.

Lucas exhales hard and removes his hand. “Have you calmed down? Can I let you go or are you going to try to set me on fire again?”

A sob steals my words and his tight expression softens. His threads loosen around me. I shake off the last few and ignore the pain that lances through me.

My heart explodes and I launch off the ground. I collide with his warm body, the force of my tears shaking me as I claw at him. He’s real. He’s actually real. Thank all the nonexistent arachnid gods.

Lucas is alive.

His arms wrap around me and he rolls us so I’m straddling his lap. I’m blubbering nonsense into his hot neck, his sodden flat cap flopping to the ground as my nails rake through his wet hair. The magical storm from the weavers’ in-fighting outside rages so loudly, it penetrates my shields to rattle my shop’s foundation with the force. But I don’t care about Vincentius and my father’s civil war or the resulting clashing, volatile magic. Lucas is here. His arms are around me and he’s crushing my body to his.

Three words I haven’t said to him nearly rip through my throat, but my lips are trembling too hard to form the proper syllables. I never want to feel this fear again. It’s different from anything else I’ve ever encountered. It’s a panic, pure and absolute, like my heart has been ripped free.

I shake off the sensation and breathe his scent deep into my lungs. Clean, with a masculine spice, mixed with smoky undertones of the city’s many chimneys on this unseasonably cold, wet summer night. It lifts the weight from my chest like a drug, and my nerves begin to steady.

Lucas. My Lucas.

I claw my hold under his damp jacket and groan at the scorching heat of him. My nose presses into the base of his neck on his right side where his black flame tattoo licks up his arm and shoulder.

Lucas presses his lips along my bare skin where my ruined white silk robe has slipped down, and I shiver. He slides his hand up my spine to cradle my skull.

“I’m here. It’s okay.” I melt into his comfort, his warmth finally seeping through our layers to penetrate my icy bones. “I won’t let the corruption take you.”

I blink. His words are slow to penetrate my foggy mind.

He rains soft kisses up my shoulder to my neck, pleasure easing the cold fear that ensnared me. My head lolls back when he strokes my hair and rests heavily in his palm. He trails kisses along my face, wiping away my tear stains, only to release a new wave of sobs.

His soft whispering soothes the exhaustion that weighs on me. “Did you hurt yourself? Are you bleeding?” He strokes my face softly, coaxingly. “Open your eyes for me, Torment. Let me see them.”

I hadn’t realized they were closed. Slowly, I peel open each lid. His ten rings glow like suns, and their heat blooms along my flesh where they rest. His smile’s warmth echoes in my heart, chasing away that odd, sludgy sensation back to the dark line fracturing my soul.

My brows twitch together. His eyes. His expression is tight, and his sun-starved complexion is ashen.

He exhales slowly, searching my face. He swallows and nods in short, jerking movements. “Good. That’s good. Oh fuck, Tor. I thought I’d lost you.”

I wet my lips. “Were my eyes…”

“Black, like when we were at the Archweaver estate.”

I suck in breath. My heart races and coldness washes away the warmth of his embrace.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m here.” He strokes me again, his thumb collecting the tears that slip from my lashes. “What happened? You were sound asleep last I saw you.”

“I thought I’d lost you,” I whisper in a broken, small sound.

He kisses my forehead softly. “You will never lose me.”

“Where were you? I couldn’t find you.”

“I was in the basement with Jinx, helping her fix the records.”

I frown. “At night?”

“I saw her going down there when I got back from meeting with my Guild contact.”

I swallow. “Did you see the body?”

He stills. “What body?”

My mind spins so chaotically that I can’t tell up from down. I clutch Lucas’ wrists, barely able to comprehend what just happened. What almost happened. I tried to kill Lucas. This terror tries to rob me of my memory. A fuzzy sensation slows my thinking. I push through it and whisper, “Someone is here. There’s a dead body in the foyer.”

His body goes rigid, his honey eyes widening.

My hand on his wrist trembles. “You didn’t see it?”

“I went sprinting into the stacks when I heard you screaming. I didn’t get a look at the foyer with the lights out.”

His gaze darts around the surrounding darkness. That tingling, warm magic of his rings pulses along my cheeks, and I smile at the flood of sensation returning to my nerves. The space around us illuminates as his threads crawl all along the floor, stacks, and ceiling to bring light to the darkness.

The wash of the purifying warmth is so good that I moan softly. I roll forward to go limp.

One of Lucas’ large hands leaves me to shift the silk along my leg. His fingers touch my calf, where the dried blood sticks, then trail up to where he can now clearly see it coating me.

“Is any of this your blood?” he asks as he fixes my robe so I’m no longer half naked.

I shake my head.

His whisper is low and rough against my ear. “Get behind me.”

He grips my arms and eases me off his lap to then drag me up to stand with him, but my legs aren’t working properly. I nearly crumple back down like a newborn fawn, weak and clumsy, but Lucas doesn’t let me fall. He hauls me back up to pin me against his strong chest. He says something, but the hammering of my heart drowns him out. I blink blearily down at my legs, at the blood that coats me. The trembling begins in my knees and travels up my body until my teeth rattle.

Lucas gently lifts me into his arms, and I cling to him with gasping breaths, my shaking arms tight around his neck. He gently shifts me to keep his right hand free in case of attack. I need to let him go. There’s an intruder and a dead body. It’s not safe for me to be clinging to Lucas like this, and yet, I cannot seem to get my body to obey. I just lived a horrific moment of life without him and my battered heart cannot stand to step away from him. Not yet.

My eyes close while Lucas carries me through the shop, and I revel in the waves of sensation that wash through my body. My soul, once ripped apart to keep me alive when my Entropy and Creation threads attempted to destroy each other, twinges horrifically along where Antonia sewed it together with the four twisted threads of the Archweaver line. I flinch, but the sensation leaves as fast as it comes, and only this building pressure against my sternum is left. My heart pulses against Lucas’ pounding one. Like our souls are meeting.

Lucas’ arms tighten around me and his back presses against the end of the stack. A tear gathers along my lashes, but I do not open my eyes to permit it to fall. My breath gives me away. The calluses along Lucas’ palm scrape my jaw as he cups it, pressing kisses against both of my closed eyelids. I fall into this gentleness, the heavy weight within me wisping away. I settle back into his hold, and he continues his inspection of the shop.

Gravity tilts, and I peer through my damp lashes. Lucas kneels. His glowing rings highlight the scorched footprint his fingers press against. Spider-silk-thin threads slip from his glowing rings to weave around the imprint, highlighting every line left behind by my foot. The threads stretch to show my mad dash through the shop. I close my eyes again.

I know the exact moment Lucas leaves the stacks and spots the body. He goes rigid, his arms tightening around me until my bones ache.

Lucas presses the side of his face against mine. He’s speaking, and it takes me a moment to resurface from the lulled, fuzzy state I’d slipped into.

“It’ll be okay. I’ll get rid of the body for you. Then, we’ll figure this out.”

Lucas’ warm, sweet affection is more potent than any drug. I kept him at arm’s length for four long years, but now I’ve tasted this forbidden fruit, now I’ve felt his naked body against mine, I can never let that go. Never.

Something uncomfortable slithers within my heart, bringing back the hazy memory of moments ago when the curse almost took me again. My face creases, the dry blood pulling my skin, as I fight to recall what happened after I found the body.

I force my eyes open and turn to Lucas, whose attention is fixed on the mutilated body. Slowly, he takes in the blood-splattered walls and the too-still books. A frown mars his ruggedly handsome face.

Then his gaze meets mine, and all the anxiety within my bones returns in a jolt. We stare at each other, Lucas searching me in that same very slow, careful way.

I find the strength to mumble, “You think I killed him.”

Lucas’ lips thin and irritation pulses in my chest.

“I found him like this. There was someone else here.”

Lucas shifts my weight in his arms. The irritation morphs into frustration, and I hiss, “Spit it out.”

He sighs again, and his gentle tone is kindling to my temper when he grimaces. “I don’t think you meant to. I know you, Tor. You wouldn’t make this much of a mess in the shop on purpose. Come on. Let’s talk about this later after we get you cleaned up.”

“Don’t patronize me!”

I unhook my legs before he can stop me, and my feet thud against the floor. Pain lances through them. Lucas immediately grabs me, like he knew standing would hurt me. I shift to the side, lifting my foot to inspect the bottom. They’re now clear of blood but red hot, like they’ve been sunburned. I release his neck to inspect my hands. Small blisters bud along both.

Slowly, I flex and contract my fingers. Numbness fades, replaced by sharp stings.

My eyes widen as I lift my gaze to behold a burn scar along my stacks. Flashes of a whip of flames pulse in time with my suddenly throbbing head. I press my fingers against my temples. I shouldn’t be damaged by my own magic. That only happens when my Soul Threads are warring with each other, and that issue has been solved now that I’m an Heir. Something else must be weakening my control. Something that feels oddly familiar…

I shake my head and stumble back out of his hold. Lucas’ strong hand catches my elbow to keep me upright.

Swaying, words pour from my lips. “No… no. There was someone else here. They slipped through my wards just like you did.”

His voice is gentle when he responds. “There was someone else here. Now he’s lying dead on the floor.”

My panic builds higher and I snarl, snapping my arm out to point at the dead body. “It wasn’t this fucker!”

“Tor—”

“I am not lying!”

“I don’t think you are.” Lucas’ pain-filled expression is almost too much to bear, but I manage to hold his soft gaze while he speaks slowly. “Someone did slip through, probably after I came inside and went down to help Jinx. Perhaps you were coming downstairs to look for me when you ran into him. The body’s not far from the door. It’s only logical that you handled the intruder and waited for me to help clean up. As for what happened after you killed him…” He combs his hair back. “I don’t know if your memory is… reliable.”

All the air is knocked from my lungs, and I step farther back. Lucas doesn’t advance but tracks me like one who would track a beloved, rabid dog. Bile burns my throat.

“When you came out of those stacks, you weren’t yourself, Tor.” His voice cracks. “You tried to kill me.”

The memory of breaking his shield burns me. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.

Lucas’ hushed whisper breaks a small part of my heart. “We’ll fix you. It’ll be okay.”

My chest is so tight that it’s a fight to gather enough air to speak. “How can the corruption be back, Lucas? I snipped the tether to my curse and when I became Heir, I saw the corruption bubble away…”

Then it returns to me. The dark stain. That burning line along my heart.

“What if it’s an aftereffect of my curse I can never truly be free of?”

He kisses my hair, his arms around me tightening as if he could squeeze the corruption from my body. His voice rasps. “There’s a way. There must be.”

My heart aches, my swollen eyes filling with tears once again. I’ve spent the last seven years researching corruption. I’ve communed with Antonia’s grimoire and absorbed all her knowledge on curses. What more could I learn? Where could I possibly find more information?

I turn from these thoughts and press against Lucas. Leaning against him allows me to breathe through these overwhelming emotions. Then my gaze lands on the body, and sweat dampens my silk robe again.

“I have no memory of killing this person. All I recall is waking up alone and finding the body when I went to search for you. The rest is becoming harder and harder to remember.” My voice cracks and I bury my face in my hands. “Lucas.”

He presses his face against my blood-crusted hair, like he doesn’t care how disgusting I am, and it breaks me all over again.

“I think I’m corrupted beyond the point of no return. Soon rot is going to bubble along my skin⁠—”

“Don’t say that.”

Lucas’ tone is harsher than I’m used to, and it pitches my voice high. “I can’t ignore the evidence. I didn’t sense you leaving the shop. I didn’t sense you or this intruder entering either. I didn’t even sense Dimitar when he broke in, and he brought three ghouls and a powerful magician with him to ambush us! He locked Jinx in an iron box and I didn’t realize. Lucas, I barely remember attacking you.” I go weak with the force of my wail. “I’m going to become like Alasdair!”

Lucas doesn’t let me crumble. He turns me in his arms, and the tremble in his strong frame has me dissolving into further hysterics. He rocks me in his embrace again, and his voice cracks. “I won’t let you get like that. I swear, Tor.” Then, firmer, he says, “I love you too damn much to lose you.”

Thundering upon the front door has both of us jumping and staring at it.

“Who could that be? It’s not even dawn yet,” Lucas wonders.

I slump against him. “Ignore it. Whoever it is can come back in the morning.”

Then the hammering on the door is replaced by a pulsing wave that hits me like a strike against my skull. I gasp, knees buckling. A dull blaring alarm reverberates through the foundations to rattle my wards, and I press my hands uselessly against my ringing ears when a voice drills into my skull.

“BY THE ORDER OF THE MAGICAL MAGISTRATE, ASTER ROSEMONT, YOU ARE TO REPORT TO THE OFFICERS AT THE FRONT DOOR OF PERIPETIA SHOP, OR YOU WILL BE DETAINED FOR FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH HAVENPORT LAW.”

My eyes meet Lucas’ then drop to the mutilated body.

Oh, fuck.