Chapter 21. Silken Chains

Mira hadn’t seen Kaelen all day. The doors of the council chamber had closed around him the moment he disappeared, like the jaws of a trap. From that moment on, she’d felt like a ghost wandering the stronghold’s polished corridors—known but unseen, welcome but somehow still foreign. She had waited, first in patient resolve, then in quiet worry, and finally in something darker, colder. Loneliness, perhaps. Or dread.

When she finally reached for him through the bond—tentative, aching, desperate for the anchor of his presence—his reply came back like a slap.

‘Sorry. I need to focus.’

And then—nothing. The bond went silent, his presence sealed behind walls she couldn’t reach, as if he had thrown a lock and deliberately walked away with the key. The absence echoed louder than any outright rejection.

The panic did not arrive in a rush. It crept. Quietly. Like ivy through cracked stone. She knew this sensation: the tight, clawing feeling beneath the skin, the