Chapter 38. Silken Chains

Mira hadn’t seen Kaelen all day.

The moment he disappeared through the council doors, they had closed around him like the jaws of a trap. From that moment on, she’d felt like a ghost wandering the halls—known but unseen, welcome but somehow still foreign. She had waited, first in patience, then in quiet worry, and finally in something darker, colder. Loneliness, perhaps. Or dread.

When she finally reached through the bond, tentative and aching, Kaelen’s reply came 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 walked away with the key. The absence of him echoed louder than any rejection.

Now she lay curled in the center of the Luna’s bed—a vast, cold expanse of velvet and silk, its sheets too smooth, too wide, too empty. The light outside had softened into dusk, and the room glowed gold with dying sun, but Mira felt no warmth in it.