CHAPTER 101: THE UNWEAVING

Kael’s scream was a thin, silver whistle that vibrated in my teeth.His massive ashen form was no longer solid. It was fraying at the edges, his grey fur stretching into long, luminous filaments that my mother reeled in with her skeletal fingers. I could see the marrow of his ribs, now glowing like molten glass, as it dissolved into the silver web. Every time Iyanla pulled a thread, a piece of Kael’s history—his first hunt, his rejection of me, his howl in the North—vanished into her robes."He’s disappearing, Amara!" Ronan roared.The rogue Alpha swung his emerald axe at the threads connecting Kael to the throne. The blade passed through the silk like it was smoke. There was no resistance. The web wasn't physical; it was a conceptual knot made of every bond the pack had ever signed."You can't cut a thought, Ronan," Iyanla said. Her silver eyes didn't blink. She reached out and grabbed a thread that looked like a vein of violet fire.The mate bond. My bond.The air left my lungs. I f

CHAPTER 102: THE HUNGER OF THE VOID

The uncounted didn’t charge the throne. They flowed into the kitchen like spilled ink, their violet eyes bleeding into the silver threads until the air turned the color of a fresh bruise. I waited for the sounds of a massacre. I waited for the shadows to tear the red feathers from my mother’s back.Instead, the three thousand ghosts did something far worse.They knelt.The man with the missing arm lowered his head, his ashen forehead touching the silver threads. A low, rhythmic humming rose from the army, a vibration that sounded like wet paper tearing. It wasn't a growl of war. It was a hymn of recognition."They know me, Amara," Iyanla said. She spread her blood-colored wings, the tips brushing the ceiling. "You thought you were leading them home. You thought you were the one giving them justice. But I am the one who gave them a shape.""You used them," I rasped. My fingers dug into the silver down of the child in my arms. "You watched them die and turned their ghosts into a wall."

CHAPTER 103: THE TETHERED PRINCE

A decoy.The word was a splash of ice water on a fresh burn. I looked at the woman who had birthed me, who had planned my life in a closet while she wove a throne out of skulls, and the last of my childhood hope died in the silver light of her eyes. I wasn't her daughter. I was her shield. I was the lamb she had tied to the stake to keep the wolves busy while she built her empire."You left me in that kitchen for nine years," I rasped. My voice sounded like it was coming from a different room. "You let me believe I was alone.""I let you survive," Iyanla replied. She pulled a thread of violet light from the air and wrapped it around her wrist. "A healer is a target. A decoy is a ghost. You were safer as a kitchen girl than you ever would have been as my heir."Kael let out a low, wet cough from the floor. He began to move, but it wasn't the movement of a man. Because he had been partially unwoven, his body followed the logic of the silk. He didn't stand; he flowed. He rose like a shad

CHAPTER 104: THE GARDENER’S SHEARS

Adaeze didn't climb out of the dark. She materialized like a cold thought in a feverish mind. The woman I had left in the mountain temple was gone. This version of her was taller, her dark skin stretched tight over a frame that looked like it was made of polished obsidian. She stepped over the threshold of the floor-eye, the shears in her hand humming with a low, airless frequency.They weren't metal. They were two curved slivers of the void, tied together by a hinge of bone."The harvest is overgrown," Adaeze said. Her voice didn't have the roughness of the temple. It sounded like the sliding of a tombstone. "Iyanla was always a sloppy weaver. She left too many loose ends. Too much sentiment."I stepped back, clutching Hope to my chest. The child was still drinking the silver threads, her silver feathers stained with the violet rot of my mother's power. "You’re dead. Your skull is under that throne."Adaeze glanced at the throne of bone. A flicker of something that might have been a

CHAPTER 105: THE LIVING LARDER

The sound of the ghosts feeding wasn't a roar. It was a wet, rhythmic grinding, like a thousand sets of teeth working on a single sheet of glass. I felt the vibration through my palms, traveling up my arms and into my chest, a cold suction that turned my blood into slush. The uncounted were no longer kneeling. They were a swarm, a violet tide of hunger pouring into the obsidian shears, drinking the void-energy Adaeze had spent centuries hoarding.Adaeze shrieked. Her obsidian skin didn't just crack; it began to peel away in jagged flakes, revealing a hollow, lightless space where a soul should have been. She tried to pull the shears back, to close the blades and cut the connection, but the ghosts were a vertical weight she couldn't lift."You're a fool, Amara!" Adaeze’s voice was a ragged, airless gasp. The flaking stone of her face fell away, leaving behind a skull of pure, unadulterated salt. "They won't stop with the shears. They’ve tasted the silence. They’ll eat everything until

CHAPTER 106: THE THREADLESS EYE

The kitchen was too quiet.Silence in Silver Ridge usually meant the omegas were working or the Alphas were sleeping. This was different. This was the silence of a grave that had been dug but not filled. I knelt on the cold stone, my fingers inches from the silver needle. It stood perfectly vertical, its point buried in a crack between the floorboards, vibrating so fast it was a blur of metallic light.I reached out. My hand was shaking, the skin raw where the violet threads had been ripped away.The moment my skin touched the silver, a jolt of twin heartbeats slammed into my palm. One was a steady, heavy thrum—granite and woodsmoke. Ronan. The other was a frantic, electric pulse—amber and lightning. Kael.They weren't dead. They were compressed."Amara?"The voice came from the floor. I looked toward the pantry. The heavy wooden trapdoor to the cellar was being pushed upward. Mama Sira’s face appeared in the gap, her eyes wide and bloodshot. She looked at the shattered floor, the eme