Fatal Matchthreads

As a Senior Actuary at the Magic Scroll Bank earning a lucrative salary, I was my aunt’s favorite target.

For the ninety-ninth time, she pushed her "perfect match" on me: a forty-eight-year-old washed-up faerie hunter, drowning in debt .

"Seraphina, women lose their value after twenty-five. Marrying a steady, older man is your safest bet!"

To force my hand, she secretly slipped an illegal, soul-draining Love Bond into my tea.

Under her greedy gaze, I smiled, pretended to drink it, and agreed to the date.

What she didn't know was that I possessed the rare Scroll Sight. I secretly extracted the Bind Mark... and quietly planted it on her own daughter, Chole.

If she loved this man so much, I would gladly grant her wish.

A month later, our family's chat group exploded. Aunt Agatha was screaming hysterically, cursing me a "shameless whore" for bringing home a Pregnancy Rune before marriage.

I calmly enlarged the image, circled Chole's spiritual signature, and replied:

"Congratulations on becoming a grandmother, Aunt Agatha."

“Seraphina, darling, you must listen to reason. It’s simply way too tough for a young woman like you to make it on your own in this ruthless, smog-choked London. At the end of the day, a woman’s real destination—her only true sanctuary—is finding a good, solid man to marry.”

Aunt Agatha settled her heavy frame onto the velvet sofa in my meticulously decorated, high-rise apartment.

She held a delicate bone china teacup between her plump, ring-laden fingers, her tone dripping with a nauseating, manufactured warmth. This marked the ninety-ninth time she had badgered me about getting married this year alone.

“Aunt Agatha,” I began, my voice as crisp as freshly minted currency. “I was promoted to Senior Actuary at the Magic Scroll Bank last month. I evaluate contracts worth hundreds of thousands of Galleons daily, and my own annual salary just breached three thousand Galleons. I can afford to buy my own sanctuary. I don’t believe I need some mythical ‘destination’.”

“Oh, what good is a fancy title and a vault of cold coins to a woman in the dead of night?” Aunt Agatha covered her mouth dramatically, her eyes wide with feigned horror. “You’re already twenty-five, Seraphina! You are teetering on the edge of becoming stale goods. If you wait any longer, your innate magic will lose its virginal purity. No respectable family will want you! The Mr. Thorne I’m setting you up with is a famous man—a legendary former goblin hunter!”

Silas Thorne.

Fifty-eight years old. He haunts London’s seedy undercity black markets. Years of ruthless goblin hunting have left him reeking of foul, ineradicable corruption.

Worse still, as a Senior Actuary, I had personally overseen his financial records during a routine audit. Silas Thorne owed a staggering eight thousand Galleons in high-interest gambling debts to the ruthless gnome syndicates.

Aunt Agatha was pushing this absolute piece of human trash onto me for one simple, entirely selfish reason: as a shady broker in London’s underground matchmaking scene, she had undoubtedly taken a hefty cut of Silas’s dirty money. To her, I wasn't a niece; I was a highly profitable sacrificial lamb.

“So what if he’s a bit older?” Seeing my icy silence, Aunt Agatha rushed to fill the void, her voice shrill with desperation. “Older men know how to treat a woman right! They know how to cherish a wife. He knows how to care for overly independent, headstrong women like you. He will ground you. Apart from the age gap, he doesn’t have a single flaw!”

I almost laughed out loud.

Painting a debt-ridden, aging, magically rotting lowlife as some perfect catch—the sheer audacity of her gaslighting was almost commendable. But not everyone would bow down and accept her so-called kindness.

“You’re absolutely right, Aunt Agatha. I have been entirely too blind to the realities of the world,”

Aunt Agatha’s face lit up instantly. The wrinkles around her eyes crinkled in greedy triumph. She hastily grabbed the silver teapot, her hands trembling slightly with barely contained excitement, and poured me a cup of steaming Earl Grey.

“Here, have some tea to soothe your throat, my dear. You’ve just been far too stubborn, working yourself to the bone in that stuffy bank. Trust your aunt, I know exactly what’s best for you.”

She slid the teacup toward me across the polished wood.

As the porcelain saucer came to a halt, the steam rising from the reddish-brown brew wavered. Within the depths of the tea lingered a faint, nearly invisible pale blue glow, pulsating like a heartbeat.

Ordinary people couldn’t see it.

But I could see it clearly.

I was born with a rare, highly coveted mutation: the Scroll Sight. My eyes could pierce through any physical illusion to see the raw, binding truths of magical contracts.

Twisting at the bottom of the teacup, swimming like a venomous aquatic viper, was a vicious dark magic artifact—a Love Bond.

My breath hitched slightly, though I kept my expression perfectly placid.

The Love Bond was a Class-A forbidden item, heavily outlawed by the Faerie Watch Station. The moment a drop of that tea passed my lips, the Bind Mark hidden within would latch onto my soul. My fate would be forcibly, irrevocably bound to the other end of the contract: Silas Thorne.

To ruin me and line her own pockets, my own aunt had resorted to lethal, forbidden dark magic.

“Why aren’t you drinking, darling?” Aunt Agatha pressed, leaning forward. Her fingers dug nervously into the velvet of the sofa.

I gracefully lifted the teacup by its delicate handle, twisting it gently between my fingers.

“Aunt Agatha,” I murmured, my voice soft, almost conversational. “If Mr. Silas is such an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime catch... why don’t you set him up with Chloe?”

Chloe. Her own daughter. Only twenty years old, with a naturally weak spiritual body.

Aunt Agatha’s expression darkened instantly.

“Don't be ridiculous, Seraphina. That silly girl Chloe isn’t remotely good enough for a man of Mr. Silas’s stature. She’s slow-witted, fragile, and completely useless. She has no career, no assets. She is nothing compared to how accomplished and... resourceful you are.”

I stared at her. Her own daughter was deemed worthless trash, yet I was the highly valued prize pig ready for the slaughterhouse?

I looked down at the swirling Bind Mark in the tea and curled my lips into a chilling, imperceptible smirk.

If Agatha wanted to play with forbidden contracts, I would show her exactly why I was the highest-paid actuary in London.

I raised the cup to my lips, pretending to lower my head to take a deep sip. The moment the porcelain touched my lower lip, the magic in my fingertips flared. Using my Scroll Sight to pinpoint the exact nexus of the dark spell, I projected a microscopic hook of raw mana.

Snap.

In a fraction of a second, before the liquid could even touch my tongue, I ripped the Bind Mark out of the tea. The invisible, writhing thread of blue magic coiled around my index finger. I slipped it silently up my lace sleeve, sealing it temporarily within a containment ward stitched into my cuff.

I swallowed nothing but air, then lowered the cup, letting it clink softly against the saucer.

“Very well,” I sighed, setting down the half-empty cup. I looked up and bestowed upon her the brightest, most obedient smile I could muster. “You’ve convinced me, Aunt Agatha. I agree to meet him. Set up the date.”

Aunt Agatha erupted in absolute delight.

“Oh, wonderful! Truly wonderful! I knew you’d come to your senses!”

She wanted to bind me to a monster? Fine

The game had just begun.