Chapter 1 An Accidental Summoning and a Forbidden Magical Bond

If I didn't come up with fifty silver coins by sunrise, Master Bramwell would throw me into the street and burn my grandmother's shop to the ground.

I wiped sweat from my forehead, leaving a smudge of black soot across my cheek. The floorboards of The Thistle & Bloom groaned beneath my boots as I stared down at the small wooden bowl on my counter. Inside lay three withered moon-orchid seeds. They were brown, shriveled, and dead.

"Come on, Wendy," I whispered to myself, my voice trembling in the cold, quiet room. "Just a tiny spark. Just make them bloom. That's all you need to do."

Moon-orchids were worth twenty silver coins a stem. If I could make all three grow tonight, I could pay the debt collectors. I could keep the only home I had ever known.

I took a deep breath and opened Grandma's old leather grimoire. The page showed a basic fertility charm, the kind of simple hedge magic even a child was supposed to manage. The problem was, my magic had never behaved. Other witches produced soft green light. When I tried to cast, sparks flew like firecrackers, my hair stood on end, and things caught fire.

The guild mages in town called me the "cinder witch." A useless girl who could only make smoke.

"Please work," I prayed, squeezing my eyes shut.

I held my hands over the bowl. I gathered the small, fluttering warmth in my chest and pushed it down through my arms, straight into my fingertips.

"Flora surgere."

The words left my lips in a whisper.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then, a sudden, blinding heat exploded through my veins. It didn't feel like a soft garden charm. It felt like an iron gate ripping open inside my heart.

The floor beneath my boots didn't just rattle; it buckled. The glass jars lining the walls shrieked and shattered, raining dried lavender and crushed roots across the room.

"Wait, stop!" I gasped, trying to pull my hands back.

I couldn't. My palms were locked in midair, glued by two beams of blinding violet light.

Cracks raced across the stone hearth, glowing with bright, molten gold. A sound filled the room, not thunder, but a deep, terrifying roar that made my ribs vibrate. The air grew scorching hot, heavy with the scent of ozone, burning ash, and wild cinnamon.

Crack!

The ceiling split. The air above my counter tore open like a sheet of silk, revealing a pitch-black void spitting purple lightning.

I screamed, throwing my arms up as a violent blast of wind knocked me off my feet. I crashed hard against the wooden counter, gasping for breath as jars and books rained down around me.

Then, something heavy hit the floor with the force of a fallen boulder.

The entire cottage shook. Dust poured from the ceiling rafters, filling the room with thick white haze.

I lay on my side, coughing, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Through the swirling dust, I saw a crater right in the middle of my shop floor.

And inside that crater stood a man.

My breath caught in my throat.

He was massive: broad-shouldered, impossibly tall, and bare-chested under a torn, smoking coat of midnight silk. His skin was pale bronze, and across his wide collarbones and down his forearms, dark obsidian scales shimmered beneath the lantern light. His long, pitch-black hair fell around a face carved from sharp, dangerous angles.

He didn't look human. He looked like an apex predator ripped out of a nightmare.

Slowly, the stranger opened his eyes.

They weren't human eyes. They were molten, liquid gold, with razor-thin vertical slit pupils that flared with pure fury.

He glanced at the ruined wooden floor beneath his boots. Then he looked at the cracked jars, the falling dust, and finally, his burning gaze locked onto me.

The air in the room instantly turned ice-cold and blistering hot all at once. The sheer pressure of his aura pushed me flat against the counter, making it hard to draw a single breath.

"What is this place?" His voice was a low, velvet growl that sent shivers straight down my spine.

He looked down at his own hands. The dark scales on his knuckles flickered, and he clenched his fists, trying to summon something. Nothing happened. A look of genuine shock crossed his fierce features, quickly replaced by lethal rage.

He stepped out of the crater, moving with silent, terrifying grace toward me.

"A mortal hovel," he snarled, his golden eyes narrowing into slits. "Who dared drag me from my throne into this filthy mud?"

I grabbed the nearest thing I could reach, an old copper fire poker lying by the ruined hearth, and pointed the trembling tip straight at his chest.

"S-stay back!" I stammered, my teeth chattering from sheer terror. "I have a poker! Who are you?"

He didn't stop. He walked right up to the copper rod and wrapped one large, calloused hand around the metal. With a casual twist of his wrist, he snapped the solid copper clean in half like a dry twig.

He tossed the pieces aside, letting them clatter against the floorboards, and leaned down until his face was inches from mine. He smelled like smoke and dangerous, untamed magic.

"I am Keith," he whispered, his golden eyes flashing with a promise of death. "Sovereign of the Obsidian Spire. Lord of the Primordial Skies. And you, pathetic little mortal, have three seconds to explain why my wings are gone before I rip your heart out."

Panic seized me. I scrambled backward, holding up my hands to shield my face.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" I cried. "I was just trying to grow flowers!"

Keith reached down, grabbing my wrist to yank me to my feet.

The second his skin touched mine, a violent shockwave detonated between us.

A bright, burning ring of golden fire burst to life around my right wrist. At the exact same instant, an identical glowing mark seared itself onto Keith's broad chest, right above his heart.

A thin, shimmering chain of pure violet light snapped into existence, linking my wrist directly to his chest.

Keith froze. His grip tightened on my arm, his golden eyes wide with pure, murderous disbelief.

He tried to step back. The moment he took two paces away, the violet chain pulled taut. Keith gasped, dropping to one knee as a sharp, agonizing shudder ripped through his body, his breath hitching as if his soul was being dragged through a sieve.

I cried out, clutching my own chest. A violent wave of heat burned through my core, matching his pain beat for beat.

Keith looked up from the floor, his jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped beneath his skin. He glared at the glowing tether binding us together, then lifted his blazing eyes to mine.

"What did you do to me?" he roared, his voice shaking the walls. "What did you do, witch?!"

Before I could answer, the front door of the shop was kicked open.

"Wendy Thorne!" a harsh voice barked from the doorway. Master Bramwell strode in, flanked by two burly enforcers holding iron clubs. "The sun is almost up, and I came for my coin. Pay up, or you leave in chains!"

Bramwell stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the shattered shop, the smoking crater, and the half-naked, scale-dusted giant kneeling on the floor at my feet.

Keith slowly turned his head toward the door, his golden slit pupils locking onto B

ramwell like a beast marking its prey.

"Mortal," Keith said, his voice deadly quiet. "You are interrupting.”