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Our arms slide around each other in an embrace and heat roars. When our Soul Threads touch, power crackles along us, dancing together until our forms are set alight. Like two beacons in the darkness, we kiss, the magic singing its pure joy.

A thump in the distance breaks our kiss. Alasdair’s form has finally untangled from the Tapestry. He drags himself up with a crackle of black lightning.

I step before my love, and my power builds in my hands. “What’s the plan?”

Astoria grips my arm. “Can you keep him occupied while I figure that out?”

I shift my stance. “Gladly.”

“Please don’t die.”

She releases me, and I charge forward, my magic pulsing through me, my soul rippling as I arc towards Alasdair. He’s badly damaged, and chunks are missing from his body, but he meets me with a surge of his own and a screech of rage.

CHAPTER 30

ASTORIA

I can’t watch Valen and Alasdair’s fight, no matter how much my soul screams at each clash of power. Fear for Valen nearly breaks me, but I gather all my training and Aunt Viola’s face appears in my mind’s eye to give me strength. I suck in breath, blocking out all the noise while I face the cocoon where I suspect my Creation ancestor imprisoned an arachnid goddess.

Gold flickering in my peripheral vision catches my attention. My father’s Soul Thread waves lightly from where I tossed him into the pit. The notebook presses against my lower back where I tucked it safely away. The chain wrapped around my arm still glows from the magic it absorbed, each pearl representing my Entropy ancestors glinting.

Viola’s voice whispers from when I was a child in her room, patiently waiting while she combed my hair and told me stories of my family. You were always meant to be a Rosemont, my little love.

Soul Threads are passed from parent to child in one line that makes up the Tapestry of Magic. Which means my mother had one Entropy Soul Thread that passed down to me when I was born. If I had only one thread, that would make me a Rosemont by default. But I came into this world with two threads.

I glance back at Alasdair, homing in on his Soul Thread. Alasdair inherited my father’s Soul Thread, not Luciana’s Transformation line. I’d assumed, like everyone else, that my Creation Thread was also my father’s. It would make sense if Duals accidentally inherit both parents’ threads, and that is what makes them so unstable.

Antonia’s glowing eyes, the way her voice warped to a hiss while she wound my threads with the Archweaver line, come to me. Magic does not make mistakes.

The little sprouting threads waving to Alvius. The way he gathered them. The uncut ruby. A new family line, Jinx had said.

I suck in breath, turning to the Archweaver line in my hand. I press my thumb down on the four threads, rubbing back and forth until they sit side by side in my hand. The gold thread of Creation flashes merrily, and I follow it to my heart where the Transformation, Preservation, and Entropy lines twist with my Rosemont Thread within my soul.

I’m not an Androclaria. I am not of the same line as my father like Alasdair. My Creation Thread is the newly sprouted gold thread Alvius gathered in his hand. The four new family lines that were supposed to be four Dual Threads weavers in the next birthing cycle.

I slowly pull the threads apart like I would if I had a tangle in my hair. I hit a snag, Antonia’s face flashing in my vision.

My lips part, eyes wide. Alvius Androclaria came to extraordinary power by plucking his Soul Thread from his family line and weaving it directly to the Tapestry. But it was a lie. He didn’t pluck it. He knotted his Soul Thread with the four new ones to force the threads into his heart and soul. But that means there are two Creation Threads. The imbalance is mind-numbing to comprehend. Is this why all the Archweavers were parents to child Androclarias? So that more and more Soul Threads did not knot with the Archweaver line and make it more unstable?

The line trembles, and my gaze snaps up. The bindings around the cocoon shift.

The queen spider is alive. Or awake. Or waking. It doesn’t fucking matter. I have found my answer. My fingers are nimble from working with Soul Threads within grimoires, but the rope is so long, and the cocoon is large. Valen can only hold Alasdair for so long.

I need to remove the knots made by previous Archweavers. Which means I need to cut the Androclaria line. Viola would’ve received her Creation Thread from her father, and Atticus from his Archweaver mother. Viola’s soul will survive, but Antonia? I can’t think about that. I need to focus.

My flames gather in my hands, my left cold with the black flickering Entropy flame and my right hot with the gold Creation flame. I wrap my left hand around the knot made by the Androclaria Creation Thread, and it dissolves into powdery ash.

Alasdair’s screech trembles the threaded path I’m on, and I fall to my knees. I can’t pay attention to him. I need to trust in Valen and focus.

I hold the four Soul Threads in both hands, my flames traveling up the rope, dissolving each Androclaria Creation Thread knot that holds it together. I sink deeper and deeper into my task, knowing Valen is at my back, protecting me. If he falls, nothing will matter.

Finally, my flames reach the top of the cocoon. The four threads trapped by a thick knot sprout through a raw, pulsing base, so different from the sleek black shell that I saw in my vision. The pain this creature must’ve been in for thousands of years. Sweat trickles down me, my breath pumping as my Entropy flame burns Alvius Androclaria’s Soul Thread to ash. The four trapped threads separate, sliding into their correct positions, and the swelling caused by the tugging eases until the base is shiny black once again.

The sphere trembles, and I stumble along the threads, eyes snapping open and flames dousing. The cocoon bulges and distorts. I step back slowly, my eyes wide. A slrrrk echoes, and a long, black point pierces the prison at the peak. A second joins, and the two pull apart, that wet ripping turning my insides, and a cold chill of terror has me trembling as I back up faster and faster.

A head emerges, long hair cascading down like a river flowing in glittering gold, black, blue, and green. Through the darkness, the silhouette of a beautiful woman emerges, her shoulder tilting up as she turns towards me, her flowing hair rippling with pure magic.

Then eyes open along her shoulder, and the horror of what I’m witnessing sends me crumpling to the threads below. It’s not a silhouette, nor is it a woman. The threads spilling forth are not from a scalp, but from a spider-like spinneret. A monstrous creature with eight pointed legs and too many joints uncoils from the threads. The queen of the spider creatures stretches out of her prison, my mind battling to understand its form.