Page 70 of Chaos Carnival

The chords showed me Ivan's path—how a lonely boy's pain had spiraled into something monstrous, corrupting everything he touched. The moment his soul cracked, letting the wraithshade in. All the futures where he might have chosen differently.

Addie's timeline splintered into countless possibilities—some where she healed, others where the trauma of what Ivan did haunted her forever. Some where she became stronger for surviving it, others where she never recovered at all.

And Maverick... oh, Maverick. Every lifetime we'd shared, every death that had torn us apart, every rebirth that had drawn us back. The mate bond wasn't just about passion or possession—it was a cosmic force, weaving our souls together across eternity.

The knowledge should have driven me mad. Maybe it had. But in this formless state, sanity seemed like such a small, limiting thing. I was beyond such mortal concerns now.

I'd become part of the substance of reality itself, a consciousness woven into the lines that bound existence together. Every possibility, every potential future, lay open before me like pages in an infinite book. I could see them all, understand them all, exist in all of them simultaneously.

But even as I marveled, doubt crept in. The threads had been too strong, too hungry. They’d pulled me apart like mist under sunlight, leaving me scattered and raw.

But Maverick was still there. I could feel him. His energy sparked brighter, hotter, as if calling me back.

I latched onto the bond, letting its warmth envelop me. For a moment, I felt almost whole again, as though I might piece myself back together.

Focusing on the strands, I willed them to respond. They shifted under my attention, dancing in intricate, flowing patterns. My thoughts strained against the vastness, but I gathered them, pulling them tighter, trying to weave myself into something that could speak.

A word. Just one word.

“Maverick?”

The sound rippled through the ribbons, a whisper that echoed in every direction. For a moment, the void seemed to tremble, and his presence surged in response, blazing with raw emotion—hope, relief, fear.

“Tess?” His voice was faint, and I felt it more than heard it, vibrating through the bond.

The streams shivered around me, but holding myself together was exhausting. The effort of speaking was like dragging a mountain across a desert and my consciousness frayed again, dispersing into the vast, endless nothing.

“No!” His energy surged, desperate, reaching to the void. “Tess, stay with me!”

But I was slipping, scattering like sand on solar winds.

“I’ll find you,” I whispered, unsure if he could hear me.

The last thing I felt before dissolving was the warmth of his desperate reach, a light in the dark, and then even awareness faded once more.

Chapter 32: Family Bound

Maverick

Thesilenceintheliving room pressed down like a thousand dragons on my shoulders. Stone's massive frame blocked out the window, his knuckles white on the frame as he stared into the onyx night. Lux hadn't moved from his vigil against the wall, the shadows under his eyes a reminder of all our sleepless nights. Addie sat on the couch, her sketchbook open but untouched in her lap. The hollow look on her face spoke of weeks of worry that had settled into a bone-deep exhaustion. She'd stopped crying days ago, moved past tears into something worse—a quiet resignation that made my chest ache.

“Even Shakespeare never wrote a silence this heavy,” Oscar murmured from his perch on the mantle, his usual theatrical flair subdued. “And I would know. I lived through all his tragedies.”

I traced the burn marks on my palms where she'd dissolved through my fingers, the phantom sensation of her form lingering in my touch.

Three weeks since the circus. Three weeks of searching every corner of the world, of screaming her name into the void until my voice gave out.

Three weeks of nothing but the hollow echo of failure.

The apartment was a mausoleum of tiny tortures. Her coffee mug mocked me from the kitchen counter, that perfect crimson imprint of her lips preserved like the last kiss we never got to share. Her fragrance clung to everything—jasmine and magic and fear—driving my senses into a frenzy of desperate yearning.

Her sketchbook lay splayed open on the dining table, the half-finished designs a testament to interrupted dreams. I couldn't bear to close it, as if leaving those pages open might somehow draw her back to complete them. The pencil still rested exactly where it had last rolled from her fingers.

We'd hardly spoken these endless days, each lost in our private hells. Stone maintained his relentless watch, muscles coiled tight as if ready to spring at the slightest ripple in the air. Lux disappeared into ancient texts, searching for any whisper of someone being consumed by the universe itself. Addie baked until the kitchen overflowed, then collapsed into silent grief when there was nothing left to do but face the void she left behind.

I'd phased across continents, haunting every place she'd ever dreamed of seeing. Tokyo's neon-lit streets at sunrise. The rain-slicked cobblestones of Amsterdam at midnight. The ancient stones of the pyramids burning gold in the dawn.Each time praying she'd reformed there, following some cosmic breadcrumb trail of desire. Each time returning empty-handed to watch hope die in their eyes all over again.

The mate bond throbbed like an open wound, stretched gossamer-thin but refusing to break. She was out there somewhere, everywhere, nowhere—lost in the darkness she'd tried to manipulate. Magic that had whispered sweet promises, until they devoured her whole.

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