Exclusive: Laura Thalassa's ‘The Curse That Binds' Excerpt is All About the Thrill of the Hunt

Laura Thalassa created a special kind of magic with her Bewitched series and now we're heading all the way back to the beginning to find out how it all kicked off. And, believe us, it's going to get your heart absolutely pumping as we get lost in the thrill of the chase as she takes us back to Roxilana and Memnon's love story that will totally have you believing in the power of soulmates.
Cosmopolitan has an exclusive look at Laura Thalassa's The Curse That Binds, which is set to be released on July 1, 2025. Set two thousand year's before Selene's story, Roxilana and Memnon long and fated love story was brought together by magic, but what happens when secrets and power threatens their happily ever after? Here's some more info from our friends at Bloom Books:
And there's no better way to start off their love story than with their wedding night! Check out an exclusive (and super steamy!) excerpt of their big night together below! Just make sure to pre-order The Curse That Binds and even check out some of Laura Thalassa's other reads as well!
An Excerpt From The Curse That BindsBy Laura Thalassa
No one has told me how, exactly, the ceremony is to unfold, and up until now, I haven't thought to ask. But as the women lead me through camp and onlookers gather to toss flowers along the pathway, I wonder if perhaps I should have.
Magic sifts from my palms, the pale orange plumes of it wrapping around my wrists and twisting around Ferox, who prowls at my side.
To my left, Tamara holds my arm lightly as she guides me. 'I can feel you shaking,' she says. 'There is no need for nerves. This is how many Sarmatian brides come to us—alone.'
I take a steadying breath and nod as we walk through the camp, a few of the women who helped dress me following in my wake; the rest of them, including Katiari and Mada, slipped away before us.
I see them again soon enough, for at the edge of camp, they wait in a semicircle. Between them stands a horse with a gilded bridle and a tooled leather saddle, one Katiari holds the reins to.
My steps slow as I take in the horse, then our location. 'Are we traveling somewhere?' I ask uncertainly.
'You are,' Tamara corrects, leading me over to the animal.
My pulse quickens. 'Why?'
Haven't I traveled far enough to get here?
Tamara sees my face and rubs a small circle on my back. Leaning in closely, she says, 'This is part of the wedding festivities.'
Before I can ask her what she means, I hear the distant sound of howls—human ones. It raises the hairs on my arms, and my eyes grow wide.
Unlike me, however, the other women giggle and titter.
'Hurry,' Katiari says, 'hide her.'
Tamara quickly turns me and steers me back down the path, while some of the other women look to the gathering crowd and shoo them away.
'What is happening?' There's a note of panic in my voice as the group of us—including Ferox and my horse—is ushered into an empty tent nearby.
No one has told you what's happening? Memnon says, clearly eavesdropping.
No, will you?
I feel his smile down our connection. With me, Memnon is often sweet and earnest, but right now, I sense another emotion commanding him, one that is neither sweet nor earnest. Whatever it is, it's hungry. Excited.
I'd rather find you first, he says. The tone of his words raises gooseflesh on my skin.
Katiari puts a finger to her lips, and the rest of the group goes deathly silent.
The outside noise grows louder, and as it gets closer, I can make out individual howls and shouts from men, along with the pounding of many, many hoofbeats.
I look from face to jovial face, confused about what exactly is happening. The hoofbeats grow thunderous, and suddenly, it's as though a stampede of them is upon us. Outside the tent, dozens of mounted riders gallop by on the open steppe beyond the tent, howling and whooping.
Little witch, where are you? Memnon calls. Come out, come out.
He's more than a little convincing, but when I take a step toward the curtained doorway, Katiari snags the back of my kurta.
'Not yet,' she whispers.
The thunderous sound of the mounted riders seems endless, but eventually it does taper off, their cries growing fainter until they vanish altogether.
In the silence, I finally whisper, 'What in the gods' names was that?'
'That was your husband and his men, looking for you,' Tamara says curtly.
Katiari says, 'Hurry, we need to get the horse out and Roxilana on it.'
With that, I'm bustled back out of the tent, where the onlookers linger, their faces growing ever more excited when they see us.
Katiari brings the horse to my side.
'Up, up,' Tamara orders me.
I don't stop to ask her about the urgency in her voice. I hoist myself up and into the saddle, swinging into the seat easily. Unlike my Roman garments, the tunic and breeches I wear were made for riding.
'This is what will happen next,' Tamara explains. 'You will ride as far and fast as you can. It is my son's job to capture you and your horse.'
'Capture?' I repeat incredulously.
'To prove he will follow you wherever you may wander,' Katiari explains. 'It's a wedding thing.'
'Once he's caught you,' Tamara continues, 'he will bring you back here, where the wedding rites will be held.'
The howls, which had faded away entirely, now start up again.
'They're heading through camp!' one of the onlookers shouts.
'Better get going,' Tamara warns as Katiari hands me the reins. 'Oh, and, Roxilana?'
I glance down at Memnon's mother.
'The longer a bride can hold off being captured, the stronger a match they're said to be.'
I've barely had a chance to process that when Katiari slaps the horse's rump and the creature takes off, running out of camp and into the wild grass beyond. The golden ornaments on my kurta tinkle and my unbound hair whips behind me, and I have the wild urge to laugh.
From my periphery, there's a flash of black, and I glance over to see Ferox bounding alongside me. He looks exhilarated, like this is all great fun to him.
I reach a hand out behind me. 'Hide us from sight,' I incant. Orange smoke unfurls from my palm, stretching out over the three of us. I'm not sure the hasty enchantment will do much to hinder Memnon, not when he was the one who taught me this trick, but I figure it's worth trying as we charge forward onto the steppe.
Better ride faster, little witch.
I glance behind me. Far in the distance, I make out a group of mounted riders. They're no longer galloping around the settlement. Instead, they wait on the edge of camp, near where I exited, their attention cast roughly in my direction. I don't see Memnon among them.
In fact, he's nowhere to be seen at all among the vast, flat expanse of summer grass that stretches as far as the eye can see.
But then I notice a faint blue line of magic no thicker than a cord extending away from me. I follow it with my eyes until it seems to vanish into thin air.
He's tracking me!
I am. I can hear the laughter in Memnon's words.
And you've hidden yourself, I add.
Should I not have?
Before I can answer him, his form comes into hazy focus—first, his gleaming armor and crown, which glint in the sunlight, then the rest of his body and the steed he rides on, a steed that is alarmingly near to me.
Are you not going to reveal yourself to me? he asks.
Rather than answer, I face forward and urge my horse onward. A moment later, Memnon's deep blue power slithers up alongside me, then thickens, encircling me and my steed as though there is no enchantment hiding our forms. It sinks into my horse's fur, and the beast begins to slow.
Memnon is closing in quickly, and though I know he cannot see me, it doesn't seem to matter, not when that blue line of magic stretches between us. It takes nothing but a twist of my wrist and a slight tug on my power to cut through the weave of my enchantment.
As soon as it comes down, Memnon's gaze sharpens, then heats.
You look radiant, my bride, he says, and through our connection, I feel the thrill of his excitement. Sarmatian clothing suits you.
You look good too, I say. Good enough for me to consider giving up right now…
You should, he replies. I promise I will make your surrender memorable. He slows his horse as he approaches.
Going to snatch her from her saddle… Memnon's idle thought passes through my mind like it's my own.
He's no more than three arm spans from me when, out loud, he says, 'It was a good effort—'
I swing my leg over my horse and hop off, dashing into the knee-high grass, Ferox bounding to my side.
I can feel Memnon's amusement behind me.
You're still thinking of running from me?
Not just running.
I whisper an incantation beneath my breath and send my power out between us. I rotate around in time to see my orange magic spread and thin into a wall that encircles me.
Memnon hops off his horse, his armor clinking together as he moves.
He strides up to the magical wall, and I can't help the way my breath catches at the sight of him. He's dressed almost identically to what he wore yesterday and the first day we met. In the full light of summer, with his dagger strapped to his side and that scar edging his face, his shortened hair shifting in the breeze, he looks beautiful and deadly.
When he gets to my ward, he stops, staring at me through the orange-tinted surface of it, the darker threads of my spell's signature still visible.
As I back away from the magical wall, it leaches of color.
'You think this will keep me out?' Memnon says.
I had, but the confidence in his voice has me questioning my assumptions.
Memnon places a hand against the ward. Beneath his touch, my magic thickens and shifts, moving toward his palm.
'There is no keeping me out, little witch.' My magic crawls up his fingertips, then the back of his hand and wrist. As it does, the rest of the wall melts away, the power dissipating until the two of us are staring at each other with nothing in between.
Memnon drops his hand. 'Every part of us longs for the other—even our magic.'
My heart constricts, and my eyes rise to his face. 'What happens now?' I ask softly.
'You could run some more—I'm always happy to chase you—or you could come back with me so I can officially make you my queen.'
I hesitate. 'It didn't take very long for you to catch me…' I had hoped to linger out here for a while.
He huffs out a laugh and steps up to me. 'Ah, I see. Someone told you that strong couples stay out here for a long time?'
I nod.
'And you're afraid our people will think we're a weak match if we don't?' He squints as he asks it.
Now I hesitate, not wanting to admit that they'd likely see us as weak because I am weak, and the haste of this wedding ritual would only validate that truth.
Memnon's voice lowers. 'Our people could never think such a thing of you. Not when you bring their king to his knees.' As he speaks, he drops down to one knee, then both. His fingers move to the laces of my pants, and he begins to undo them.
'Memnon,' I gasp, my hand covering his as I glance over his shoulder to the settlement in the distance. 'What are you doing?'
Memnon smiles. 'Making your capture take longer.' Then he tugs down my pants.
The feel of his roughened palms on my bare thighs feels unreasonably good. It always does. There's magic in his touch, magic that has nothing to do with our supernatural abilities.
I glance uncertainly at the distant camp again, still nervous, until deep blue plumes of Memnon's magic shroud them from sight and a phantom hand tilts my head back down to him.
'They cannot see you,' he reassures me. He runs a thumb along the seam of my sex, eliciting a hiss from me. 'Now,' Memnon continues, 'would you prefer I taste you while you're standing or while you're reclining?'
'Taste?' I suck in a breath at the thought, even as that languid warmth begins to pool between my thighs.
'Reclining it is,' Memnon announces.
His magic does the rest, dragging my torso back until I gently hit the ground. My legs are trapped together at the ankles by my lowered pants and my soft leather boots, and Memnon uses this to his advantage, lifting my bound feet up and spreading my legs wide enough for him to slip beneath them and settle my thighs on either of his shoulders.
Any lingering resistance I might still have is banished by the first brush of Memnon's lips against my slit. Without meaning to, I shift my hips, my legs falling farther open.
Memnon huffs out a laugh at my body's response, his hands lovingly sliding up my thighs.
He presses kisses up and down my outer lips, gently nipping at them as he goes. I let out a moan and reach for his head, eager to thread my fingers through that rich, dark hair of his. His magic, however, presses my arms back, pinning them together above my head.
'What are you doing?' I ask, wriggling. I feel like meat on a spit.
Memnon pauses his work to look up, and I can't help but notice the obvious desire in his eyes and the soft smirk on his lips. 'Keeping you at my mercy.'
I'm reminded then that this ritual is about capture and surrender.
I will make your surrender memorable, he said.
Memnon's arms pull my thighs apart as much as possible, and then he leans in.
No longer is he interested in teasing me. His tongue dips into my opening, and then his mouth finds that point right above it, the one that makes my muscles tense and pleasure coil in my belly.
He sucks on that fold, his teeth lightly scraping over it every so often. I writhe and shift beneath him, my hips tilting uselessly, my arms tugging at their magical bindings.
I want to feel him—my hands in his hair, his heavy body against mine, my heels dragging down his back. I want his warmth and the friction of his form, and the absence of it makes me feel caged within my own skin. The conflicting sensations seem to only wind me tighter and tighter, until I'm taut and poised like the string of a bow.
I think Memnon knows it too and is eager to watch me come undone because, amidst all of it, I feel a phantom finger stroke along the edge of my entrance.
That's all it takes.
If I was a bowstring before, then my orgasm is the arrow, shooting through my body. I come with a cry, my release swallowing me up.
Between my legs, Memnon groans, his hold tightening as he must feel an echo of my release down our bond. When he looks up at me, his mouth glistens with my slick, and his eyes have the barest edge of a glow to them. Idly, he strokes a hand up and down my skin, his gaze finding mine. 'Love watching you come—and feeling it too.'
Gently, Memnon lifts my thighs from his shoulders and disentangles himself. But the moment his skin is gone, his magic is there, tugging my pants back up my body and releasing my arms.
I sit up, my gaze finding the far-off settlement.
'I think we've been gone appropriately long,' Memnon says, leaning over me and pulling out a long blade of grass from my hair.
I stare at that blade and bite my lower lip. 'They're all going to know what we've been doing out here.'
Memnon laughs. 'And absolutely no one will argue that we are not a strong match. But,' he says, picking off another strand of dead foliage from my hair, 'if you prefer, I could use my magic and clean you off.'
I stand up and dust my hands. 'I don't prefer it,' I decide. I think I like the idea that they can see him all over me.
I glance down. 'Come, Husband.' I reach out a hand for him. 'You've thoroughly captured me, and I'm at your whim. Now let's go get married.'
Excerpted from The Curse That Binds by Laura Thalassa, to be published on July 1, 2025, by Bloom Books, an imprint of Sourcebooks, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Laura Thalassa.
The Curse That Binds, by Laura Thalassa will be released on July 1, 2025. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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