This was illusion magic, the kind spoken of in old war stories, feared because it could turn a battlefield into a labyrinth of ghosts—sound warping, sight betraying, men dying slashing at shadows while the real blade slid unseen across their throats. It was rare, unpredictable, lethal, and now it stood before her, convincing reality to lie.
The clearing erupted.
Steel clanged. Blades glinted. Men grunted from impact. Flesh tore. An attacker gurgled, choking on blood.
Jakobav moved like nothing she’d ever seen before. He wasn’t simply trained, he was transformed. Each dodge, pivot, and strike landed with a terrifying force that was somehow also fluid, a grim choreography. Every motion clean, every blow lethal, every arc of his blade unnervingly beautiful.
When one man lunged, Jakobav dropped low and twisted his sword in a sudden curve that sliced into the side of the attacker’s thigh, and as the man screamed and staggered back, Jakobav pressed forward without pause, his momentum as unstoppable as a tide.
And then Ella saw it.
Jakobav sank to one knee beside the bleeding man, his fingers slick with blood. He drew a single drop onto his hand and lifted it to his mouth.
His eyes went black, not the ordinary black of shadow or midnight, but deeper, a darkness threaded with faint veins of silver, an ancient magic that did not belong to this world. His spine straightened, and around the clearing, the illusions wavered before they steadied again, but now, each one bore Jakobav’s likeness.
Jakobav stepped forward once, and six perfect copies moved with him, blades gleaming, feet silent, faces as unreadable as his own.
The masked men never stood a chance.
They were overtaken in seconds, Jakobav’s figures cutting and feinting and vanishing into the smoke of their own making, striking so swiftly even Ella lost the thread of which one was flesh and which was shadow.
She only knew the truth when the real Jakobav appeared behind the leader and bent to whisper something she couldn’t hear before driving his sword cleanly through the man’s back.
The illusions collapsed into nothingness.
Ella’s lungs seized, her chest refusing air.
He was not merely a warrior. He was power incarnate.
And not just any power. Blood magic. Ancient, forbidden, impossible.
Blood-Scenting was supposed to have been extinct for centuries, ever since the realms were sealed and the Fae had vanished into myth. From behind the boulder, she watched a legend made flesh, alive and breathing, carving through masked men with the kind of lethal grace mortals weren’t meant to witness.
Goosebumps rose, and her heart hammered like a drum.
Jakobav hadn’t simply tasted a man’s blood. He’d taken his magic and made it his own.
It had been too fast, too seamless, too effortless. Which meant the man beside her was something else entirely. Dangerous. Other. And gods, was she not the same, for had she not whispered those very words about herself only the day before?
Jakobav had ordered her to stay hidden, so she’d remained behind the rock, obeying as though she were some trembling novice. She watched him turn the night into a battlefield of fallen men.
Why in all the gods’ names am I crouching here like prey?
Movement jarred her attention. Three of the surviving men broke and fled for the trees.
Cowards.
Ella was faster.
Fueled by adrenaline and fury and a motivation darker than either, she surged forward from her cover. She caught the first man by the collar and dragged him back hard, driving Thane’s stolen knife into his thigh with such force the scream ripped out of him before he even hit the ground.
She wrenched the blade free, spinning with the same wild momentum, and buried it in the chest of the second man just below his collarbone. He fell gasping, clawing at the steel, but she was already moving again, meeting the third who swung in blind desperation. She ducked beneath his strike, slammed her boot into the back of his knees, and when he dropped, she cracked her fist into his jaw with every ounce of wrath in her veins. He crumpled at her feet.
Panting, wild-eyed, her hands slick with blood, she bent and ripped the knife free from the man’s chest. The hilt was wet, the blade gleaming dark in the faint light, but she held it tightly as she stalked back across the clearing.
Jakobav hadn’t moved. There was only one of him now, thank the gods, for even that single figure was more than she could bear right now.
He’d watched every moment of her violence, his sword idle now at his side, his expression unreadable.
