She stopped in front of him, chest heaving, her hair plastered to her temples with sweat, and raised her eyes to his. “You just going to stand there and watch?” she taunted, her voice breathless. “Suddenly you’re no longer overbearing and overinvolved in everything I do?”
He smirked, a fleeting glimpse of amusement cutting across his mouth. “You had it handled.”
Before she could summon a retort, his hand lifted, slow and unhurried, and his thumb brushed a smear of blood from her cheek. She stilled, lips parting, stunned less by the touch than by the certainty in his words, the ruinous truth of him believing in her.
Jakobav’s gaze lingered as he dropped his hand, and then, almost lightly, he said, “Thane will be furious when he realizes that knife is gone.”
“Is that so?” Ella’s lips curved just slightly, the words carrying more anticipation than doubt.
“It’s the only thing he brought with him from Velmire. Passed down. It’s his favorite.”
Ella lifted the heavy, blood-slick blade in the moonlight and arched a brow. “I know the people you keep closest to you are brutal,” she said, voice laced with dark amusement. “But this”—she gave the deadly weapon a languid wave—“is a level of family baggage that I don’t wish to unpack. I’ll give it back as soon as I see him.”
Jakobav chuckled, and the sound was like light breaking through stone. She caught herself staring, because for a fleetingheartbeat, he looked lighter, unarmored, almost human again, though the air between them hadn’t settled at all.
Her gaze dropped to the blood still staining his fingertips. “So,” she said carefully, voice low and measured, “you really do have a thing for blood.”
Jakobav’s smirk didn’t vanish, but it twisted darker.
“You shifted forms,” she continued. “I saw it when the Veil Leach exploded and its blood got in your mouth. At first I thought that was just how the creature’s blood affects anyone who ingests it. But you moved like the creature itself, borrowed its speed and strength. Tonight, you knew those men weren’t Dravaryn before they even raised a blade. Then you took that man’s blood and used his illusion magic. And before any of that, you already knew I was Orchid-born. You knew it before my sigil flared.” Her tone turned curious, edged with suspicion. “There were rumors, years ago, that your father had a power no Dravaryn was supposed to possess. A foreign, ancient ability that the palace buried fast.”
Jakobav didn’t answer, making a noise in his throat that might have been a grunt or a caution to tread carefully.
“Jakobav,” she said firmly. “I know you have Blood-Scent magic. I saw it.”
Instead of answering directly, he tilted his head. “Do you remember your first few days at the castle?”
Of course she remembered. Every warning from her childhood had hissed through her head. But she’d ignored them all in pursuit of the prophecy.
“I knew something was different about you then,” Jakobav said quietly. “You shouldn’t have made it past the outer wards. No one should. But you bled your way in.” His jaw tightened. “After you collapsed, I carried you. You were unconscious, barely alive. And your blood…the scent was foreign, enticing. I toldmyself I wouldn’t.” He hesitated. “But a drop landed on my tongue. By mistake.”
Ella’s expression darkened, heat flashing in her chest.
“You tasted my blood?”
He raised both hands, defensive. “I swear I didn’t mean to. It was instinct. It felt like…” He exhaled. “It felt like I was breaching something sacred. I didn’t want to invade. I wanted to earn that right.”
The words struck her harder than she expected.
Her laugh came short and disbelieving, edged with anger.
“Earn the right to invade me? Gods, Jakobav.” She wanted to be furious, wanted to cut him down with the harshest words she could muster, yet his phrasing unsettled her, caught her off guard in a way she hated.
Jakobav’s eyes darkened as he leaned closer.
“Still working on that.”
The words sparked between them, tension coiling into something volatile.
He didn’t press further, only held her gaze as though daring her to look away. “I knew your fire ability instantly,” he said at last. “I could taste the smoke in your blood.” His voice dropped lower, husky with something almost reverent. “But I couldn’t access it. Couldn’t reach it. There was more, Ella. Your blood didn’t just hint at power—it was full of patterns, layered and ancient, woven into something I couldn’t trace. Sweet, intoxicating, but unreadable. I still don’t know what you are. Not fully.”
Ella’s body clenched without her permission.
Her pulse was racing, heat pounding in her veins as though he had branded her from the inside. Gods, he just kept going, and it should disgust her. It did. Yet the way he described the taste of her blood in such intricate complexities sent a flash ofheat pooling low, a wild thought whispering what it might mean to be claimed in that way.
Jakobav stepped closer, placing a hand on each of her shoulders, grounding her, his touch far too calm for the storm she felt rising.
“When that Veil Leach locked onto you, I knew you had abilities you hadn’t even touched yet. I thought I saw a ripple when you extended your arms and called to your flame. But I didn’t know for sure until you vanished into another realm right before my eyes. That moment… It was how I felt when I first used my blood magic. I knew it was wrong. I knew it shouldn’t exist. But in that moment”—he lowered his forehead until it almost rested against hers—“there had never been anything more right.”
