My heart fists in my chest. This isn’t a casual gesture. Does he really want me gone?
“Oh…of course,” I say at last. I still can't quite believe that he bled so much just to send me home, but before I can ask any more questions, Lucian draws himself up to his full height and I feel the unspoken presence of his blood magic drawing in around us—like storm clouds filled with lightning rolling in.
Hanna sways beside me, her green eyes unfocused, as if the room is too bright and too dim at the same time. Whistler steps closer to her, ready to catch her if she goes down. My protective instincts kick hard, and I slip my arm around her once more.
Get her home. Just get her home, I think.
Lucian lifts both hands—palms upward, as if he’s offering something to the air itself—and his voice drops into a register that doesn’t sound quite human anymore.
“It is time,” he rumbles and the small hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rise.
His eyes glow faintly as he speaks, chanting what sounds like a rhyming spell that seems to engrave itself on my memory as he says each line.
“By blood that binds and blood that buys,
By shadow’s throat and starless skies?—
I name the seam between the spheres,
I call the gap that feeds on fears.
By iron vow and velvet night,
By thirst made tame, by fated bite?—
Unravel, world, your stitched disguise,
And show the road where nowhere lies.
Let hinge of Nothing swing and sigh,
Let silence open, laws deny?—
For what is torn cannot be sewn,
And what is crossed is crossed alone.
Depths unseen, lend me your flame,
Unknowable, I speak your name?—
Not to command, but to implore:
Make me a door…
Make me a door.”
The last line lands like a bell tolling and for a heartbeat, the ballroom goes utterly still.
Even the chandelier seems to stop glittering. Even my breath catches as if the air itself is listening.
Then…
A single spark appears above the center of the pentagram.
It’s tiny at first, like the first firefly of summer. It flickers and dances and then it starts to swell—fed by something I can’t see but can feel—power rippling outward in waves that prickle across my skin.
This is Lucian’s blood magic, stretched to its outer limits. He is willing this portal into being—using all his strength to make me a way home.
