I begin to circle the Matron. Absently, I tap on the power encasing her, like I’m looking for weak spots. This new barrier is roughly ten by ten and see-through, just like the outer barrier still encasing us. However, this cast is fresh and the magic still has a red tinge to it.
“What do you want?” the Matron snaps, more annoyed than genuinely concerned as she tracks my slow circuit around her.
“What all the Syphons want—our dragons back,” I tell her simply, and I welcome the bloodlust as it starts to build in my veins.
I’ve been at a disadvantage since I was collected by The Horde. I’ve been playing catch up with the Noctises from the moment I met them, always on the defense. But not anymore, because this—hunting the Matron, drawing things out so I can get the answers I need—this is what I do.
Thisis what I’m good at.
Too bad for the Matron, I don’t need any more answers. I’ve found exactly what I’m looking for. She’s standing right in front of me.
“Your dragon?” the Blood Crafter huffs, like I’m some whiny child demanding something I’m not entitled to. “I can’t lift the curse on your dragon. It would have to be done by the sorcai who cast it, and they’re all dead.”
I tsk and stop pacing in front of her barrier like some caged lion. I level her with a look so loaded with loathing and steeped in vengeance it makes the hairs on her arm rise with alarm.
“Wrong,” I snap, and then I walk through her barrier like it was nothing more than a soap bubble and wrap my hand around her throat.
She gasps in surprise and tries to fire off another defensive cast at me, but I brutally slam her back into the hard magic of her red barrier. In a panic, she shoves raw power into me. It sizzles and scorches, and pain blasts through me as she breaks my hold and then works to incinerate me from the inside out. I grit my teeth through the electric shocks she feeds through my system. I’ve had one other Blood Crafter capable of doing this, but the bite of the Matron’s power is truly unmatched.
Good thing I’m no stranger to pain.
Her dark eyes fill with hate and satisfaction as she pours even more power into me, but it all bleeds into shock and then fear when I start to laugh.
“How are you still standing?” she shrieks at me, both shocked and outraged. My only answer is to spring for her.
I split her eyebrow with a well-placed hit, and we start to grapple, slamming one another back and forth against the walls of her protective dome. I get in a few more hits, and she tries to kick my feet out from under me, which makes us both start to lose our balance. She presses a hand to the red barrier to keep from falling, and I slam a dagger through her palm, pinning her hand to her own magic.
Except it isn’t her magic anymore, it’s mine, she just doesn’t realize it yet.
The Matron’s scream is music to my ears. Crimson magic pours out of her hands like blasts of boiling water, and she tries even harder to fry me where I stand. She coats me in what should be a lethal amount of power and then watches in horror as my body absorbs the magic, and I’m left standing without a mark on me to show for her trouble.
Horror-struck, she quickly abandons the fight and starts trying to escape. She attempts to yank the dagger out of her hand, but it doesn’t budge. She tries to drop the red barrier around us once again so she can dislodge herself that way, but the magic in the barrier doesn’t respond to her.
“How are you doing this?” she cries, pure panic now bright in her eyes.
“Didn’t you know?” I purr. “Thanks to the curse the Relacours put on us, your magic now runs in my veins,” I inform her casually as I pull another lizard dagger from behind my back. “It lets me do fun little things like this…”
I grab her other hand and press it back against the barrier, and then I slam my other dagger through it, pinning her with her arms outstretched as tears begin to drip down her face and she screams with all of her might for help.
I grab her throat and press her hard against the barrier at her back. “My kindred screamed that night too. When your people stole their dragons and helped slaughter them. Nobody came to help them either.”
“I can’t break your curse, you stupid bitch!” she snarls and tries to spit at me.
I dodge the glob and smile viciously at her. “Now, now,Conduit, yes you can,” I cluck, and her eyes widen with pure unadulterated terror. “Oh yeah, I knowallabout that little loophole. Only the sorcai that casts a curse can break it, right? Wrong. There’s one exception you magical fucks like to keep to yourselves, isn’t there? If you kill a bloodline’s Conduit, everyone in that line dies, and when that happens, their magic dies with them.”
“You can’t,” she gasps through panicked breaths.
“Watch me,” I snarl in her face.
She starts screaming and thrashing, but just like all the others that came before her, it’s not going to do shit to stop what’s about to happen. The other Syphons and I have been hunting the Relacour Conduit from the moment one of the other Blood Crafters confessed what it was, or ratherwhoit was and why they were special.
Turns out sorcai are kind of like vampires. They’re all linked back to a sire or a creator. Kill the master vampire, and all of their progeny goes with them. Kill a Conduit, and they take out their coven in exactly the same way. It’s a closely guarded secret, one offered in exchange for a life that I ended up taking anyway, because no Relacour will ever find mercy at the hands of a Syphon again.
Out of nowhere, one of the daggers pinning the Matron’s hand to the barrier goes flying away. My head snaps to follow the trajectory of my blade, and I find Herm on the other side of the first barrier with his hand outstretched. My lizard dagger flies toward him like he’s a magnet.
I guess I know now how he stole my butter knives.
Fucker.
