Here, surrounded by evidence and equipment and the accumulated knowledge of the Flight’s scholars, I can actually think. Actually work. Actually make progress.
Izan stays.
Doesn’t leave to attend to whatever duties an enforcer handles during normal operations. Doesn’t hand me off to subordinates or scholars who might be equally qualified to assist with this analysis. He stays, asking questions, providing context, watching me work with that unnerving intensity that makes my skin prickle with awareness.
And my magic keeps responding to him. The Vireth bloodline has carried volatility for generations—power that answers but doesn’t obey. I learned early how to wrestle it into compliance, how to force it toward my intent rather than letting it run wild.
What I didn’t learn—what no one was left to teach me—was the rest of it. My grandmother understood the deeper architecture: not just severance, but the history ofwhyVireth witches sever. The old accounts say we were once called Ashbinders, not Ashcutters. That the bloodline’s original function was to negotiate between imposed authority and living systems, not simply to destroy bindings but to determine which onesdeservedto hold. My grandmother knew those distinctions. Knew the genealogy of each binding tradition we could touch, the specific signatures that marked consent from compulsion, the techniques for redirecting rather than just ending.
She died in the third year of the Regent’s hunts. Before she could pass any of it to me. Before I was old enough to understand I should have been asking.
What burned with her, and with my cousins, and with the handful of scattered Vireth witches whose names I only half-remember, is the full depth of what our bloodline was meant to be. What I carry is the raw tool without the manual. I’ve spent my life inventing workarounds for knowledge that should have been handed to me across a kitchen table.
Every working required effort: not the magic itself, but the discipline to keep it directed. Here, close to him, that volatility fades. My ash magic flows smoother. Responds faster. It’s as if his fire creates a channel my power wants to fill—dragon wrath and witch severance, destruction and dissolution, opposite forces that somehow stabilize each other. One of the scholars’ texts mentioned something similar: old accounts of dragon mating bonds producing expanded domains, power that rewroteitself through partnership. I’d dismissed it as mythology. Now I’m less certain.
“This composition.” I hold up a sealed container of processed ash, studying the way light refracts through the material. “It’s different from the others. More refined. The blood component is more thoroughly integrated.”
Izan moves closer to examine the sample. Reaches past me to adjust the angle of the container, and his arm brushes mine.
The contact lasts perhaps half a second. The heat that surges through me lasts much longer.
I jerk back before I can stop myself. He goes rigid.
Neither of us acknowledges it. Neither of us moves for a long, suspended moment. The air between us feels heavy, electric, carrying a tension that has nothing to do with the analysis we’re supposed to be conducting.
“The sample.” The steadiness in my voice surprises me. “Where did it come from?”
Izan answers, his own voice rougher than before. “A node in the trade quarter. We raided it three weeks ago. Lost two guards in the process.”
I file away the composition differences, adding them to the pattern I’m building. The refined samples tend to cluster in specific locations. Newer nodes, positioned with greater precision. The Blood Regent is improving his methodology. Learning from each iteration. Though something in the most refined samples nags at me—a binding signature I can’t place, older than any tradition I’ve studied. As if the Regent’s drawing on a source I don’t have a name for.
I file the anomaly away. One problem at a time.
“He’s testing.” I set the container down, turning back to the map table. The action puts distance between us. Necessary distance. “Each node is an experiment. He’s refining the process,figuring out what works best before he triggers the final working.”
“How long do we have?”
“Days, maybe. A week at most.” I trace the containment pattern on the map again, noting how far it’s progressed. “The net is almost closed. Once the outer nodes are in position, he’ll only need to activate them simultaneously.”
“Can you stop it?”
The question carries more than its simple words suggest. Can I stop it? Can I sever blood-oaths faster than they spread? Can I dismantle a network that’s been building for months, perhaps years?
“I can try.” Honest answer. “But I’d need direct access to an active node. Not samples—the actual working, running in real time. My magic can identify the threads that bind nodes to each other. Find the central coordination point you’ve been looking for.”
“You want me to take you into the field.”
“I want to prove I’m worth keeping alive.” The instinct to survive bleeds into my voice, sharpening it past professional distance.
He moves before I can react. One moment, he’s across the table, separated from me by volcanic glass and floating maps. The next, he’s in front of me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze.
“You’re not payment.” The words emerge rough, scraped raw. “You’re not a transaction. Whatever intelligence you provide, whatever value your bloodline offers—that’s not why I kept you alive.”
He steps back. Turns away. Walks to the wall of samples and stands there with his back to me, his shoulders rigid, his hands clenched at his sides.
Evening arrives without ceremony.
The light from the sconces shifts from amber to deeper orange, the enchantment responding to the natural cycle of the day. Someone—I never see who—delivers food to a small table near the chamber’s entrance. Bread, meat, and fruit, more substantial than the cell rations. Water in a crystal pitcher. A flask of wine that I don’t touch.
