“Report.” The word scrapes out rougher than I intend. The fire always wants more after being released. “How widespread?”
“Six districts, Enforcer.” Corveth has caught up, breath ragged from running. “Maybe more. The bound are attacking anyone associated with Flight Authority. Merchants, administrators?—”
I scan the bodies around us. The baker. A chandler, based on the wax embedded in her fingernails. A courier still clutching a delivery satchel. Working class, all of them. The Blood Regent’s preferred targets—people desperate enough to accept help from any source, even one that costs them their will.
“Not random. They’re targeting our infrastructure. Disrupting the chain of command.”
“There’s more.” Corveth hesitates. Not good. “We’ve tracked one of the activation signatures. A ritual site. Active. Someone is running a working right now, during the chaos.”
Using the distraction. The riots aren’t random violence—they’re cover.
“Take me there.”
TWO
IZAN
The ritual site hides in a basement beneath a condemned tenement. Three blocks from the market riots. Close enough to benefit from the distraction, far enough to avoid direct attention. Smart positioning.
I tear the door off its hinges rather than waiting for my team to breach properly.
The basement opens up larger than the building above suggests—walls knocked through, space carved from the volcanic rock beneath. Ash-circle wards cover the floor in overlapping patterns. A central altar of porous stone, stained permanent rust-red. The stench of copper and fear.
And in the center of it all—her.
She doesn’t look up when I enter. Doesn’t flinch at the sounds of violence in the stairwell behind me, where my team deals with the site’s guards. Her attention stays fixed on the altar, hands moving through precise gestures, lips forming words I can’t quite hear.
She’sworking. Not creating blood-oaths—destroying them.
I freeze. Partial shift ripples across my shoulders, scales breaking through skin, responding to a disturbance I don’tunderstand. My wrath—the fire that lives in me, always leashed, always directed—flickers. Not toward her. Not away.
What the fuck?
On the altar, the blood-work she’s attacking begins to collapse. I watch the signature dissolve—watch the bound citizen strapped to the stone gasp as the oath releases, his pupils contracting, awareness flooding back with the force of a physical blow.
The witch—because that’s what she is, her magic singing through the air with bloodline resonance—finally looks up.
Dark hair pulled back tightly, emphasizing sharp features. Eyes that have seen too much and given away too little. Lean build, economical movements, even now as she steps back from her completed work. Old scars on her wrists and collarbone—marks that gleam silver in the altar’s residual glow—binding marks.
She’s been caged before. Someone else’s useful tool.
“Enforcer Sulien.” Her voice is steadier than it should be, facing a dragon in a basement full of evidence that could get her executed. “I wondered how long the riots would hold your attention.”
“You knew we’d come.”
“I knew someone would.” She glances at the freed man on the altar—conscious now, trembling, staring at me with glazed terror. “I hoped I’d have time to finish first.”
“Who are you?” The question comes out harder than I intend. My fire is still doing that thing—that flickering, thatpulling—and I need it to stop. I need to understand what kind of threat she represents.
“Alerie Narayan.” She watches me with that too-knowing gaze. “Vireth bloodline.”
The words hit me with unexpected force. Vireth. One of the oldest witch bloodlines in Aetherfall. Ash and authority. Theability to sever bonds others consider unbreakable. The Blood Regent has been hunting Vireth witches for months—killing most, capturing a few for purposes my intelligence network hasn’t determined.
And this one is standing in a basement in my city, destroying blood-oaths by choice.
“You’re working against the Blood Regent.” Statement, not question. The evidence surrounds us.
“I’m working against anyone who thinks they can own people.” Her chin lifts. Defiance, even now. Even facing me. “The Regent’s network spreads through the lower districts because no one else is doing anything about it. Your Flight sits in its throne halls debating strategy while citizens lose their minds to blood magic.”
