I’ve been contained before. Caged. Used. The scars on my wrists burn with phantom memory of binding rituals and the casual cruelties inflicted on “useful” prisoners.
I will not go back to that.
The next attacker who gets close loses fingers to my blade. The one after that catches my elbow in his windpipe and goes down gurgling. I fight dirty—I’ve never had the luxury of fighting clean—and for a moment, for a brief desperate moment, I think I might actually make it.
Then the second wave arrives.
More gray robes. More empty faces. More bodies flood the alley until escape becomes impossible. They press in from every direction, absorbing my violence without slowing, their numbers making skill irrelevant.
A hand grabs my arm. I slash at it, connect, keep moving. Another hand. Another. They’re not skilled, these blood-bound soldiers, but they don’t need to be. They only need to be numerous. To be relentless. To keep pressing forward until my knife arm tires and my reflexes slow and my survival instincts finally accept the mathematics of defeat.
My back hits a wall.
Stone. Cold. The end of the alley. The end of the line.
The attackers spread out before me, forming a half-circle of gray robes and borrowed strength. Behind them, more fill the alley’s mouth. Twenty. Thirty. Too many to count.
The lead figure steps forward. His hood falls back, revealing a face marked with ritual scarification—an Ash Cardinal, one of the Blood Regent’s inner circle.
“The Vireth witch.” His tone carries no emotion. “The High Ritualist sends his regards.”
My magic strains against the dampening field. Useless. Useless.
I raise my knife.
The Cardinal smiles. “That won’t save you.”
He’s right. And we both know it.
But I refuse to be taken without a fight. Refused it when I was twelve and they came for my family. Refused it every time since. I’ll refuse it now, even if refusing means dying in this ash-choked alley with no one to mourn me.
The Cardinal gestures.
The soldiers advance.
The world explodes into fire.
TWENTY
ALERIE
Izan doesn’t arrive.
Hedetonates.
The wall to my left shatters inward as his body tears through it—not walking, not running, but moving with the terrible speed of a dragon who’s stopped pretending to be human. Obsidian scales ripple across his shoulders and up his neck, catching the firelight with edges sharp enough to cut.
His eyes burn full red. Not ember-gold. Not amber. The deep volcanic crimson of a predator who’s found something threatening what belongs to him. His jaw works with the need to fully shift, teeth elongating into serrated ivory, the dragon in him wanting to feel their authority snap.
Dragonfire tears through the attackers blocking the alley entrance. Not the measured burns I’ve seen him use in raids—this is annihilating, absolute, incinerating flesh and blood-oaths alike in a single devastating surge. Bodies don’t fall. They cease. Ash and memory and nothing else.
The dampening field wavers under the force of his fire. Fractures. Then shatters entirely—and my magic floods back with a force that nearly drives me to my knees. Like breathing after drowning. I grab hold of it before it can overwhelm me.
“ALERIE.” His voice carries the resonance of a form too large for human speech. He’s at my side in three strides, positioning himself between me and the Ash Cardinal, and I sense his power reaching for me—not grasping, not claiming, only checking. Making sure I’m still alive.
“I’m here.” The words scrape through my ash-dry throat. “They wanted me for the containment sites.”
“I know.” His teeth are bared, scales still rippling at his jawline. “That ends now.”
