So I stop trying to break his magic. Iredirectit instead.
The cistern’s aether residue responds to my intent, answering the way ash has always answered Vireth witches. I pull the ancient power into myself, use it to buffer Threx’s attacks rather than confronting them directly. His workings slide off the aether like water off volcanic glass.
Threx’s expression shifts from certainty to confusion to rage in the space of three heartbeats.
“Impossible.” He hurls another strike—more power, more perversion, more of the twisted ash magic he’s spent years perfecting. “Your bloodline can’t access raw aether. The Vireth domain is severance, not channeling!”
“My bloodline defines itself.”
I don’t give him time to recover. The aether I’ve gathered coils around his workings, not severing them butcontainingthem—wrapping his magic in a prison of ancient power that neutralizes its effects. He staggers, thrown off balance by the counter he never anticipated.
My knife finds his shoulder.
He screams—the high, animal sound of a fanatic whose faith has cracked. Blood sprays across the cistern’s ancient stone, and his magic falters as pain disrupts his concentration. The smell of copper mingles with the chamber’s thick residue.
I press the advantage. Strike after strike, each drawing blood, each driving him back toward the altar he’s spent years building. He tries to rally his magic, but every working he creates, I contain or redirect. The techniques he developed to counter Vireth witches were designed for a bloodline that plays by established rules—and I’ve spent my whole life learning that rules are cages for people who can’t think beyond them.
“You were supposed to complete the ritual.” Threx’s voice has gone high and desperate, blood staining his gray robes. “You were supposed to be the final component?—”
“I know.” I drive my knife toward his throat. “That’s why I came.”
A hand closes around my wrist before the blade connects.
Not Threx’s hand. His grip is too weak, his body too broken by the wounds I’ve inflicted.
This hand is stronger. Smoother. Wrong in the same way the Blood Regent’s eyes are wrong.
“Impressive.” The Blood Regent’s voice brushes against my ear from behind, close enough that I feel the unnatural heat radiating from his skin. “Truly impressive. Threx always was overzealous in his preparations. But his techniques were only ever the bait.”
I try to twist free. My magic surges toward the bindings that power him?—
And finds nothing to sever.
No blood-oaths I can unravel. No imposed authority I can reject. The Blood Regent’s power isn’t borrowed or stolen in any way my Vireth abilities can touch. It’smimicked. Processed through rituals so elaborate that the power has become part of him rather than a constraint upon him.
“Did you believe I wouldn’t prepare for you?” His other hand presses against my spine, and I feel magic that isn’t Threx’s twisted ash—magic designed specifically for this moment, specifically for me, specifically for everything I am. “Your bloodline severs bindings, yes. But I don’t need tobindyou to use you.”
The pain begins.
I’ve known pain before.
The binding rituals of my childhood, when captors tested how much my Vireth blood could endure. The casual cruelties of owners who saw my body as a resource to be exploited. The wound across my ribs that I hid from Izan, earned in an alley fighting beside him.
This is different.
The Blood Regent’s magic doesn’t attack my body. It attacks myblood. My Vireth heritage itself becomes the conduit for his working—the very thing that makes me valuable transformed into the weapon that will destroy me. I feel my power beingdrained, pulled through channels that lead directly to the ritual altar, feeding the binding magic he’s building with the essence of everything I am.
I try to fight. Try to sever the working, redirect it, contain it the way I contained Threx’s attacks.
But the Blood Regent has spent years preparing for this moment. His magic slides through every defense I raise, finds every weakness in my power, exploits every instinct my bloodline has developed over generations. My Vireth abilities don’t protect me—theyenablehim.
“Don’t struggle.” His voice comes from very far away, clinical and calm. “The more you fight, the faster it drains. Your grandmother lasted nearly an hour before her heart gave out. The others—your cousins, the scattered survivors I found across the realm—lasted less. You’re stronger than all of them combined. I’m hoping you’ll prove more resilient—the ritual requires sustained power, not brief surges.”
My grandmother. The others. All of them consumed for this.
The knowledge should fuel my rage, should give me strength to fight harder. Instead, it slides through a mind that’s becoming increasingly detached from my failing body. I’m aware of the cistern’s sickly light, of Threx crawling away to nurse hiswounds, of the ritual altar pulsing with power that’s being torn from my blood.
I’m aware of Izan.
