Page 35 of The Witch They Crave

The room is very quiet.

"I killed him." My voice is flat now. Scraped out. "I can't fix that. I can't… give him back. And I know that nothing I say in this room changes what happened." I make myself look at Emric’s mother again. Her eyes are wet. Mine are too. "I'm so sorry. I am so so sorry about your son."

I sit down. I don't have a closing argument. I don't have a speech about deserving a second chance. I just have a dead boy's mother looking at me with his face, and the truth sitting between us like a body.

What else is there to say?

Advocate Marcellus stands.

"House Vane acknowledges the Dean's statement and does not dispute that provocation occurred." His voice is smooth, professional. "House Vane's position is that provocation is irrelevant to outcome."

He straightens a cuff.

"Emric Vane is dead. The means of his death is not in dispute. The subject's magic, by her own admission, killed him. House Vane therefore invokes its right under traditional law to enter a blood claim against the responsible party."

Blood claim.

I don't know what that means. I know what blood means and I know what claim means but together? I look at Aamon. His face is blank but his thumb is pressing into his palm hard enough to hurt.

"Under the terms of the blood claim, House Vane demands full redress: the subject is to be surrendered to House Vane custody for a period of indentured service proportional to the life taken. During this period, House Vane retains full discretion over the use of the subject's abilities—including the right to suppress her magic through chemical or ward-based means, or to direct its application in service of the house's interests." He lets that land. "She will remain under House Vane's authority until the debt is satisfied."

Direct its application. In service of the house's interests. The words are clean and legal and what they mean is: they own me. My magic, my body, whatever they want. Suppress me or use me—their choice, not mine. A weapon or a corpse, depending on what's more convenient.

Surrendered. Indentured. Suppressed.

Chemical.

The facility. The tray. The groove in the mattress. Twelve years of white ceiling and flat blood and my own pulse the only proof I existed. Different house, different name on the door. Same cage. Same needles.

Or… I become their witch slave.

My magic surges. The ward-lines under my feet flare bright enough to illuminate the full pattern—concentric circles, yes, but also symbols carved into the stone beneath the grime. Suppression wards. This room was built for people like me.

I hold as best I can, breathe through the spike. I hold because if I flare now I prove every word Marcellus just said.

I look to Aamon who meets my eyes and nods, his chest rising and falling to remind me to breathe.

I keep breathing, time slows. Until finally, the current beneath my skin cools and relaxes and I can think again.

The room directs their attention to the Vanes, eagerly awaiting their response to Marcellus’ words.

Emric's father nods. Barely.

Emric's mother is still looking at me. Something in her expression has cracked—not composure, something underneath it—

My heart beat thumps in my ears.

A voice cuts across the room from the gallery.

"If it pleases the tribunal…"

My stomach sinks.

My head turns before I decide to turn it. I know that voice. Warm, unhurried, calibrated to sound like it belongs wherever it shows up.

Leopold is already on his feet. Second row, near the Vanes. White hair catching the ward-light, brown eyes sweeping the room—adjudicators, Leyonna, Balcour—before landing on me last.

His index finger taps his thigh. Once. Twice. Three times.