Chapter 23
BLOOD THAT BINDS
The full moon rode high above the canopy, its silver glow bouncing off the leaves as bright fragments of light peeked through the branches and lit up the clearing.
Sleep unraveled around Ella in broken segments, tugged apart by the certainty that something was amiss, the kind of wrong that prickled against the skin long before the ear caught it.
A twig snapped in the distance, sharp and sudden. Another followed, closer.
She jerked upright, lungs tight, but Jakobav was already moving, soundless as a whisper swallowed by night.
Imminent violence was written all over his face, visible even in the moonlight.
He dropped low beside her, one hand tightly wrapped around the hilt of his sword while the other pressed flat to the ground, as though listening through the earth.
His hushed warning cut through the silence.
“Do not speak. Do not move. They’re already here. ”
Ella’s hand darted beneath the bedroll until her fingers closed on Thane’s dagger, and gods, she was grateful she’d stolen it.
Three emeralds glimmered along the hilt, deep and polished, each perfectly set in the body of a serpent coiled in eternal strike.
Its citrine eyes caught what little light touched them, burning with a predatory gleam.
It settled against her palm, the balance unnervingly perfect, as if the blade had been waiting for her hand, the rush of strength that coursed through her veins leaving her both unsteady and unwilling to let go.
Shapes bled out of the trees, one by one, until she counted eight, maybe nine.
Their faces were hidden behind cloth masks, only their eyes glinting in the moonlight.
As they got closer, she saw that their clothes hung torn and filthy, seams split, fabric stiff with dried blood while fresher streaks darkened their sleeves.
They looked like men who’d already been broken elsewhere and had crawled out of ruin in search of easier prey.
They had chosen wrong.
Jakobav rose, his movements slow and intentional, his shoulders squaring as if some ancient inheritance stirred awake inside him. He didn’t reach for words. His presence was its own warning.
Ella’s gaze swept across the intruders, her voice little more than breath. “They don’t look Dravaryn.”
Jakobav didn’t answer.
His jaw tightened, a small ripple of muscle betraying that he already knew.
She wondered how he could tell—how he always could—as if the truth reached him without sight or sound, sensed in a way that defied explanation. She wanted to demand answers, to ask if it was the same instinct that told him she was from Orchid the night they met.
But this wasn’t the moment.
“Stay hidden,” he murmured, the command barely a breath.
Before she could respond, he rose from their crouched position behind the boulder and stepped into the clearing with a predator’s calm.
One of the masked men moved ahead of the others, shoulders squared, every step carrying the command of authority. The rest held back, a subtle deference that marked him as their leader even before the first trace of sorcery touched the air.
He hesitated, his stance rigid, eyes narrowing beneath the mask as his form wavered—a second figure peeled away from him, and then a third—until three versions of the same man stood in the clearing where only one had been.
Each moved with the barest fraction of difference, almost imperceptible, yet enough to set her nerves on edge and tilt the world slightly askew.
Ella’s stomach hollowed.
This was illusion magic, the kind spoken of in old war stories, feared because it could turn a battlefield into a labyrinth of ghosts—sound warping, sight betraying, men dying slashing at shadows while the real blade slid unseen across their throats.
It was rare, unpredictable, lethal, and now it stood before her, convincing reality to lie.
The clearing erupted.
Steel clanged. Blades glinted. Men grunted from impact. Flesh tore. An attacker gurgled, choking on blood.
Jakobav moved like nothing she’d ever seen before. He wasn’t simply trained, he was transformed. Each dodge, pivot, and strike landed with a terrifying force that was somehow also fluid, a grim choreography. Every motion clean, every blow lethal, every arc of his blade unnervingly beautiful.
When one man lunged, Jakobav dropped low and twisted his sword in a sudden curve that sliced into the side of the attacker’s thigh, and as the man screamed and staggered back, Jakobav pressed forward without pause, his momentum as unstoppable as a tide.
And then Ella saw it.
Jakobav sank to one knee beside the bleeding man, his fingers slick with blood. He drew a single drop onto his hand and lifted it to his mouth.
His eyes went black, not the ordinary black of shadow or midnight, but deeper, a darkness threaded with faint veins of silver, an ancient magic that did not belong to this world.
His spine straightened, and around the clearing, the illusions wavered before they steadied again, but now, each one bore Jakobav’s likeness.
Jakobav stepped forward once, and six perfect copies moved with him, blades gleaming, feet silent, faces as unreadable as his own.
The masked men never stood a chance.
They were overtaken in seconds, Jakobav’s figures cutting and feinting and vanishing into the smoke of their own making, striking so swiftly even Ella lost the thread of which one was flesh and which was shadow.
She only knew the truth when the real Jakobav appeared behind the leader and bent to whisper something she couldn’t hear before driving his sword cleanly through the man’s back.
The illusions collapsed into nothingness.
Ella’s lungs seized, her chest refusing air.
He was not merely a warrior. He was power incarnate.
And not just any power. Blood magic. Ancient, forbidden, impossible.
Blood-Scenting was supposed to have been extinct for centuries, ever since the realms were sealed and the Fae had vanished into myth.
From behind the boulder, she watched a legend made flesh, alive and breathing, carving through masked men with the kind of lethal grace mortals weren’t meant to witness.
Goosebumps rose, and her heart hammered like a drum.
Jakobav hadn’t simply tasted a man’s blood. He’d taken his magic and made it his own.
It had been too fast, too seamless, too effortless. Which meant the man beside her was something else entirely. Dangerous. Other. And gods, was she not the same, for had she not whispered those very words about herself only the day before?
Jakobav had ordered her to stay hidden, so she’d remained behind the rock, obeying as though she were some trembling novice. She watched him turn the night into a battlefield of fallen men.
Why in all the gods’ names am I crouching here like prey?
Movement jarred her attention. Three of the surviving men broke and fled for the trees.
Cowards.
Ella was faster.
Fueled by adrenaline and fury and a motivation darker than either, she surged forward from her cover. She caught the first man by the collar and dragged him back hard, driving Thane’s stolen knife into his thigh with such force the scream ripped out of him before he even hit the ground.
She wrenched the blade free, spinning with the same wild momentum, and buried it in the chest of the second man just below his collarbone.
He fell gasping, clawing at the steel, but she was already moving again, meeting the third who swung in blind desperation.
She ducked beneath his strike, slammed her boot into the back of his knees, and when he dropped, she cracked her fist into his jaw with every ounce of wrath in her veins. He crumpled at her feet.
Panting, wild-eyed, her hands slick with blood, she bent and ripped the knife free from the man’s chest. The hilt was wet, the blade gleaming dark in the faint light, but she held it tightly as she stalked back across the clearing.
Jakobav hadn’t moved. There was only one of him now, thank the gods, for even that single figure was more than she could bear right now.
He’d watched every moment of her violence, his sword idle now at his side, his expression unreadable.
She stopped in front of him, chest heaving, her hair plastered to her temples with sweat, and raised her eyes to his. “You just going to stand there and watch?” she taunted, her voice breathless. “Suddenly you’re no longer overbearing and overinvolved in everything I do?”
He smirked, a fleeting glimpse of amusement cutting across his mouth. “You had it handled.”
Before she could summon a retort, his hand lifted, slow and unhurried, and his thumb brushed a smear of blood from her cheek. She stilled, lips parting, stunned less by the touch than by the certainty in his words, the ruinous truth of him believing in her.
Jakobav’s gaze lingered as he dropped his hand, and then, almost lightly, he said, “Thane will be furious when he realizes that knife is gone.”
“Is that so?” Ella’s lips curved just slightly, the words carrying more anticipation than doubt.
“It’s the only thing he brought with him from Velmire. Passed down. It’s his favorite.”
Ella lifted the heavy, blood-slick blade in the moonlight and arched a brow.
“I know the people you keep closest to you are brutal,” she said, voice laced with dark amusement.
“But this”—she gave the deadly weapon a languid wave—“is a level of family baggage that I don’t wish to unpack.
I’ll give it back as soon as I see him.”
Jakobav chuckled, and the sound was like light breaking through stone. She caught herself staring, because for a fleeting heartbeat, he looked lighter, unarmored, almost human again, though the air between them hadn’t settled at all.
Her gaze dropped to the blood still staining his fingertips. “So,” she said carefully, voice low and measured, “you really do have a thing for blood.”
Jakobav’s smirk didn’t vanish, but it twisted darker.