Imara
EIGHT
The Sanctum’s corridors are quiet now. The crisis has passed, the message has been sent, and the machine grinds on. Tomorrow there will be rituals. Next week there will be harvests. Next month, another desperate soul might find another weak point in the wards and try their luck.
They’ll fail. They always fail.
Unless a change occurs.
I take the long way back to my quarters, moving through less-traveled passages. My mind churns with images I can’t escape—Sera’s broken hands, her ruined voice, the hope in her eyes when she asked about her friends.
And underneath it all, another image. Kharvek in the Red Fields, holding that woman by the throat, his scars glowing with banked power.
He could have killed her instantly. I’ve seen him do it—watched him drain a man in seconds, watched him tear another apart with his bare hands. The efficiency of his violence is legendary.
But he didn’t kill her. He brought her back alive because the Matron wanted a survivor. Made a spectacle of the capture because the Matron wanted a message. Performed his role with precision and purpose, every action calculated for maximum effect.
This is different. This is violence with purpose.
The thought shouldn’t comfort me. It does anyway.
I round a corner into a maintenance alcove—one of hundreds scattered throughout the Sanctum, places where supplies accumulate and servants rarely linger—and stop.
He’s waiting for me.
Kharvek fills the alcove the way he fills every space—completely, overwhelmingly. His shoulders brush both walls. His head nearly touches the ceiling. In the dim light, his scars pulse with residual power, and that hunter’s focus fixes on me.
There’s blood on his hands.
Not metaphorical—actual blood, still wet, darkening the green-gray of his skin. He hasn’t cleaned himself since the hunt.
“You watched.” The words come out graveled, quiet. Not an accusation—a statement.
“I watched.” I don’t step back. Don’t flee. “I wanted to see.”
“And what did you see?”
The question hangs in the air between us. I could give him an easy answer—horror, revulsion, second thoughts about the alliance I offered. That’s what he expects. What anyone would expect after watching him work.
The alcove feels smaller with every word. The air grows thicker, heavy with tension and unspoken possibility. His scars catch the dim light, and I find myself watching the faint glow—fascinated despite myself.
Something shifts in his expression.
“Most people just see the violence.”
“I’m not most people.” I take a step closer.
My pulse kicks, but my voice stays steady.
“I’ve watched the clan’s violence my whole life.
I know what mindless brutality looks like.
What you did out there wasn’t mindless. It was precise.
Deliberate. You performed exactly what was required, nothing more and nothing less. ”
“That’s supposed to make it better?”
“It makes it useful.” Another step. I’m close enough now to smell him beneath the blood—that strange heat, that power thrumming just beneath his skin. “A weapon that thinks. A monster that calculates. That’s what I need.”
His scarred hands flex at his sides. Blood flakes off his knuckles, drifting to the stone floor.
“The woman I brought back.” He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. “You were with her when she died.”
“Yes.”
“Did she suffer?”
The question catches me off guard. Not the words—the way he asks them. Not casual, not dismissive. Closer to careful.
“Yes.” No point in lying. “For hours. The questioners were thorough.”
“Did she tell them anything useful?”
“She didn’t know anything useful. She just found a weak point in the wards and took her chance.” I pause. “Her name was Sera. Her mother named her for the sunrise.”
He’s quiet. The scarification on his arms flares briefly, then dims.
“You memorize their names.”
“Someone should.”
“Why?”
He stares at me. His gaze searches my face with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
“You’re reconsidering.” He lowers his voice. “My offer. You saw what I did to those escapees, and now you’re wondering if you made a mistake.”
I look at his hands. The blood crusted between his fingers, drying in the lines of his palms. The scarification channels that split open when he drains his victims, weeping power and death in equal measure.
Those hands killed two people tonight. Delivered a third to torture that lasted hours.
I ask the only question that matters.
“Can you do that to the Matron?”
Silence.
Then something unfolds that I’ve never seen before. An expression I didn’t think his face was capable of.
Kharvek smiles.
Not the half-expression I saw before—this is a different emotion entirely. Real. His scarred face transforms, brutal edges rearranging into something I have no name for.
Something in my chest seizes.
“Yes.” The word lands heavy, certain. “When the time comes, I can do exactly that to the Matron.”
Heat floods my chest. Something primal responds to that smile, that promise, that glimpse of the weapon finally pointed in the right direction.
“Good.” The words come out rougher than I intend. “Then we have an alliance.”
He extends his bloody hand.
I should hesitate. Should think about what this means—binding myself to a weapon, sealing an alliance with a monster, gambling everything I’ve built on a creature who kills as easily as breathing.
I take it.
His grip is hot—that same unnatural heat I felt in the Womb Chamber—and strong enough to crush my bones if he wanted. The blood on his palm smears against mine, warm and slick.
I hold steady.
“Third bell.” He steps back from me. “Tomorrow night. The storage alcove you mentioned.”
“I’ll be there.”
He releases my hand. Steps back. That smile fades, replaced by his usual mask of controlled violence.
“Clean that off.” He gestures at my blood-smeared palm. “Before someone sees.”
Then he’s gone, slipping out of the alcove with silent grace, leaving me alone with the smell of copper and the racing of my pulse.
I look at my hand. His blood—mixed with Sera’s blood, mixed with the blood of the men he killed—marks my skin in smeared patterns.
I don’t wipe it off immediately.
What is wrong with you?
The question has no answer. None that I want to examine too closely.