Chapter 36 Aurelia
Aurelia
Everything was too loud.
Too bright.
Even the dust that floated through the haze of dusk seemed to shimmer too sharply, cutting gold and violet threads of light as it drifted across my chamber walls. I watched it, unsure how long I’d been sitting there, the air brittle against my skin.
I smoothed a hand down my torso, pausing at the place just above my heart. No pain, but the memory of it stirred. The scar was quiet now, but whatever came next would not be gentle.
A sharp knock echoed through the chamber. I didn’t move to answer it.
I turned from the mirror, but the image stayed with me, clinging like shadow.
Kaelith’s mouth on me. His blood on my tongue.
It wasn’t want. Not truly—and especially not for him. It was a hunger threaded through my veins, one that clawed past thought and left my body begging before I could command it still.
I needed it.
And when I drank—when I tasted the searing warmth of his blood—I had felt, for a terrifying moment, whole.
The dreams that followed blurred. Shifting walls. Velvet skin. Kaelith’s voice in my mind. The scent of ash. And Malachi, watching—always just beyond the edge. Unmoving.
And then… The bath. His arms around me. His hands in my hair. The gentle pressure of his thumb beneath my chin. The way he had turned me to face him—slowly, gently.
My body was a mess of sensations. My skin burned. My vision pulsed at the edges. And worst of all, I was so godsdamned thirsty.
I didn’t mean to reach for the heat curling low in my belly. But the memory of his mouth—the way his voice had caught on my name—had taken root somewhere deeper than want.
My breath hitched. One hand braced against the wall, the other slipping beneath my waistband with a hunger I didn’t want to name. Didn’t want to need.
It wasn’t my hand I felt. I imagined him. Malachi, pressed behind me. Filling me with the kind of ache I hadn’t known I was capable of wanting. My hips tilted forward. My lips parted.
I was right there. And then—
The door creaked open. I jerked upright and spun towards the door, dragging my hand out of my pants just as Malachi stepped into view. There was a flicker in his eyes when they landed on me.
He paused. Sniffed once.
Oh gods.
His voice dropped, rough and too close. “Who’s in here with you?”
“No one,” I said quickly—too quickly.
His eyes moved. Then landed on me. The flush across my neck. I tried not to flinch. Not to look guilty.
Malachi didn’t respond. Not with words. Only the faintest tightening of his jaw.
He lingered in the doorway a moment longer than he should have, gaze unreadable. Then: “We leave within the hour. Lysara, Santiago, and Gabriel are already preparing. I’ve arranged for two mares. You’ll be riding with me.”
I nodded, throat too tight to object.
A pause.
“What?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
A hint of amusement ghosted across his face.
“Your hair is… full of life this morning.” I scowled and instinctively reached up, fingers catching in the snarl of half-dried curls.
They felt tangled and determined to escape my head entirely.
I braced myself as I approached the mirror, legs strong but heavy, as if every bone had been lined with lead, and crossed into the bathing chamber.
Gods.
I looked like a bedraggled wraith spat back out by the cliffs.
“I must’ve fallen asleep with it wet,” I muttered, more to myself than him.
The memories hit in fragments. Kaelith’s mouth at my wrist. The flush of warmth. His blood on my tongue. And then—gods—I had taken from him. The thought sent my stomach lurching.
“I drank from him,” I whispered, the words tasting like rust. “From his wrist.”
“Which wrist?” Malachi’s voice cut through the haze.
“I don’t know… I can’t remember.”
“Try,” he pressed. “It is important.”
I closed my eyes, forcing the memory to sharpen, to pull itself together through the fog. The weight of his hand. The silver edge of the blade. The blood welling hot across my tongue.
“The left one,” I breathed. “Sliced open with Eryndis’s blade of truth.”
Malachi’s gaze lingered on me, unreadable, gold catching in the half-light.
“Of all places,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “The left wrist—closest to the heart. Once called the lover’s vein.”
“It will be all right, Aurelia,” he said quietly.
I turned to face him. “What, exactly, will be all right?”
“You’re going through a transition,” he said, stepping closer. His tone was calm, but not dismissive.
“A transition,” I repeated flatly. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
His gaze held mine, gold catching in the half-light.
“If it completes, you will not wither,” he said. “Not the way King Talon did.”
I frowned. “But he’s a Vampyre.”
“Yes,” Malachi said. “And that is precisely the problem.”
He exhaled slowly. “Talon bound himself to the goddesses during the purge. He traded part of what we are—what endures—for the right to rule Nyxarra. Power for permission.”
His jaw tightened. “Vampyric immortality is not meant to be shared with gods. It doesn’t rot on its own. It doesn’t erode. But when it’s divided, when it’s bartered…”
My throat went dry. The hunger in me surged like a tide against stone. “I don’t want to become anything.”
“Want is irrelevant,” Malachi murmured. “The blood has already chosen.”
“You’re saying it’s not exhaustion or trauma. You’re saying this is not something that will pass.” I stepped back, voice rising.
Malachi nodded once. My vision flared red.
Malachi let out a breath—half laugh, half sigh—as his hand dragged down his face.
“Somewhere in you—deep, blood-deep—something answered. Not desire. Not choice. The Blade of Eryndis reveals inheritance, not want. If you’d had no ancestral tether to vampyric blood, the blade wouldn’t have answered at all—it can’t force desire or create instinct where none exists. ”
A cold ripple crawled through my stomach. “You’re saying I asked for this?”
“No.” His answer came fast, sharper than before. “I’m saying your blood recognized what he offered. The blade can only open what already exists in a person. Dormant magic. Old instinct. An inheritance even you don’t understand.”
My mouth went dry. “What did it open?”
“The truth that your body would rather live than die. That the shadow in your blood remembers immortal power, even if you don’t.
You didn’t want Kaelith. You didn’t even know what the bond meant.
But your magic did. And when the blade cut you, it reached for the only thing that could keep you alive. ”
A tremor ripped through me, part fury, part dread. “So you’re telling me—”
“I’m telling you this wasn’t consent,” Malachi said. “It was survival. Instinct. The blade didn’t make you choose him. It revealed what was already sleeping under your skin.”
The nausea hit hard and fast. I pressed a palm to my ribs as the truth twisted sharp as glass. Because if Malachi was right, if some hidden, ancient part of me had reached for Kaelith’s blood, then the damage was already done. And I didn’t know whether to scream… or break.
I staggered back, catching myself on the wardrobe. “I’m going to become like him. Like you. A Vampyre.”
“Yes and no. You’re becoming something,” he said carefully. “Something… new. Your bloodline is old, tied to things we don’t fully understand. Which means your transition may not follow the rules we know.”
I tried to hold onto something solid. Anything.
But the words echoed in my mind like a warning I couldn’t outrun.
Heat burned under my skin, not from the change gnawing through me, but from fury.
At Kaelith for forcing this on me. At Malachi for speaking of it like it was inevitable.
At myself for drinking, for letting even one part of me answer when I should have resisted.
My hands ached with the want to tear something apart, to punish the world for daring to twist me into a shape I hadn’t chosen.
“No one knows what’s happening to me,” I said, my voice sharp, shaking with the edges of a rage I couldn’t swallow.
“You’re strong, Aurelia. That’s what he fears. That’s why he did this. So your strength wouldn’t rise against him, but for him.”
“And what about you?” I asked, voice low, dangerous. “What do you think I’ll become?”
His gaze didn’t flinch. “Exactly what you were always meant to be.”
Gods, I hated how much I wanted to believe him.
I turned away, pulling open the wardrobe doors with more force than necessary. “Anything else I should know?”
“We need to make a stop on the way to Synnex,” he said.
My chest tightened. “A stop?”
“If I didn’t tell you now, you’d see it soon enough,” he said evenly. “There’s rumor of a village to the west. Survivors of the rebellion. Kaelith gave orders to… handle it.”
I wheeled on him. “Handle it? As in destroy it?”
“Quietly. Discreetly.” He looked sick even saying the words.
“There is nothing more to the west. I traveled its edges, knew the maps. It’s just…
darkness.” Even as I said it, the memory rose: the flicker in the fog, the shapes I’d sworn I’d seen, the prickle along my spine as if I was being watched.
The old warnings about lands best left forgotten.
Not forgotten, I realized now. Buried. Erased.
I shook the thought away. “I really couldn’t care less, Malachi. I just need to get to Aeryn.”
“It won’t take more than a couple days’ time,” he replied. Seemingly uninterested in my concern.
“Days?” The word tore from me. “I’ve been gone nearly a month!”
“Right,” he said, unruffled. “So what’s a few more days?”
“And you’re dragging me there now?” My voice cut. “While I’m becoming something I don’t even understand?”