Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
SACHA
“When all else crumbles, love stands as the final rebellion.”
Love Songs of the Mountain Provinces
She looks like she’s sleeping. Her eyes are closed, her face turned toward me, a slight smile on her lips, arms folded across her chest. But that’s where any similarity to sleeping ends. Her skin is mottled with patches of gray and blue, the veins showing in dark lines beneath the discolored flesh.
Lisandra betrayed me, more than once. She sold me to Sereven, warned him of the rescue plan at Glassfall Gap, knifed me in the back at Blackstone Ridge.
The litany of her treachery unfolds in my mind like pages from a ledger written in blood.
And yet, seeing her like this—still and silent, instead of the vibrant Veinwarden leader she was—makes shadows lift from my skin, responding to the fury I’m trying to keep locked behind control.
Her death gives me no satisfaction, only regret. If I had been the one to take her life, it would have been quick and clean. She deserved that much, despite everything.
“Oh my God,” Ellie breathes from beside me.
Varam stands frozen at my left, his fingers clenched around his sword hilt so tightly his knuckles have gone white. Mira’s sharp intake of breath echoes off the walls. The sound hangs in the oppressive silence, mingling with water dripping somewhere close by.
I force myself to step closer. Each footfall sounds too loud, disturbing the unnatural quiet that has settled over this place.
Lisandra’s face looks unmarked from a distance.
Sereven clearly wanted her death to look peaceful, and it’s only when I reach the base of the platform that I see the truth hidden beneath his careful staging.
Her fingernails are torn and bloody. Rope burns circle her wrists in angry welts. The fabric of her tunic is cut where a blade found its mark in a blow meant to cause pain or to feed Sereven’s cruelty, but not to kill. Dark bruises bloom across her exposed skin.
Beneath her, dark stains spread outward along channels carved into the stone, grooves designed to collect and direct the flow of lifeblood.
The sight turns my stomach. This isn’t just murder, it’s ritual sacrifice, performed with the same methodical precision that Sereven brings to everything he touches.
She suffered before she died. My brother made sure of that. Made sure she paid for every moment of defiance, every scrap of loyalty she might have still held for the Veinwardens buried deep beneath her fear.
“This is theater.” Varam breaks the silence. “He knows we’re coming.”
Of course it is. Displaying Lisandra’s body like a sacrifice on an altar, positioned where we couldn’t miss her, arranged to look peaceful until we drew close enough to see the true horror.
It’s meant to make me question my ability to protect anyone.
It’s meant to put me off-balance before the real confrontation begins, to plant seeds of doubt that will turn into hesitation at the worst possible moment.
The worst part is that it’s working. Looking at what remains of Lisandra, I can't stop thinking about everyone else I've failed to save.
The faces blur together—Veinwardens who died, innocents caught in Authority raids, Veinbloods who trusted me to keep them safe and paid for that trust with their lives.
Movement at the corner of my eye catches my attention, and my head snaps around so I can scan the darkened area beyond the platform.
There are shadows there, pooling in corners and crevices …
but not my shadows. It’s a darkness that bends unnaturally, that seems to swallow light rather than simply existing in its absence.
“Well, well.” A voice drifts across the chamber, echoing off the walls until it seems to come from everywhere at once. “My dear brother arrives at last. I thought you’d never get here.”
Sereven steps from the shadows as if emerging from another world.
His appearance locks anything I might have said in response deep in my throat.
Crystal shards jut from his face like grotesque jewelry, their blue light pulsing with his heartbeat.
Where they’re embedded in his skin, veins of unnatural color spread outward like infection, turning flesh into something that belongs more to nightmare than reality.
His eyes are no longer dark like mine, but a brilliant blue that hurts to look at directly.
Blood vessels have burst in the whites, creating a web of red that makes him look like something held between life and death.
Whatever the crystal is doing, it’s clear that it’s slowly killing him.
“You’re late.” He sounds disappointed, almost hurt, like a child whose playmate has kept him waiting. “She called for you at the end, you know. Called your name until her voice gave out. Until there was nothing left but whimpers and blood.”
The words are meant to wound. I keep my expression neutral. He wants a reaction. He wants to see me break. That satisfaction is something I will never give to him.
“Did you enjoy it?” My voice comes out soft, conversational. “Watching her die?”
“I enjoyed the lesson it provided.” Sereven moves closer. There’s a wrongness radiating from him, a magic that doesn’t belong there, power rebelling against its host. “Loyalty to you and your kind brings only suffering. How many more will have to die before you accept that truth?”
Around him, the air seems to recoil. I direct subtle shadows to test the space between us, sending tendrils of darkness forward like scouts.
They encounter dead zones where they break apart, unable to exist so close to the crystals jutting out from his face.
The feedback sends needles of pain through my skull.
“You are my brother.” The words are torn from a place I thought I’d sealed away years ago, from the part of me that remembers when we were children, when we shared the same dreams and nightmares.
His laugh is bitter. “The brother who was supposed to be the High Prince. That was my right, not yours.” The crystal fragments pulse brighter. “I should have ruled Meridian. It should have been me. And you took it from me.”
Ellie’s breathing changes, becoming shorter and sharper, preparing to call on her power. Varam shifts his weight at my side. Mira’s fingers curl around the hilt of her sword. They’re all preparing to follow my lead into whatever horror comes next.
But I’m not sure I can lead them to anywhere other than death.
The crystal’s presence, even shattered and melded to Sereven, is already disrupting my shadows. But not in the same way as last time. It’s no longer drawing my power into it, it’s …
“The crystal isn’t absorbing power anymore, it’s destroying it.”
“Very good.” Sereven raises his hand, and flames dance around his palm.
Flamevein fire that should be impossible for him to wield.
“Every ability the crystal has collected, they all live within me now. The accumulated power of thousands of Veinbloods, concentrated and perfected. Your power will be depleted long before mine.”
Stone surges up from the cavern’s floor without warning—jagged spears that force us to scatter. I roll left, shadows responding sluggishly as they fight against the crystal’s influence. Every time they touch a dead zone, I feel the drain like acid eating through my connection to the darkness.
Ellie moves right, lightning flying from her fingers in silver arcs. But when her power reaches the space surrounding Sereven, it too falters, the bright strikes stuttering and dimming.
Mira darts forward, trying to flank him while he’s focused on our magical assault. Her blade seeks the gaps in his defense, but wind catches her mid-strike and hurls her backward against the cavern wall. She hits it with a sickening crack and slides down, gasping.
“You see?” Sereven’s voice carries over the chaos as he forms ice spears in the air. “This is what true power should look like. Not your crude fumblings in the dark, or her uncontrolled lightning, but mastery of everything. This is how it used to be, before the bloodlines grew weak and diluted.”
A blast of freezing air sends me stumbling backward.
Ice crystals forming on my clothes and skin.
Before I can recover my balance, vines of shadow—twisted versions of my own—snake across the ground toward my feet.
I jump over them, but more stone spikes force me to keep moving, never allowing me to find solid footing or mount a defense.
Everything becomes a nightmare of constant motion.
Sereven doesn’t fight like a single opponent, he fights like an army.
Fire and ice manifest at the same time, defying every law of magic I know.
Wind tears at my clothes while stone spears seek my flesh.
Shadow tendrils that mimic my own power lash out with killing intent.
I reach for Voidcraft, forcing an incantation through gritted teeth.
“Vauren tel korvash.”
But the crystal’s influence disrupts even that, the words dissolving into meaningless sound before they can take hold.
Varam charges from the side, his blade seeking Sereven’s ribs in a move I’ve seen him execute perfectly a thousand times before. For a second, it looks like he might succeed. Sereven is focused on his assault against me and Ellie, leaving him vulnerable to a non-magical threat.
Then Earthvein power sends a wall of stone shooting up between them. Varam’s blade strikes rock instead of flesh, and the impact jars the weapon from his hand. Before he can recover, a blast of Flamevein fire hits him in the chest. The flames consume him for a heartbeat that feels like an eternity.
The scream that follows will haunt me for however long I’m going to live. It’s the sound of a man being burned alive, raw and primal and utterly inhuman.