Chapter 5 – — Bloodline Physiology, Volume II
Chapter Five
“Among documented bloodlines, blood mages exhibit the highest recorded capacity for current density and manipulation.”
— Bloodline Physiology, Volume II
I turn to see who spoke and fight the instinct to gasp.
He’s tall and wide with dark-brown hair that sticks up in sharp, uneven spikes, but it’s his eyes that steal my attention. Red. Not a soft or warm red, but a deep crimson, split down the center by vertical slits instead of rounded pupils.
Predatory.
“Why?” Elizabeth asks beside me before I can say or do anything other than stare.
“You really think he told me?” the male replies flatly. “He said to find you since you were assigned as her mentor.” His gaze shifts to me. “You are Maelis Rose, right?”
I nod.
“This is Felix,” she says, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes at him. “He’s a brown-nosing demon who plays assistant to the headmaster.”
Felix sighs.
“Go ahead,” she adds, already turning away. “I’ll head to the library and pick up your books for you. Head back to your room after.” She waves dismissively in his direction and stalks off before I can protest. I glance between her retreating back and the demon beside me.
“After you then,” I say.
Felix turns and starts walking. I fall into step beside him.
“So,” I say, sneaking a sideways glance at him, “you’re a demon?”
“Last I checked,” he says under his breath.
The tone makes it very clear the conversation is over, and I guess I’m perfectly fine with that. I have more important things to worry about at the moment.
Maybe the headmaster will know something about what was written at the bottom of my invitation to Ashwell.
Maybe he will be able to tell me if my father was the one who applied for me in the first place.
We cross yet another stretch of stone walkway covered in ice.
Gods, I am certainly going to stay fit here with how far apart everything is.
I won’t be jogging with Jace anymore, but it seems I will be getting my exercise simply trying to navigate the layout of this school’s campus.
We finally stop in front of a tall, narrow stone tower riddled with arched windows that stretch skyward, disappearing into the drifting gray above.
Once inside, warmth rushes over me, so I tug off my jacket and drape it over my arm before I start sweating.
The contrast from the bitter cold outside makes my skin prickle as I follow Felix up several flights of stairs, the steady echo of our footsteps bouncing off the stone walls.
Felix stops at a single door tucked along a quiet landing and lifts a finger, pointing.”Knock. He’ll see you when he’s ready.”
Then he turns and descends the stairs, leaving me alone in the corridor.
A flicker of panic stirs. Why do I suddenly feel like I’m in trouble?
I lift my hand, hesitating inches from the door, when it creaks open on its own.
A spike of tension slides down my spine.
I have no idea if he opened it with magic or if the door simply sensed my presence, but either possibility is unsettling. Blood mage, whatever the fuck that means. I clear my throat louder than necessary and peer inside.
He sits at a massive desk near the far side of the room, head bowed, attention fixed on something in front of him, as though I am not standing here at all.
I step inside and quietly close the door behind me then glance around as I move toward the chair positioned in front of his desk.
The walls are lined from floor to ceiling with shelves overflowing with books, not arranged neatly for show but stacked in layered rows.
Between the shelves are glass bottles filled with softly glowing liquids, trays of metal instruments shaped for purposes I cannot begin to guess, and strange trinkets that hum faintly with restrained energy.
The space feels less like an office and more like a private laboratory fused with a personal library.
Every instinct in me wants to drift closer, to study the shelves, to touch something, to understand any of it. Instead, I lower myself into the chair, folding my hands in my lap and forcing my spine straight.
“Maelis Rose,” he says, still not looking up.
I swear I have heard my full name more in the past twenty-four hours than in my entire life.
“Yes,” I answer.
“You didn’t apply to Ashwell,” he says, dark reddish-brown hair slipping loose over his forehead as he flips a page in the book he’s reading.
“I know.” I’m not sure what he’s getting at or how he even knows that. Shit, maybe the fae who came to collect me told him what I said. He can’t send me away now. I haven’t found anything out yet, and things are just starting to get interesting.
“Yet, you’re here.”
Silence stretches between us until he snaps the book shut.
The sharp sound makes me flinch. I look from the closed cover to him as his head finally lifts, dark eyes meeting mine.
Brown so deep they border on black, heavy-lidded and assessing.
The kind of gaze that feels less like being looked at and more like being weighed.
“You’re aware Ashwell doesn’t accept humans,” he continues.
My jaw tightens. “So I’ve been told.”
“And yet you arrived without reluctance.”
His gaze drags over me slowly, from my face to my boots and back again, clinical and unhurried, like he’s taking inventory.
“You have to know you’re unremarkable.”
I want to say the same about him, but it would be a lie.
He is broad-shouldered and solid, built like someone who has never needed to rely on speed.
His features are sharp without being delicate.
A dark, neatly kept beard frames his jaw, threaded faintly with silver even though he doesn’t look truly old, though I don’t know how blood mages age.
There is nothing flashy about him. No ornamentation. No excess.
And yet the room feels oriented around his presence. Power radiates from him in a quiet, oppressive way that has me on edge, I’ve never felt anything like it.
I shift in my seat. “Then why am I sitting in your office?”
He rises, steps around the desk, and stops directly in front of me, tall enough that I have to tilt my chin up. He leans back against the edge of his desk, folding his arms loosely.
“Because something about you doesn’t align with what you claim to be.”
My brows lift. “A human.”
He flicks an invisible piece of lint from the sleeve of his black coat. The fabric is simple, tailored, and immaculate.
“You were raised by a human healer.”
“My father—”
“Was a competent man,” he cuts in.
My ire rises at the back-handed compliment. “He was the best healer in Ironfen, even beyond that.”
Ashmoor studies my reaction.
“Admiration is a weakness,” he says. “Attachment even more so.”
“You didn’t bring me here just to insult my family.”
“No,” he says, “I brought you here because whatever you are won’t survive without toughening up. You will attend every assigned class. You will not request special treatment. You will not expect leniency.”
I swallow.
“You will work harder than your peers because you won’t be as good as them,” he continues. “You will fail faster, you will bleed sooner, and you will adapt, or you will be gone.”
His eyes narrow, and my anxiety rises.
“If you were ordinary,” Ashmoor adds, “you’d already be dead.”
I don’t know what that means and don’t know if I should be pissed or terrified.
“Why do you care?” I ask.
Something flickers across his face. “Because wasted potential offends me.” He turns away, returning to his chair. “You may leave.”
I push to my feet. I want to ask how I’m here or who applied for me, if it was my father. The questions feel urgent, but none of them escape.
I turn toward the door.
“Maelis Rose.”
I stop without looking back.
“Do not attempt to become a healer like your father. Become better.”
His voice follows me into the corridor as I step out and pull the door shut, drawing in a long, steadying breath.
Once I’m down the stairs and back outside, I tug my jacket on and start speed walking toward the dormitories, keeping my eyes fixed on the ground. I don’t want to see anyone else and don’t want anyone looking at me.
What about me screams human anyway? How can they all supposedly tell?
Maybe they can’t. Maybe I let the headmaster work his way under my skin and now am spiraling for no reason.
I try to steady my breathing as I weave through courtyards and cut across several narrow paths, barely paying attention to where I’m going.
It isn’t until the space around me grows too quiet that I realize I’ve wandered somewhere more unfamiliar than the grounds I covered with Elizabeth.
The path opens into what looks like a garden, though it feels wrong to call it that.
Snow blankets nearly everything, broken only by narrow stone walkways and clusters of dark, skeletal trees.
Most of the branches are dead and brittle, stripped bare by winter, except for the occasional light-blue trumpet flower drooping from frozen stems, their soft glow standing out unnervingly against all the gray.
There are no voices here. No movement, as if this part of the grounds has been forgotten.
I slow without meaning to.
Statues line the garden, spaced between the trees and bare hedges along the path, but they are nothing like the ornamental fountains or gentle angels you’d expect to see in a village square.
These are grotesque. A winged man bends over a body, stone fingers buried deep inside a cracked-open chest, ribs splayed outward, a heart exposed.
The detail is horrifyingly precise, every feather, every tendon, every groove of bone carved so realistically I don’t want to look away.
I turn quickly, my boot sliding on a patch of ice, and I stumble hard, landing on the stone with a sharp gasp as pain shoots through my tailbone.
When I look up, my blood turns to ice.
A massive black wolf stands inches from my face.
Its lips curl back in a low snarl, long teeth bared, glowing eyes locked onto mine with terrifying focus. My heart slams so violently it feels like it might break free from my ribs. I don’t know if it’s a shifter, something like Elizabeth’s bat, or some kind of wild animal that broke in here.
I slowly lift my hands, palms open, afraid to stand or move at all.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for teeth.
Nothing happens.
When I dare to look again, the wolf is trotting away, circling the legs of a man leaning against a stone pillar several yards away.
He’s watching me, honey gold eyes stark against warm golden skin.
His dark hair falls to his shoulders, half tied into a loose bun, dusted with snowflakes as if he’s been standing here longer than I’d like to think about.
The wolf presses against his side.
My legs feel unsteady as I push myself upright, brushing snow and ice from my clothes without lifting my gaze.
When I finally look up again, they’re gone, leaving an empty garden and a cold, crawling sense that I was never alone at all.
I eventually found my way back to my room. Elizabeth isn’t here, but a neat stack of books is on my desk beside a folded map of the school. I shrug off my coat and cross the room, pulling my schedule from my pocket and smoothing it out across the worn wood.
A small handwritten note is on top of the stack.
“Orientation is at 3 p.m. in the Grand Hall. Don’t be late.”
I read it twice before setting it aside then pick up the map and scan the layout. The Grand Hall isn’t far, two buildings over connected by an enclosed walkway one story up.
That’s something at least.
I glance at the small clock mounted above my desk, and it’s already ten past two. I don’t know where the day went, only that everything here feels like a blur layered on top of another blur. Too many faces. Too many corridors and pathways. Too many things I don’t understand yet.
I don’t want to wrestle with the heavy coat again if I can use the enclosed walkway, so I pull off my shirt and slip into one of the button-up long-sleeve sweaters instead. The fabric is soft, warm enough. It’ll do.
In the bathroom, I run the brush through my hair then pause when I catch my reflection.
No pointed ears. No unusual pupils. No glowing eyes. No wings.
But not all bloodlines have such conspicuous characteristics. The headmaster looked human enough, and so did half the people I passed in the courtyard, even though I knew they weren’t.
What about me makes people look twice? What gives me away as human?
I tilt my head slightly, studying my face the way I’ve done a thousand times before, but it feels different now, like I’m searching for something that’s never been there.
My skin is pale, dusted faintly pink across my cheeks.
My nose is straight and covered in freckles that fan out beneath my eyes.
Lips full enough that my mother used to tease me about them when I was younger, always saying I’d grow into them one day.
Maybe I did.
My eyes are dark brown, almost espresso colored when the sun hits just right. I’ve always wished they were green or blue like everyone else in my family, something brighter and softer, but my father used to say they gave me character, whatever that means.
My hair has always been the one thing people notice.
It’s a deep-coppery red, not bright like fire but rich, warm, the kind that catches light and holds onto it.
It falls down my back, thick enough that it takes effort to tame but mercifully not the wild, unmanageable curls my mother battles every morning.
I drag the brush through it again, watching it spill over my shoulders, familiar and strangely foreign at the same time.
I glance down, taking in the rest of myself.
I’ve never been delicate. I’m not thin, not willowy, but I am fit, built from years of hauling supplies, standing on my feet all day in the clinic, helping lift patients when no one else was around.
Curves where I should have them. Strength where it counts.
A body that’s always felt practical rather than ornamental.
Today, it feels like something else.
I’m being measured against a scale I don’t understand.
I lean closer to the mirror, searching for something hidden beneath skin and bone, some invisible mark that explains why I’m here and why everyone seems to know I don’t belong.
The reflection offers nothing back.
Just me, unremarkable Maelis.
But in the back of my mind, the question still gnaws at me. What the headmaster said is replaying on a loop. “If you were ordinary, you'd already be dead.”