Chapter 74
Yerin straightened, blood soaking his side, and let out a sharp breath through his nose.
Then, as though the pain were a mere inconvenience, he reached up and dragged a hand across his face.
Magic shimmered like oil on water, his illusion unraveling.
The crisp lines of Lareth’s features melted away, revealing the scarred, glass-eyed face of Yerin Mecari.
“Let’s not pretend I came down here on a whim,” he said, voice low and smooth with satisfaction.
“I knew exactly how House Virellien would respond. Seal the upper floors. Lock down the warded corridors. Run to the safe rooms.” He gestured vaguely at the chamber around them. “And just like that, I had them.”
Riven’s brows furrowed. He looked to Thane.
Thane exhaled, jaw tightening. “The failsafe,” he said. “You’re going to use the House’s own lockdown protocol to collapse it from the inside out. That’s why you kept her alive.” His gaze flicked to the Matriarch, still standing silent but sharp-eyed at the center of it all.
Yerin’s grin widened. “See? He gets it.”
“Not very creative,” Riven said dryly.
Yerin’s head tilted, glass eye catching the light. “Why mess with something that works?”
“Except it didn’t work,” Riven shot back. “We’re here. Kind of a glaring flaw in your master plan.”
For the first time, Yerin’s smile faded just a fraction.
“That,” he said coldly, “is something I intend to remedy—now.”
The glow of corrupted wards pulsed like a heartbeat beneath their feet—but Thane didn’t hesitate.
Neither did Yerin.
They launched at each other, fists colliding with flesh and bone in a blur too fast for the eye to track.
No weapons now, just fury and decades of trained violence.
Thane fought with precision, every movement controlled and devastating.
Riven had seen him put down men twice his size without breaking a sweat—but Yerin was something else entirely.
Twisted, yes. Wounded. But skilled. Every hit he took, he returned harder, faster, his strength shockingly intact despite the injury Riven had inflicted.
They slammed into the side of the vault, knocking over a table piled with tomes and scattering the remnants of old magic across the stone.
Dust choked the air as they exchanged punishing blows.
Thane ducked under a wild punch, landed a knee to Yerin’s ribs, and drove him back—but Yerin twisted, using the momentum to shove Thane into a stone column, cracking the surface.
Riven moved to help, but Thane had told him—run if I say run. And right now, he hadn’t said anything.
Thane gained ground again, seizing Yerin by the collar and slamming him against the curved wall, driving his fist into his stomach, his jaw, his temple. Yerin staggered, bleeding from his lip, breath ragged—but then—
He smiled.
Not the feral grin of a man enjoying a fight. This was something colder. Satisfied.
Riven’s gut turned.
“Thane—!” he shouted, too late.
Yerin’s hand darted to his coat, and before Thane could stop him, he pulled out a small glass vial. The liquid inside shimmered with a sickly opalescence, swirling like smoke in water. Soulglass.
Yerin smashed it on the floor at Thane’s feet.
The vial shattered.
A bloom of silvery vapor erupted upward, and Thane had no time to dodge. Yerin rolled away from the cloud, coughing once but untouched, while Thane staggered back, trying to wave the fumes away—but it was already too late.
Riven’s heart dropped into his stomach.
“No!”
Thane swayed, one hand to his face, breath hitching as the Soulglass took hold. His pupils dilated, his chest heaving in ragged, shuddering gasps. The veins in his neck and arms flared dark against his skin, as though his blood had turned venomous.
Yerin watched it all with calm satisfaction. “There we go,” he said. “Let’s see how much of a Virellien he really is now.”
Thane dropped to one knee, breath ragged, eyes wild with the beginning edge of something inhuman. His hair, which had come loose from its ties in the fight, fell like a curtain as he hunched over further, body spasming, arms drawing tightly about himself.
Yerin laughed, and the sound made Riven’s skin crawl, high and ragged and full of something unhinged, like a violin string pulled too tight. He crept along the edge of the room, slinking toward the exit, keeping to the shadows like he didn’t quite trust Thane not to turn on him too.
Riven barely noticed. His eyes were locked on Thane, who knelt on the ground, shaking. Every muscle in his body clenched and convulsed as the Soulglass stormed through him. His breath came in short, jagged bursts. His nails were digging into the floor. His body fought the transformation—and lost.
“Thane,” Riven said, taking a tentative step forward. His voice was low, gentle, like speaking to a wounded animal. “It’s me.”
But Thane didn’t lift his head.
The Matriarch, still crumpled on the floor where Caerel had left her, began crawling toward the gun. Her fingers closed over the grip, trembling, her gaze shifting from Thane to Yerin, then back again. Riven caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.
Please don’t do it.
Thane screamed.
The sound tore through the chamber like it could peel stone from the walls—raw, guttural, and wrong.
When he looked up, his eyes were wrong too.
No clarity. No thought. Just a savage, feral gleam of something not him.
His lips peeled back in a snarl, baring teeth like an animal’s, and his whole body moved with terrifying purpose.
Yerin was ecstatic. “Yes!” he shouted, voice cracking from glee. “Look at him—no chains, no code, no leash. Just the Beast. That’s who he really is!”
Thane’s wild gaze snapped to Riven, and without warning, he lunged.
Riven moved, diving sideways just in time. Thane’s body slammed into the space where he’d been a heartbeat before, nails raking the stone, teeth bared in an unrecognizable snarl. The impact cracked the floor beneath his fists.
Behind them, the Matriarch raised the gun.
“No—don’t!” Riven shouted, flinging a hand out toward her.
She hesitated. Just one breath. It was all Thane needed.
He turned on her with terrifying speed, knocking the weapon from her hands with a swipe that could’ve taken her head clean off.
She cried out, winded, as he drove her to the floor with brutal force.
Her head struck stone, and the gun skittered away into the darkness as Thane loomed over her, a monster carved from fury and magic and pain.
And Riven, heart pounding, knew he had seconds to stop what came next.