Chapter 2
SERIS
They’d drugged me.
Not enough to knock me unconscious, they needed me awake for the casting, but enough to make my limbs feel heavy and strange, like they belonged to someone else.
The potion tasted of bitter herbs and something metallic that coated my tongue, making everything taste like blood.
My vision wavered at the edges, but my mind stayed sharp. Cruelly, perfectly sharp.
I could feel everything.
The ritual chamber squatted in the bowels of the keep like a tumor, all black stone and carved runes that hurt to look at directly.
Ancient symbols crawled across every surface, pulsing with a sickly green light that made my teeth ache.
The air itself felt wrong here, thick and oily, as if too much dark magic had soaked into the stone over the centuries.
They stripped me down to a thin shift that barely covered my thighs, because it was easier to draw the targeting sigils on my skin, the kind that would scar.
The ink burned like acid, each symbol a fresh violation that made my magic writhe and snap beneath my flesh.
Royal mages circled me like vultures, their faces hidden behind black masks, their voices a constant drone of incantations.
“The subject is prepared, Your Majesty,” announced Master Thaddeus, the king’s chief torturer.
He’d traded his usual bloodstained apron for elaborate ceremonial robes, but I could still smell death on him, old blood and newer screams. “The targeting crystals are aligned with the suspected site of the rebel encampment. Distance: forty-three leagues northeast.”
Forty-three leagues. Far enough to spare them the sounds of death from these cowards and their heinous crimes.
King Aeron stood on a raised platform, safely behind wards that would protect him from any magical backlash. Coward. “And the amplification matrix?”
“Stable, Your Majesty. The focusing rings will channel her power directly through the ley lines. The destruction should be… comprehensive.”
My stomach clenched. Comprehensive. Such a clean word for burning families alive.
They’d chained me to a metal framework that held me upright but immobile, my arms spread wide like a scarecrow.
Or a crucifixion. On the other side of the chamber were the innocent Fae children, blindfolded, gagged, and bound.
They writhed as the ropes bit into their skin.
My magic was fighting the drugs, the suppression runes, the targeting sigils, and everything that tried to force it into a shape it was never meant to take.
“Begin the invocation,” the king commanded.
The mages raised their hands, and power crackled through the air like lightning.
But this wasn’t the wild, living magic of my bloodline.
This was something colder, more deliberate.
Calculated. They were going to use me as a conduit, forcing my magic through their framework, shaping it into a weapon of precision rather than passion.
It felt like a violation.
“No,” I whispered through the muzzle, the word muffled but audible. “No, I won’t.”
Pain exploded through my skull as one of the suppression runes flared to life. The world went white for a moment, and I tasted blood. When my vision cleared, Master Thaddeus was standing directly in front of me.
“You will,” he said simply. “Because the alternative is watching these mutts die piece by piece while you listen. We’re very good at making death last, child. Very creative.”
The targeting crystals began to glow, a network of faceted stones floating in the air around me like a constellation of malice.
Each one showed me glimpses of what they wanted me to destroy, a hidden valley where firelight flickered in cave mouths, where Fae who had never done anything worse than refuse to bow to a tyrant tried to build something better.
I could see them. Mothers holding babies. Children playing with wooden toys. Old men sharing stories around dying fires. They had no idea death was coming. No way to prepare or protect themselves or run.
Because of me.
“Channel your power into the crystals,” Thaddeus commanded. “Let it flow through the targeting matrix. Feed the flames that will cleanse the kingdom of your filthy kind.”
My magic coiled beneath my skin like a living thing, responding to my terror and rage. But something was wrong. Instead of the usual wild surge I expected, the power felt… different. Older. Deeper. Like I was tapping into something that had been sleeping for centuries.
The first crystal pulsed, and I saw a flash of the rebel camp, a woman singing a lullaby to her baby. The melody was one my mother used to hum, back when the world was simpler and I thought monsters only existed in stories.
"No." The word came out stronger this time, cutting through the muzzle's restraint. "I won't kill them."
"You will," the king snarled from his safe platform as he pointed at the nearest child. "Or that boy— "
The magic erupted.
Not in the controlled stream they wanted, not channeled through their crystals and frameworks and careful calculations.
It exploded outward like a dam bursting, raw, wild and furious.
The targeting crystals shattered in sprays of light and molten glass.
The metal framework holding me began to smoke and warp.
Several mages screamed as the backlash hit them, their masks cracking, their careful robes catching fire. One fell to his knees, clutching his head as blood poured from his eyes. Another simply collapsed, his body convulsing as too much power coursed through him.
"Control her!" the king screamed. "Shut it down!"
But they couldn't. My magic had been locked away for too long, forced into too small a space, compressed and contained and denied until it reached a breaking point. Now it wanted out, and it didn't care what got destroyed in the process.
The suppression runes on my skin began to smoke and crack. The iron chains grew red-hot, then white-hot, then started to melt entirely. I threw my head back and screamed through the muzzle, not in pain, but in pure, wild release.
Power poured through me like molten gold, and for the first time in months, I felt alive.
That's when the shadows came.
They flowed through the chamber like living smoke, darker than darkness, moving with purpose and intelligence.
At first, I thought they were part of my magic, some manifestation of the power that wanted to tear this place apart stone by stone.
But then, I heard the sound of steel on flesh, and realized something else entirely was happening.
A figure materialized behind the nearest mage as if stepping out of the darkness itself.
Tall, lean, dressed in black leather that seemed to drink the light.
Twin daggers flashed in his hands, and the mage's throat opened in a precise red line before he could even scream.
The killer moved like water, like wind, like death itself, one moment there, the next already striking someone else.
At the same time, something massive crashed through the chamber's main door with enough force to shake the entire room.
A mountain of a man with a war hammer that looked like it could crush boulders charged into the fray, roaring something unintelligible.
Guards turned to face him and died before they could draw their swords, not from any magical attack, but from sheer, brutal efficiency.
He made his way directly for the children on the floor, the room parting in two. By the time he reached them, there were no guards to hurt the children. He put his back against them, hammer high and ready to smash anyone that came close.
A third attacker moved through the chamber like a whisper, disabling the magical wards with touches so light they barely disturbed the air.
I caught glimpses of him, young face, white-blond hair, fingers that danced over rune-stones with an artist's precision.
Every ward he touched simply... stopped.
Like he was speaking to the magic in a language it couldn't refuse.
When the magic in the room was disabled, he grabbed the crossbow that was slung over his shoulder, cold determination in his eyes. Anyone who tried to flee found themselves facing bolts that struck with inhuman accuracy.
But it was the fourth attacker who captured my attention completely.
He stood in the center of the chaos like the eye of a storm, shadows writhing around him like living things. They responded to his will, reaching out to strangle guards, to blind mages, to tear weapons from hands with tendrils of pure darkness. And his eyes...
Pitch black. Darker than the deepest part of the night.
Those eyes found mine across the carnage, and the world seemed to stop.
I’d seen eyes like that before. In nightmares. In stories whispered by terrified servants.
Eyes that belonged to someone who walked between life and death, who commanded shadows and ruled fear itself.
But that was impossible. He was supposed to be the shadow of the king, raised since birth to hunt down Fae like me. Why was he here?
The man moved toward me through the battle with fluid grace, his shadows clearing a path before him.
Guards tried to stop him and found themselves fighting creatures made of living darkness.
Mages threw spells that simply vanished into the writhing shadows around him.
He was untouchable, inevitable, like death itself walking among mortals.
Master Thaddeus raised his hands, power crackling between his fingers in preparation for some devastating spell.
The shadowed man didn’t even look at him.
A tendril of darkness wrapped around the torturer’s throat and lifted him off his feet, squeezing until bones cracked and his face turned purple.
“Please,” Thaddeus wheezed, his silver mask askew. “Please, I was only following—”
The shadow tightened, and there was a wet sound. The torturer fell to the floor and didn’t move again.
King Aeron was screaming orders from his platform, but his guards were too busy dying to listen.
The assassin had reached the royal contingent and was methodically working his way through them with brutal precision, each strike followed by the bloody gurgle of opened throats.
The crossbow wielder had run out of targets at the exits and was now picking off anyone who looked reckless enough to try something desperate.
And through it all, those pitch-black eyes stayed locked on mine.
The man reached the melted remains of my restraints and raised one hand.
The shadows around him stilled, waiting.
Up close, I could see he was younger than I’d expected, maybe late twenties, with sharp cheekbones and dark hair that looked like he’d been running his fingers through it.
There was something almost beautiful about his face, if you ignored the cold calculation in his expression.
“Can you walk?” His voice was quiet, cultured, edged with an accent I couldn’t place. It should have been lost in the chaos of battle, but somehow, I heard every word clearly.
I tried to answer and remembered the muzzle. Tried to move and felt the melted iron still clinging to my wrists and ankles. The drugs made everything distant and strange, as if I were watching this happen to someone else.
He studied me for a moment, then reached up to touch the leather straps holding the muzzle in place.
His fingers were long, pale, scarred with calluses that spoke of weapons training and hard use.
When he touched the buckles, they simply…
came apart. As if the leather had forgotten how to hold itself together.
The muzzle fell away, and I gasped, tasting free air for the first time in months.
“Who…” My voice came out as a croak, raw from disuse and trauma. “Who are you?”
Those black eyes flickered with something that might have been amusement.
“Someone who’s been looking for you for a very long time.”
Before I could ask what that meant, he turned away, surveying the chamber.
His companions had finished their work with brutal efficiency.
The king was nowhere to be seen, fled through some hidden passage, most likely.
The mages were dead. The guards had been reduced to bloody smears on the stone floor.
The children were still bound in their restraints, their panicked cries echoing down the long halls of Blackstone Keep.
And I was free.
Sort of.
The man in black turned back to me, and I caught something in his expression that made my blood run cold. Not cruelty, exactly. Not the casual malice I’d seen in the king’s eyes or the calculating sadism of Master Thaddeus.
This was something else entirely. Something that looked at me and saw not a person, but a puzzle to be solved.
My fists tried to clench at the thought of becoming someone else’s tool, but the drugs were creeping deeper now, my powers ebbing with the last of the chaos.
Another cage. I was trading one master for another. The thought was a shard of ice in my gut.
“What do you want with me?” I whispered.
He smiled then, and it was like watching winter settle over a graveyard.
“Everything,” he said.