Chapter 7
DAEMON
The tower’s interior was a tomb of forgotten purposes.
Dust motes danced in shafts of moonlight filtering through cracked windows, and every surface was covered in a layer of grime thick enough to write in. But it was defensible, with thick stone walls and only one entrance.
Seris hadn’t woken since the magical explosion.
I’d carried her up three flights of narrow stairs to what had once been the watchtower’s main chamber, her body limp in my arms, her breathing shallow but steady.
Now she lay on my cloak beside the cold hearth while I tried to pretend I wasn’t at my breaking point.
I had suffered worse wounds, but the curse was worse than it had ever been.
I felt her magic like a second heartbeat in my chest, a phantom rhythm that echoed my own.
Her magic called to mine even in sleep. It wasn’t natural.
This kind of soul-deep awareness took years to develop, if it developed at all.
But somehow, in the space of a few hours, we’d become linked in ways I didn’t understand.
Ways that were slowly killing me.
Each time she’d used her power, it had pulled something from me.
Not consciously. She had no idea what was happening.
But her magic recognized mine as a compatible source, drawing on my life force to fuel her wild displays of Veil-touched power.
My hands, which wouldn’t stop shaking, were a reminder of the curse’s acceleration, fed by magical demands it was never meant to handle.
I should have been furious. I should have seen her as a threat to be eliminated rather than a person to protect. Instead, I found myself checking her pulse for the third time in an hour, my fingers gentle against her throat.
Pathetic.
Rain began to fall outside, droplets striking the broken windows with sounds like distant drums. The temperature was dropping.
I could see my breath in the air, could feel the cold seeping through stone that had once held warmth but no longer remembered how.
We needed fire. Heat. Food, if I could manage it.
I left her side long enough to explore the tower’s upper levels, shadows scouting ahead to ensure we were alone. Most of the rooms were empty, picked clean by scavengers or time, but I found a stash of dry wood in what had once been a storage chamber. Old, brittle, but it would burn.
The hearth downstairs was cracked but functional.
I built the fire carefully, methodically, the way I’d been taught in those early years when survival depended on not attracting attention.
Small flames that gave heat without much light, positioned so the smoke would disperse before reaching the windows. Assassin habits die hard.
Seris stirred as warmth began to fill the chamber, her dark eyes fluttering open to find mine across the growing flames.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, her voice hoarse from magical exhaustion.
“It’s nothing.”
“Liar.” She tried to sit up and immediately winced, one hand going to her ribs where the targeting sigils had been carved. “What happened to the wolves?”
“You killed them. All of them.” I fed another stick to the fire, not meeting her eyes. “Your magic disintegrated them on a molecular level. Quite impressive, actually.”
“And nearly killed you in the process.”
It wasn’t a question. Somehow, despite being unconscious for most of it, she knew what her power had done to me. The connection between us worked both ways, she could feel my life force the same way I could feel hers.
“The risks were acceptable,” I said.
“To who?”
“To me. You’re worth more alive than dead.”
She was quiet for a moment, studying my face in the firelight. Looking for tells, probably. Signs of deception or hidden agenda.
“You’re in pain,” she observed.
“Everyone’s in pain. The trick is not letting it show.”
“Is that what they taught you? The assassins who raised you?”
I looked up sharply. I hadn’t told her about my training, hadn’t mentioned the years spent learning to kill with hands and blades and shadows. But she was watching me with those dark eyes that missed nothing, cataloging details I thought I’d hidden.
“What makes you think I was raised by assassins?”
“The way you move. Like every step is calculated, every gesture planned three moves in advance. The way you built that fire, exactly hot enough to warm us, not bright enough to be seen from outside. The scars on your arms.” She nodded toward my sleeves, torn during the fight.
“Those aren’t battle wounds. They’re training marks.
Self-inflicted, probably during lessons on pain tolerance. ”
Observant. Too observant for comfort.
“My father had little use for bastard sons,” I said finally. “Especially ones born to Fae concubines. The assassins were his way of ensuring I’d be useful rather than simply inconvenient.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven when the training started. Twelve when I made my first kill.”
Her expression didn’t change, but I caught the slight tightening around her eyes. Disgust, maybe. Or pity. Both were preferable to fear.
“What was it like?” she asked softly. “Being that young and having to take a life?”
The question caught me off guard. Most people either avoided the topic entirely or asked for gory details they could use to titillate themselves later. But Seris sounded genuinely curious, like she was trying to understand rather than judge.
“I don’t know,” I said after a moment. “After my first kill, I didn’t look back for a while. I simply accepted what I was at that point. If it hadn’t been for Kael, I would still be Shadow of the King.”
“Kael? The one with the daggers?”
“He was my combat instructor. He’s more of a brother to me than men born of the same father.
” I poked at the fire with a stick, watching sparks spiral toward the ceiling.
“He taught me that killing wasn’t about panic, anger, or cruelty.
It was about precision. About ending threats efficiently so you could go home to the people who mattered. ”
“Is that what you were doing tonight? Protecting people who matter?”
I looked at her across the flames, this girl who’d nearly killed me trying to save me, who carried enough power to reshape the world or destroy it entirely. She was beautiful in the firelight.
“Maybe,” I said finally. I couldn’t tell her that I was sick of the blood. Sick of the dying breaths. Sick of it all.
She shifted closer to the fire, and I caught the slight hiss of pain that escaped her lips. The sigils were still healing, the burns angry and inflamed despite the treatment they’d received.
“Let me see,” I said before I could stop myself.
“What?”
“Your wounds. You’re favoring your left side, and I can smell an infection starting.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re stubborn. There’s a difference.” I pulled medical supplies from my pack, clean cloth, healing salve, a bottle of something that would sterilize wounds and probably hurt like hell. “Turn around.”
She hesitated, and I realized what I was asking. Trust. Vulnerability. The chance to tend to injuries that required removing her shirt, leaving her exposed in ways that went beyond the physical.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said quietly. “I swear it.”
Something in my voice must have convinced her, because she slowly turned her back to me and began working at the ties of her torn shift. When she pulled the fabric away from her shoulders, I bit back a curse at what I saw.
The targeting sigils were worse than I’d thought. They were carved deep. The symbols formed intricate patterns across her back and shoulders, still red and angry despite the passage of time.
But it was the older scars that made my chest tighten. Whip marks. Burn scars. Evidence of years of systematic abuse that had nothing to do with the recent torture.
“Who did this to you?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Which scars?” she replied with bitter humor. “I’ve collected quite a few over the years.”
“The old ones. The ones that aren’t from the ritual chamber.”
She was quiet for a moment, and I thought she might not answer.
“When my parents died, I ran. I was only a child with no way to defend myself. I was caught by slave traders. I spent my childhood as a slave. I escaped when I was sixteen and went on the run. The older scars are from those days.”
I began cleaning the targeting sigils with movements that were probably gentler than necessary, trying to keep my touch clinical rather than intimate.
But it was impossible to ignore the way she shivered when my fingers traced the edges of each burned symbol, impossible not to notice how soft her skin was beneath the scars.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.
“For what?”
“For what my people did to you. For what my father’s kingdom has cost you.” I dabbed healing salve onto the worst of the burns, trying to ignore the way she tensed at the contact. “For the fact that saving my life is probably going to make yours considerably more complicated.”
She laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “My life has been complicated since the day I was born. At least now the complications are interesting.”
“Is that what you call nearly dying in a ritual chamber? Interesting?”
“I call it better than rotting in a cell for the rest of my life.” She turned to face me, pulling her shift back over her shoulders. “Besides, you saved me. That has to count for something.”
“I saved you because I need you. There’s nothing noble about it.”
“Isn’t there?” she studied my face with those dark eyes that saw too much. “You could have taken me by force. Could have threatened me, tortured me, used chains with suppression magic to bind me completely. But you didn’t.”
“That would have made you useless.”