Max #2
“I don’t lie, Princess.” He said it to me alone, as though the rest weren’t there.
“I have hunted for you a very long time. These heirs are using you, nothing more. You stand above every one of them, and they’ve dressed you up and worked you like a common soldier, like a whore to be passed around.
With me, you would be my equal. My queen. The mother of my line.”
He raised a fist. A rolled parchment unfurled into the air above his open hand and hung there. With a flick of his power, a shimmering ward closed around it.
“By all means, review it. The marriage contract, signed in blood.” His smile didn’t waver. “I can see how badly you’d all like to burn it. But it’s warded against water and fire—dragon fire included—against blade and fist and spell. A blood contract cannot be unmade.”
He’d chosen this stage on purpose. The ball, the open floor, the New Columbian envoys standing witness.
As one, the heirs and I moved to the shimmering forcefield and looked through it at the thing suspended inside.
BLOOD DEED OF BINDING
Sworn in Living Blood and Sealed Beyond the Grave
Be it known to the powers of this world and the next:
That the bearer of this seal, Xander, Sovereign of the Haven, takes to wife and queen the girl-child born of House Scorpio and House Capricorn, Princess Trivia Morningstar.
That she was pledged to him before her birth, and that no law, no crown, and no death shall sever what this blood has joined.
That from their first meeting and first touch, their lives are bound into a single thread, so that what befalls the one shall befall the other.
Sworn in blood, this deed shall stand beyond water, beyond fire, beyond force, beyond spell, world without end.
At the bottom left, Xander’s signature was written not in his blood alone, but in mine—my own blood, taken when I was a baby and pressed into this contract before I had words to refuse it.
Your blood, girl. The demon in me confirmed.
“Your birth name, Princess Trivia Morningstar.” Xander smiled, as though savoring it. “Born to two Houses. Born with a lock of white in your hair. There are only so many ways to mark a lost heir.”
“That’s not my name.” My voice came out harsh and cold. “Neither is the other one.”
The heirs leaned in. Disbelief, shock, and horror marked every face.
Then I saw the bottom right. A second name in dried-blood ink.
Hecate. Head of House Scorpio.
My pounding heart dropped straight through the floor.
Hecate. The White Witch.
I lifted my head and looked at the heirs, the terror in me too large for words. I needed them to deny it. To tell me that the ink lied, that blood could be forged. I couldn’t carry her blood in my veins. I couldn’t. Oh gods.
They looked back at me. Nikolai had gone marble-still. Caspian’s face had closed in a way I’d never seen from him before. Aelindor’s jaw was set hard, his blue eyes icing over as they moved between me and the contract.
Then my eyes found Drakken’s.
Dark fury burned in them. No molten gold. No dragon rising. Just cold gray. I stood there and waited for it—for him to cross the floor and close his hand around my throat and end the White Witch’s bloodline here and now.
“Nothing changes.” Aelindor’s voice dropped and pulled me back. “Max is ours. She always was. She always will be. She is a daughter of the Zodiac Covenant, the same as every soldier in this hall.”
Gratitude landed somewhere behind my ribs, but it didn’t bring me relief.
It didn’t void the contract. It didn’t change the fact that I’d been sold.
I’d clawed my way out of that mine, broken the chains off my own wrists, and the White Witch had sold me into bondage before I ever drew my first breath.
The heirs traded a look and hurled their combined power at the field around the marriage contract. The force of it should have leveled a wall. It struck the shimmer and rebounded, harmless, the parchment inside untouched.
They turned to Xander, grim-faced and murderous. If they destroyed him, they nullified the contract. My hand went to my Coldiron armguard, ready to drive it through my new slaver’s heart.
Xander was faster. He flicked his wrist, claws sliding free from his fingertips. Caspian’s growl climbed up out of his chest, his body already half-shifting, ready to tear the Collector open. Steel sang as the heirs drew their blades.
One more breath and the ballroom would have become a slaughterhouse.
Xander dragged his claws across his left forearm. The skin parted. Blood welled and ran.
A bright line of pain tore open across my own arm, and I cried out before I could stop it. I looked down. There—on my left forearm, in the exact place he’d cut himself—a gash had opened in my skin, and my blood was running down to drip from my fingers.
The heirs stared at the wound. The color drained from every face as the truth of it landed hard.
“My apologies, Princess.” Xander didn’t sound sorry in the least. “I had no wish to ruin your gown, but it couldn’t be helped. I’ll buy you a thousand more.”
Nikolai broke toward me, already tearing a strip from his sleeve, but Aelindor reached me first and bound the wound with his handkerchief, his hands steady and his eyes anything but.
“What the fuck is this?” Drakken demanded. “What kind of witchcraft?” The dragon’s rage strained at its tether, desperate to burn the Collector to ash.
“I knew you’d want me dead the moment I revealed the contract,” Xander said, unbothered.
“You’d break every rule of the Tri-Crown Accord just to own her.
So I had to show you—you cannot kill me without killing Max in the same stroke.
The instant I touched her tonight, the blood contract activated.
Our lives are now bound as one. Hers to mine, in life and in death. ”
The heirs drew into a ring around me, a wall of bodies between the Collector and where I stood.
Behind them our warriors fanned out. Across the floor, Xander’s men gathered at his back.
The President of New Columbia and his envoy held the third side, the three kingdoms forming a tense triangle with me at the center of it.
“The lost heir,” the President of New Columbia said quietly, staring at me. “Surfaced here, tonight, in front of all of us.” He exhaled slowly. “Then the prophecy is true after all. This changes everything.”
“One last thing.” Xander smiled. “From this moment, no one lays a hand on my betrothed with desire in his heart. The contract is active. She is mine. Mine alone.”
He pressed his fingers to the cut on his arm, and the wound knit shut beneath them.
In the same breath, the gash on my own arm sealed itself closed under Aelindor’s handkerchief.
He’d made his point for the whole room to see.
Slaughter him, and I died with him. A chain forged in blood ran from his life straight into mine.
He let the ward fall and spread his arms wide.
“Good news, gentlemen.” His amber eyes glittered. “I’ll make my alliance with the Zodiac Covenant gladly, on one condition—let me carry home my treasure—Princess Morningstar.” A beat. “That, or war. The choice is yours, Highnesses.”