Chapter 38
Cael’s tour of the compound lasted approximately seven minutes, which told me everything I needed to know about how much he trusted us.
Not that I could fault him for it. We were strangers who had shown up unannounced at the edge of his settlement with a vague promise of information and no real proof of anything.
If our positions had been reversed, I would have done exactly the same thing—shown us the paths between the structures that gave the least away, steered us clear of anything worth knowing about, and called it a tour with a straight face.
It was a smart move. The kind of thing you learned to do when you’d been responsible for keeping people alive long enough to get good at it.
What I did see of the smaller structures up close was enough to hold my attention.
They were built differently than the Hold.
Rougher, more improvised. Red stone fitted against dark volcanic glass wherever the obsidian hadn’t stretched far enough, the gaps between packed with compressed earth and strips of that strange reddish timber I’d noticed earlier.
Here and there an entire log had been used as a crossbeam or a door frame, dense and dark with age, and the sight of actual wood, however alien-looking and far removed from anything I’d have called a tree back home, was startling enough that I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch it as we passed.
Our quarters were at the far edge of the settlement, tucked against the interior of the perimeter wall.
One room. Low ceiling. The walls were bare red stone, unsmoothed and close, and the space had the quality of a place that had never been intended to feel comfortable, only sufficient and necessary.
It made me think about light switches. Hot water. Doors that locked. The small, unremarkable things modern life gave us that I’d never bothered to notice before.
The furnishings were about what I’d expected.
A flat-topped block of dark stone near the wall that served as a side table, and opposite it, set low to the ground, a sleeping platform of reddish timber filled with packed earth and topped with what I could only describe as a mattress made of pure desperation.
Salvaged fabric and clothing sewn together into something wide and flat and stuffed just enough to give slightly when I pressed my hand into it.
It was, objectively, the saddest bed I had ever seen in my life.
Trace crossed the room without a word and lowered himself onto it, stretching out with his arms folded behind his head and his eyes on the ceiling. I wasn’t sure if he was testing it or simply done pretending he had any energy left to stand. Probably both.
Dominic moved to the far end of the room where a low partition of rough-cut obsidian sectioned off a narrow alcove. He ducked inside with his hands clasped loosely at his back, taking stock as though he were memorizing the dimensions of something he expected to need later.
“Basin,” he reported flatly, reappearing a moment later.
I peered past him into the alcove and frowned at the shallow basin cut into a slab of dark stone. It was filled with water and had a folded piece of cloth placed neatly beside it. It seemed like such a mundane, ordinary thing, and for some reason, the sight of it made my chest feel heavy and tight.
I stepped back into the main room and leaned against the wall.
Trace still hadn’t moved from the bed, though he had one arm draped over his eyes now.
The bond hummed between us, and I let myself sink into it, choosing to focus on that instead of the walls that suddenly felt closer than they had when we’d first walked in.
Instead of supper, and the settlement, and all the other things I hadn’t let myself think about too deeply.
“Comfortable?” said Dominic, his eyes moving to Trace with the particular brand of dry amusement he reserved for moments when he found something genuinely funny but wasn’t going to admit it.
“No.” Trace didn’t move. “But it’s better than the floor.”
“That seems debatable,” I said, eyeing the sad, stuffed-fabric situation he was laying on.
“It would be a lot better with you on it.”
He said it without missing a beat, arm still draped over his eyes, like it was the most reasonable thing anyone had said all day.
“But then we’d both be uncomfortable.”
He pushed himself upright and leaned back against the wall, his eyes sweeping over me from my bare legs all the way up to my face. “You can always lay on top of me instead.”
The warmth that moved through me was immediate and completely traitorous given our circumstances.
“Charming,” said Dominic flatly. “I see vampire purgatory has done nothing to dull your priorities.”
Trace’s dimple popped on one side as he smirked. “I’m just trying to be supportive.”
Dominic arched a brow. “Structurally?”
“Whatever helps her sleep,” said Trace, entirely unrepentant.
“How generous of you.”
A laugh caught in my throat before I could stop it, more of an exhale than anything, and I pressed my lips together against the rest of it. Something about the sound of it in this room felt wrong. Out of place. Like wearing the wrong shoes to a funeral.
“You’re both impossible,” I said, shaking my head. “Can either of you be serious for five minutes?”
“Who said I wasn’t being serious?” said Trace. “The offer stands. Anytime, any place.”
I felt my cheeks warm again, my body apparently doing whatever the hell it felt like.
“I’ll try to remember that while we’re figuring out a way out of vampire hell,” I teased, my eyes moving around the bare stone walls of the room, the low ceiling, the single basin of cold water waiting in the alcove.
I’d meant it as a joke, but the smile slipped from my face anyway as the reality of where we were settled back over me. Cael’s words from earlier were still circling, unhurried and patient, waiting for me to give them my full attention.
I slid down the wall and sat on the floor, pulling my knees up. “What do you make of Cael?” I asked, my voice dropping down to a whisper.
“He’s strategic,” answered Dominic, perusing my legs for a beat before climbing back up. “You don’t survive a place like this for forty years by being careless.”
I couldn’t argue that. “True,”
“Everything he does is in service of something. Hard to tell yet whether that something aligns with ours goals or not,” he added pointedly.
Also, true.
Trace’s eyes hadn’t left me. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking about a lot of things,” I said carefully, my eyes cutting briefly to the door before coming back. The walls in here were thin and the settlement outside was not empty and we all knew it.
Something passed between the three of us. A shared understanding, wordless and immediate. Dominic’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly, the way it did when he’d already made a decision and was simply working out the best way to execute it.
‘I know that look, angel.’ Dominic’s voice slid through my mind like a caress. ‘You’re thinking about what Cael said in the Hold.’
I stared back at him and I nodded.
“Woah. That’s new,” murmured Trace.
Dominic looked at him, his expression almost bored. “Care to elaborate?”
“I heard you.”
The room went very still.
A long beat passed where Dominic and Trace stared at each other across the space, something unreadable moving between them. I looked between the two of them, my gaze volleying back and forth.
“Heard him what?” I asked, confused as to what the hell they were talking about.
‘He can hear my voice when I mind speak to you’, said Dominic, his eyes still on Trace.
“What?” I blinked and then blinked again. “How is that possible?”
“The fuck if I know,” said Trace, looking genuinely disturbed.
Dominic was quiet for a moment, something rare enough that I noticed it. His brow creased slightly, and I could almost see the pieces moving behind his eyes. Then his head came up.
‘The anchoring spell.’
My eyes widened as Dominic’s response slid though my mind.
‘When they bound the three of us together, the spell must have tethered more than just your magic to us.’
I turned that over slowly. It made sense, in the strange, sideways logic that most things in my life seemed to operate by lately. And if it was true…
It was also very useful. For now, anyway.
‘Before we entertain anything else, we need to stick to the matter at hand,’ went on Dominic, this time, his eyes moving between me and Trace.
‘We need to see whether you can call up your Nephilim magic. If this place is bound Anakim magic, there’s a good chance it won’t be able to touch your magic allowing you to circumvent it entirely. ’
Dread moved through my stomach. I knew he was right but that didn’t make me feel any less afraid.
Because if I tried it and nothing happened—if I reached for it and found the same solid wall everything else had hit—then we were back at the beginning.
Out of ideas. Out of options. Well and truly stuck in a vampire purgatory with a dinner invitation I was already dreading.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I rasped, the thought of it practically choking me.
‘There’s only one way to find out, angel.’
“Right.” I nodded but still didn’t move.
Trace pushed off the bed and moved to crouch in front of me, his eyes level with mine as his hands slid up the outside of my knees. I felt the bond shift before he even spoke, something warm and calming moving through it, steady as a hand braced against a shaking wall.
“Whatever happens, we figure it out. That’s what we do.”
I searched his eyes, drawing from the strength I found there, and I let myself believe it too.
Not because the fear had disappeared but because but he was looking at me with that unshakeable blue-eyed certainty of his, like the outcome had already been decided and he just hadn't bothered telling the universe yet.
My anxiety loosened a notch, just enough to breathe a little more easily.
I nodded again, and this time, I meant it.
He rose to his feet in one fluid motion and pulled me up with him, his hand staying around mine for a moment longer than necessary before letting go.
Dominic had already moved closer, positioning himself at my other side without a word.
He glanced toward the small table near the wall, then reached out and picked up what sat on it.
An oil lamp of sorts, fashioned from dark stone and hammered flat at the base, its reservoir filled with dark rendered fat, still and glossy at the surface.
A short wick rose from its center, unlit and waiting.
He turned it over once in his hand, then held it out to me.
‘Try to call up your fire’, he said into my mind, and I felt Trace register it at the same moment I did. ‘Start small. Just the wick’.
I took the lamp carefully, the weight of it heavier than it looked. For a moment I just stood there holding it, the memory rising unbidden.
Caleb sitting cross-legged across from me.
The patient calm in his voice as he had guided me through it the first time.
I remembered the way he’d told me not to reach for it like I was grabbing something, but to invite it.
To picture the flame first. To feel the heat before it existed and let the magic follow the image rather than the other way around.
The strange, almost embarrassing intimacy of learning how to pull something elemental out of myself and shape it into something tangible.
I closed my eyes, letting everything fade away until there was only my thoughts and the image of the lamp. The wick at its center.
I reached inward for the same place Caleb had shown me how to find and brought the heat forward slowly, carefully, gathering it and bending it to my will just like he had taught me.
I drew the heat forward slowly, coaxing it the way you coaxed something skittish, and felt it stir somewhere deep and low, sluggish in a way it had never been before, as though I were trying to start a fire in a wet forest.
“Ignire flamma,” I murmured and then opened my eyes.
For a second, I thought nothing at all had happened. And then I saw it. A single ember, orange and trembling, clinging to existence like it wasn’t entirely sure it was allowed to be here.
My breath caught.
The ember held, flickering faintly before slowly pulling itself into a flame.
I bit down on my lip as I stared at it, the relief and the doubt arriving at exactly the same time.
Because it was there, yes. But it was also the most pitiful flame I had ever produced in my life, and if this was the full extent of what I could access in this Realm, it was not going to bring down any walls.
“Great. I managed an ember,” I said tartly, looking between them.
Dominic reached out and pinched the flame between two fingers, extinguishing it cleanly. “It’s weak,” he said. “But it’s there.”
The disappointment that moved through me was immediate and heavy. Weak wasn’t going to cut it. Weak wasn’t going to get us out of here.
Dominic seemed to read that thought immediately. “This is a good thing, angel.”
“How do you figure?”
“The Realm may be interfering with it, but it hasn’t blocked it entirely,” said Dominic, his eyes moving to the darkened wick thoughtfully. “Think of it like static cutting across a signal. But the signal itself is there. It simply isn’t coming through at full strength.”
“Try again,” said Trace, his baritone voice roughened just enough to slide under my skin.
Dominic’s eyes met mine. Use us, he said to my mind. ‘Draw as much as you need.’
Something moved through my chest that hadn’t been there a minute ago. Not quite confidence, but something that definitely wanted to be. Something that was tired of being afraid and had started looking for somewhere else to put all that energy.
I turned the lamp over in my hands and closed my eyes.
The bond stirred immediately in response, both of them suddenly present in it in a way that made the magic inside me shift and stretch toward them like a plant reaching for sunlight.
And this time, when I reached for my magic, I didn’t reach alone.
The heat came to me faster. Fuller. Like a door being pushed open from both sides at once.
Ignire flamma, I said again and then opened my eyes.
The flame that rose from the wick was small, but it was there, and it was bright, and it didn’t flicker.
Nobody said anything as we watched the flame dance between us.
“Okay,” I said quietly, a smile pulling at the corner of my mouth. “Better.”
It wasn’t enough. Not yet. But it was a start, and in a place that had spent decades convincing people that hope was futile, in that moment, it felt like everything.