Chapter 39 Revenant #2
The steady whoosh of blood I had grown accustomed to in every human body—a soft, constant tide beneath skin—hitched, then broke rhythm entirely.
The current within him turned chaotic, misfiring in frantic, uneven bursts.
His heart fluttered wildly against the cage of his ribs, no longer driven by fear of me alone but by a dawning, animal awareness that something vital was betraying him from within.
His eyes widened—not in defiance now, but in confusion.
Still, stubbornness carried him forward.
“I thought he'd f-forget you when I sent him away.” The words assembled themselves in his mind, but his mouth lagged behind, clumsy and uncooperative.
One corner of his lips dragged lower than the other.
“I d-didn't c-care that he'd s-sired a brat in the village.”
The scent of him shifted—acrid, threaded now with rot of failing flesh. His hand lifted as if to steady himself, but it rose too slowly, fingers curling inward against his will. The predator in me recognized the moment before the man did. Something in his brain had torn.
The boyar's blood pressure dipped—slowed—and then surged violently, his body scrambling for a rhythm it could no longer hold.
A thin rope of spittle gathered at the corner of his mouth.
I felt it then: his mind cleaving, one half struggling to reason with an enemy, the other half slipping, confused, trying desperately to understand what was happening inside him.
“I've—I—tried to arrange his marriage twi—twice,” he forced out, each word a battle.
“And he…he refused both women. Sss—sssaid he'd never forgive me.”
A chill crept over the left side of his body, the blood there faltering, failing to reach the far half of his mind. The muscles on that side of his face—so tight with scorn a breath ago—went slack, sagging in a slow, inevitable melt.
Had fear done this to him? If it had, I felt no guilt.
Drago took a few steps around the desk before his knees buckled, one hand reaching out as if I might steady him.
The irony of it almost made me laugh—this man who had destroyed my life now seeking my help.
His eyes widened in the instant he understood, whether surprise that his legs no longer held him or that I wasn't going to catch him, I couldn't say.
The great and powerful Drago Burián fell to the cold stone floor like a tottering child, and I watched.
“I was so na?ve…thinking our dear boyar would protect the people he governed,” I mused as I walked slowly around the desk.
“How wrong I was. You protect only those who can serve you—never the low-born, never the poor, even when we pay your taxes and your rent for the land beneath our feet. All this time, you let us believe the danger to our way of life came from the Ottoman Empire.” I circled his slumped form, the only arm his failing body still answered to braced against the floor, holding him up by sheer stubborn will.
I saw his gaze flick toward the small bell resting at the edge of his desk—the one he'd used to have me dragged out of this room in what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Oh…would you like me to ring it?” I teased, my voice a pleasant singsong.
“Shall I summon one of your servants? Or Caius? Yes—Caius I think.” I nodded as I reached for the bell.
“What a good idea.” The delicate chime that followed was so light, so dainty, it felt almost absurd—an oddly feminine sound for the monstrosity who wielded it.
I turned as the door creaked open and caught the eye of the servant—the same young girl I'd encountered upon entering. I slipped into her mind before her second step crossed the threshold, stilling her like an insect caught in tree sap.
“Fetch Caius,” I murmured. “The boyar is unwell. Tell no one. Go straight to him.”
Her expression slackened, obedient, and she turned on her heel without another sound. The girl did a small curtsy to me before heading out of the room, closing the door behind her, just as if I'd asked her to bring me mulled wine.
I looked down at the boyar, his body crumpled on the floor.
“Ppp—please. Don't let him sss—see me like this,” he begged, words slurring, his pride leaking out of him as surely as the strength from his limbs.
“He will see you like this,” I said. “And so will every soul in this house.” I crouched beside him, letting him see the truth in my eyes. “After what you stole from me, did you really think I'd spare you a moment of dignity?”
He whimpered. The sound might once have startled me—might have fractured something inside me to hear fear in the voice of Drago Burián. I moved closer to him. He flinched as I neared, shrinking into himself, as if proximity alone might draw blood. I did not touch him. Not yet.
Behind the desk, the world looked different.
A map lay spread across its surface, thick parchment pinned at the corners with brass weights to keep the edges from curling.
Inked roads branched like veins. Forests were rendered in dark crosshatch.
My gaze snagged on a mark pressed hard enough to score the paper—a village an hour's ride to the east. Marked?
Or targeted? I leaned forward with interest. Was this what Serban had spoken of?
A few moments later, the library door creaked open.
Caius stepped inside. His eyes were wide with worry—real worry, desperate and raw, when they landed on his father prone on the floor.
It transformed his face, the one I'd glanced these past months in the village, from afar.
Drawn, hollowed, usually drunk or feeling the effects of the night before.
Now, just for the briefest moment, I saw the man I had once believed him to be.
Then he saw me. Standing behind his father's desk. Concern twisted into confusion. Confusion sharpened into disbelief. And then—like a crack splitting stone—something surfaced beneath it. “Magda…” My name left his mouth like a desperate prayer.
I studied him in silence. How many nights had I imagined this moment? Confrontation. Answers. Regret. He looked between me and his father, taking in the pallor, the tremor in Drago's hand. Understanding dawned in him far faster than it had in the old man. “You're alive,” he breathed.
Alive. The word scraped at my mind. “I was,” I said softly. “I am no longer.”
Caius took a tentative step forward. “Magda, whatever you think—“
I lifted one finger. He stopped. “You will not lie to me,” I said, my voice calm and terrible in its restraint. “Not in this room. Not after what your father ordered while you stood by with your head bowed.”
His gaze flicked to the map on the desk. He saw the mark. Confusion crossed his face. Good. Let him question the kind of legacy he'd turned a blind eye to.
He looked again to his father, slumped there between us, drool spilling from the slack corner of his mouth, his body half-collapsed—a puppet with its strings cut.
“I was just speaking with your father when he was suddenly struck by some kind of…palsy,” I said, all innocence, lifting one shoulder in a small shrug.
Caius reeked of alcohol, his hair as disheveled as it had been every time I'd seen him since his return. But despite the drink clinging to him, his eyes were clear. Whatever else he'd drowned, he had not drowned his mind.
“I told him I'd dealt with Ivar and his men,” I said evenly, nodding again toward his father.
“After that, he confessed. Why he had your daughter killed. Why he murdered your closest friend.” I held Caius's gaze.
“He was afraid he was losing his hold on you. And once he was rid of me, he believed he could pull you back into line. That you would simply forget us.”
Caius went pale—truly pale—and then slowly turned to look at his father. The expression on his face was not confusion. It was betrayal.
“Your father hasn't protected the people of our area,” I said quietly. “He's used us to protect his interests.”
Caius's jaw tightened, but he didn't interrupt.
“The attack the day we were at the lake—“ I let the memory hang between us: sunlight on water, laughter, the last uncomplicated afternoon we'd known.
The beginning of the end, though we hadn't understood it then.
“He orchestrated it,” I finished. “Manufactured the threat. Used fear to tighten his hold, let the innocent pay the price with their lives.”
I watched him absorb it, saw the shift behind his eyes—the slow churn of reckoning. Belief warred with denial, each refusing to yield ground. For a moment, I considered pressing harder. Forcing the truth past whatever defenses he still clung to.
But I didn't. Conviction born of coercion would never hold. If he was going to face what his father had done—what he had failed to see—he would have to arrive there on his own.
“Control,” I said. “That's all it's ever been about.” I let him sit with that truth for a moment before I continued.
“It's time to become the man you were meant to be, Caius—the man our daughter could have loved, the man Dani believed you were. It isn't too late. Not yet.”
The words left me softly, weighted with everything we had lost—and everything he might still salvage.
I shook my head once, slow and deliberate.
“I don't know if he will recover,” I said, glancing at his father's slumped form.
“But he is your responsibility now.” My gaze returned to Caius.
“You can keep drowning in guilt, drinking yourself toward an early grave…or you can rise and become the leader your father never was.”
He looked stricken, but his eyes never left me.
“But hear me—you must lead all our people.
Not just the wealthy, not just those who can serve your family's ambitions. All of them. The poor. The sick. The ones your father ignored.” I took a step closer, letting him see the truth of what I'd become, and what I expected of him.
“Be better, Caius. Be the man he was not.
Because if you won't…if you choose cowardice again…then so help me, I will be the one to put you in your grave.” I let my eyes flare with that unholy fire—silent, inhuman, unmistakable—the living embodiment of my threat.
Caius stared at me, eerily still, and then looked down at his father. Disgust carved hard lines into his features, but beneath it was something else—something that had been festering for years. At last, he tore his gaze from his father and looked at me.
The man who met my eyes was not the boy I had once loved, nor the broken creature who had drowned himself in wine and grief. He looked like someone standing at the edge of his own reckoning. The blue of his eyes, once bright with mischief, now clouded, haunted…yet in their depths, a spark caught.
He swallowed hard, his throat working, and for a fleeting instant I saw the boy he had been—golden, untested, full of promise. A boy who once dreamed—until he chose obedience over love, chasing a father's approval that was never worth winning.
“I don't know if I can live up to what you're asking,” he said, his voice roughened by more than drink. “And if I fail them again—Dani and Anca—“ His gaze shifted to his father, collapsed on the floor. “—then I deserve the grave.”