Chapter 18 Kielyne #2
He’s fast—faster than anything his size should be—his axes singing through the air, carving through the first blight soldier before it can react. Blood sprays across the flagstones. Another soldier falls, then another, his movements brutal and efficient.
But there are too many. For every one he cuts down, two more close in. They don’t fight like men—they fight like puppets, heedless of pain, uncaring of wounds that would drop any normal soldier.
And Hadrin is speaking words I don’t understand—old language, harsh syllables that make the air shimmer and the sigil brands flare bright as torches.
Chains erupt from the stone floor.
Not plain chains—blight chains. But this blight is different. It’s dark red and not black. Hadrin has modified this somehow. Metal links that glow wrap around his arms, his legs, his throat, dragging him down with inhuman strength.
He roars, fighting them, muscles straining until veins stand out on his arms. But the chains tighten with every movement, cutting into his flesh, the blight magic sizzling where it touches his skin.
His knees hit the flagstones. The impact echoes through the cathedral like thunder.
“BLORJORN!” I lunge toward him, but a blight soldier catches my arm, its grip cold and impossibly strong. Another grabs my other arm. They hold me in place, force me to watch as he’s dragged to his knees before Hadrin.
“Let her go.” Blorjorn’s voice is a snarl, choked by the chain around his throat. “This is between you and me, Hadrin. She’s not part of this.”
“She became part of this the moment she saved your soldier.” Hadrin crouches in front of him, sigil brands still glowing in his hands.
“The moment she let you bind her with blood magic. The moment she chose an orc over her own species.” His voice drops to something soft, almost intimate.
“She made her choice. Now she’ll live with the consequences. ”
He presses one of the brands against Blorjorn’s chest.
The scream that tears from Blorjorn’s throat is inhuman. Agony incarnate, the sound of a soul being ripped apart. His whole body convulses, the chains rattling, his massive frame arching against the pain.
And I feel it.
Fire rips through my own chest, stealing my breath, dropping me to my knees. The oath mark on my arm blazes with sudden heat—not the warning pulse I’ve felt before, but something violent, invasive, clawing at the edges of my soul.
“Fascinating.” Hadrin watches me writhe with clinical interest. “The brand affects her too. The oath goes deeper than I thought.”
He pulls the brand away. The pain recedes—not completely, but enough that I can breathe again. Blorjorn sags in his chains, gasping, his face ashen beneath the green of his skin.
“That was a taste.” Hadrin rises, brushing dust from his uniform with one hand.
“A preview of what’s to come if you continue to refuse me.
The full process takes hours. Days, sometimes, depending on the strength of the oath.
” His gaze finds mine. “How long do you think you can watch him suffer before you break?”
I can’t answer. My voice is gone, stolen by the echoes of shared agony still reverberating through my body.
“The execution happens at dawn.” Hadrin’s voice is matter-of-fact.
Businesslike. “You have until then to accept my offer. If you agree, he dies quickly, cleanly, and you serve my army as a healer. If you refuse—” He shrugs.
“The brands will do their work. The oath will break. And you’ll watch him die screaming while you feel every moment of it. ”
He turns to leave. “Release her,” he says to his men. “She isn’t going anywhere.” The soldiers holding me let go. I collapse to the flagstones, gasping, my whole body shaking.
“Choose wisely, healer. His life is in your hands. And I am having too much fun making him suffer. Watching you see him dying before your eyes.”
Across the nave, Blorjorn hangs in his chains, barely conscious, the strange blight magic still eating at his flesh.
The ward walls shimmer around us—invisible barriers we can’t break, trapping us in this ruined cathedral with no way out. Dawn is hours away. Hours to find a solution. Hours to watch him suffer.
I crawl to him.
My hands shake as I reach for his face, tilt it toward me, force him to meet my gaze. His skin is too hot where the chains touch, blistered and raw, the blight eating at him slowly.
“Stay with me.” My voice cracks. “Blorjorn, stay with me. I’m going to figure this out.”
His dark gaze finds mine. Clouded with pain, but still him—still fierce, still stubborn, still the orc captain who claimed me in chains and freed me with blood.
“Don’t.” The word is barely a rasp. “Don’t let him... take you. Not for me.”
“I’m not leaving you.” I press my forehead to his, feel his labored breath against my lips. “You hear me? I’m not leaving you to die in this place.”
His hand fights the chains, strains upward until his fingers brush my cheek. The touch is featherlight, trembling.
“Kielyne.” My name on his lips, rough and broken. “You have to—”
“No.” I catch his hand, hold it against my face. “Whatever you’re about to say, no. I didn’t bleed for you in the Bonefields just to watch Hadrin kill you. I didn’t save your life to lose you here.”
Something shifts in his expression. Pain, yes, but something else underneath—wonder, maybe. Disbelief.
“Why?” The question is barely audible. “Why do you care what happens to me?”
I don’t have an answer. Or rather, I have too many answers, tangled together in a knot I can’t unravel. Because you protected me. Because you saw me. Because when you touch me, I feel like I’m finally home after years of wandering.
I can’t say any of that. Can’t name what’s happening in my chest, this fierce desperate thing that refuses to let him go.
“Because you’re mine.” The words surprise me as much as they surprise him. “You claimed me, remember? That goes both ways.”
The ghost of a smile crosses his pain-ravaged face. “Stubborn woman.”
“You like it.”
The chains yank him back down. His hand falls away. His eyes squeeze shut against a fresh wave of agony.
I sit back on my heels, staring at the man who changed everything, and make a decision.
Hadrin wants me to choose between surrender and watching Blorjorn die. But those aren’t the only options. The blood oath binds us—his life to mine, his pain to mine, his fate to mine. If Hadrin’s brands can attack the oath from the outside, then maybe—
Maybe I can use it from the inside.
The oath mark pulses on my arm, hot and insistent, as if responding to my thoughts. I’ve used it before—channeled my blood to break his fever, to purge the blight from his veins. Morra said the magic goes both ways.
What if I can turn it into a weapon?
I don’t know if it will work. I don’t know if I’ll survive trying. But I know one thing with absolute certainty:
I am not letting him die.
Whatever this thing is between us—this tangled mess of want and trust and something I’m terrified to name—I’m not ready to lose it. I’m not ready to lose him.
Dawn is hours away.
I have until then to figure out how to save us both.