Chapter 47
Then she saw it.
The scene that had haunted her for years. The one that followed her into sleep and waited for her when she woke.
Her parents lay crumpled on the floor, their bodies drenched in their own blood, their faces frozen in expressions she had never been able to forget. Her brother lying beside them, small and still and impossibly fragile. The air was thick with the metallic scent of death.
And the guard stood over her.
The same guard she remembered killing.
The same moment she had replayed a thousand times.
Only—this time, it was different.
This time, she saw the truth.
The knight’s hand moved faster than she remembered. The knife plunged forward and buried itself in her chest, driven to the hilt between her ribs.
Ellaryn screamed.
She felt it.
The pain was blinding, absolute, stealing the air from her lungs as her body collapsed beneath her weight. She could feel her heart stutter around the blade, could feel the warmth of her own blood pouring out of her.
The world went black.
She died.
She was sure of it.
And then—
She came back.
Her lungs seized as air rushed into them again, violent and burning. Her eyes flew open, and she stared up at the knight as something inside her surged and roared and refused to be extinguished.
Defying everything.
Defying death.
Her hand rose, fingers wrapping around the knife still buried in her chest.
She pulled it free.
She heard the knight gasp.
And before he could run, before he could understand what he had done, she drove the blade across his throat. She wanted to make him pay. Wanted to make him suffer.
His blood sprayed across her face, and then he fell.
Ellaryn collapsed beside him, gasping, shaking.
The wound in her chest was still there, but it was healing, and the pain subsided quickly.
She watched it. Watched the torn flesh knit itself back together, watched the blood that spilt from her, slow, stop, and then seal her closed.
She had remembered it wrong.
No—
She had been made to remember it wrong.
The King had twisted it.
Poisoned it.
Rewritten her mind and memories.
He had wanted her to believe he had made her.
That he owned her.
That her immortality belonged to him.
But it didn’t.
It never had.
She had always been this way.
She had always had the power within her.
She thought of Xander’s expression the night they met—the confusion, the disbelief that had flickered across his face when she told him the King had made her immortal.
But she had clung to the lie. The one she’d been fed over and over again until it rooted itself deep in her bones.
Chosen. Spared.
Special.
Her mind raced back through it all—the bottles of blood, the liquid that gave him power. How did he have an endless supply in a city completely void of Potentials?
A sickening thought curdled low in her gut.
Her blood.
The King was drinking her blood.
The realisation settled slowly, horrifically.
Every punishment. Every blade driven into her skin under the guise of discipline. Every act of “correction” for disobedience.
Excuses.
He hadn’t been punishing her.
He had been harvesting her.
Drawing her blood carefully. Deliberately.
She had thought he saw a darkness in her—that he had spared her because he recognised something cruel and powerful and worthy. That her family had died because they were weak… and she had lived because she was not.
But now the truth stood bare and merciless before her.
He hadn’t favoured her.
He hadn’t loved her.
He hadn’t been obsessed with who she was.
He had been obsessed with what she was.
A battery.
A well that never ran dry.
A toy he could break over and over again because it would always mend. Because it would always bleed.
With her, his power was infinite.
As long as she endured, so did he.
And all those years she had mistaken possession for preference.
She had never been chosen.
She had been drained.
It was only a matter of time before Potentials became immortal, she thought.
The ultimate mutation.
Power that no longer burned out. Blood that no longer shimmered. A body that adapted faster than it could be destroyed.
Survival perfected.
Her thoughts drifted back to the infant in the cot—the stillness, the ordinary red of his veins beneath fragile skin. No shimmer. No telltale gleam.
Evolution had learned to hide.
Ellaryn gasped.
Her eyes snapped open.
The throne room came crashing back into existence around her.
She was in Xander’s arms.
Sailen was beside her, clutching her tightly, his face buried against her shoulder.
They were both holding her like they thought she would disappear.
She dragged in a breath.
Alive.