Chapter 52 Blood
Blood
Cold comes first, a hollow draining from the center outward, as though my body has been unthreaded and left to unravel. Sound reaches me before light ever does, cloth pressing hard against my skin, low voices overlapping as they speak.
“She is still bleeding.”
“Hold it there.”
The scent of iron is thick. It coats the back of my tongue. My side burns in a distant, pulsing rhythm that does not feel entirely attached to me.
“She will not survive without blood.”
“She has lost too much,” the healer says, breath tight with urgency. “And her magic is consuming what remains. If we do not replace it, she will die.”
A heavy silence follows.
Then Colsar. “Brother,” he says, his voice low and controlled.
Sevrin meets him in that silence and answers just as low. “I know.”
Nothing more, only quiet understanding passing between them.
Footsteps shift and doors open somewhere beyond the chamber.
I drift closer to the surface of myself as raised voices approach.
“I will not,” Yvara says angrily. “Do not even suggest it.”
“She is failing,” the healer insists. “There is no other option.”
“She is garbage,” Yvara snaps. “She is not worth even a drop of my blood.”
“She is the Princess of our realm,” Sevrin replies, voice stripped of warmth.
“She is a whore’s daughter,” Yvara shoots back. “Why are you all so bent out of shape over her? And you would expect me to give her my blood?”
“Yes.” The answer comes without hesitation.
“You would have me do it even if it harms me?” Yvara demands. “Even if it harms the child?”
“Yes.” Sevrin’s voice is sure and calm.
Yvara inhales to continue her protest and the sound cuts short, as though something has tightened around her throat.
The air in the room tightens in a way I now recognize as Colsar’s power. His voice moves through the pressure. “You have taken enough from her. Consider this your penance.”
The invisible force eases just enough for Yvara to gasp. “I will remember this,” she whispers.
“I expect you will,” Sevrin says.
She is brought closer. Even half lost, I feel her presence near the bed. The heavy perfume. The tremor of fury barely contained beneath royal composure.
Cool hands grip my arm, then the quick bite of a needle. For a moment, I feel nothing, then warmth pours into me. My magic stirs instantly, starved and reaching, drawing from the new current with instinctive hunger.
“It is taking,” the healer breathes.
It moves through my veins, down my spine, across my ribs. The wound at my side ignites as though something molten has been poured through it.
Yvara makes a strained sound. “This is enough.”
“It is not,” the healer answers. “Her magic is pulling it faster than we can measure.”
The hunger inside me deepens, no longer reaching but consuming, dragging more from her whether I will it or not.
Yvara sways. “You are killing me,” she says, her voice unsteady now. “Stop this.”
The healer murmurs something urgent to the King.
Then Colsar. “Enough.”
The word carries finality, and the flow slows, then stops. The King remains silent. The warmth inside me does not vanish. It moves through me, catching what was slipping and holding me together.
The healer presses fingers to my throat. “She is stabilizing.”
Sound grows clearer. The ceiling above me resolves into fractured light.
My eyelids lift halfway. For a moment the room does not make sense, only the sensation at my throat, his fingers there, careful rather than hesitant.
I remember it dimly, the brush of metal, the careful way he lifted the chain as though even that small movement might be too much for me.
When I look down, the ring rests once more at my throat.
Yvara stands beside the bed, pale beneath her fury, one hand braced over the curve of her stomach.
Humiliation passes across her features before it hardens into something colder.
Our eyes meet, and hers are full of hatred.
I understand in that instant that she would have watched me die without regret.
Movement draws my attention as Colsar stands at the foot of the bed, blood dark against his skin from earlier.
He does not speak, he simply looks at me.
Then he moves toward me without haste, as if anything abrupt might fracture the fragile certainty that has just been won.
His hand finds mine and closes around it, warm and unyielding, anchoring rather than soothing.
His thumb brushes the ring where it rests against my throat, a quiet confirmation that it is still there.
He offers no reassurance and gives no explanation. He remains beside me, and that is enough. And in the quiet that follows, with Yvara’s resentment still hanging in the air and the political consequences already forming beyond these walls, I understand something far more dangerous than affection.
They chose me. And she will never forgive it.
Darkness gathers again at the edges of my vision, but this time it does not feel like falling. It feels like being held in place by something that has decided I am not permitted to leave.
And I let it take me.