Chapter 24 – Quinton
QUINTON
The chill of the night still clung to the camp as I shrugged into my gear, the fire’s embers barely holding back the cold. Kael’s voice came low but certain from the sentry post. “Movement—northeast ridge.”
That was all it took. No shouting. No chaos. Just efficiency honed by survival. Weapons were buckled, wards were adjusted, and the camp came alive in silence. Everyone was present. Except her.
I glanced toward Azaria’s tent and saw Dain already moving. Something was wrong. I caught the snap of his voice, brittle and loud. “Fuck. I asked her not to go.”
My stomach turned to ice.
Reyna straightened, eyes scanning the dark. “She didn’t go. She stayed behind; I saw her. She went into her tent.” She turned to me, searching. “Right?”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. Because Reyna was right. I had seen Azaria near the fire. Her leathers were dark against the glow. Her smile was tired, but her presence was solid and grounding. Until it wasn’t. Until it was gone.
My heart thundered. My magic—it should’ve felt her. Even when she was far, I could sense the thread between us. But now?—
Nothing. No thrum, no heat, no pull. Like she’d been cut away entirely.
“I can’t feel her,” I said, and my voice came out raw, full of fear.
That drew every gaze.
Elias turned, tense. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, my magic can’t sense her. She’s too far.” I forced the words out. She’s alive. The words tasted like a lie. I didn’t know that. I was telling myself that, because the alternative was a door I couldn’t open and still function.
Dain’s cold voice cut in. “How did she get past the wards without any of you noticing?”
Kael’s head snapped up. “The wards recognized her. They’d let her through without triggering because she’s supposed to be able to.” He paused, face pale. “But I should’ve felt the passage. So should Lirael. There should’ve been... something.”
“Nothing stirred,” Lirael whispered, hands trembling. “Not a flicker.”
“She must’ve slipped through,” Kael said, voice tight.
“No one can do that,” Reyna muttered, almost pleading.
I didn’t answer. Because Azaria wasn’t no one.
Dain was already strapping on his sword belt, eyes burning with fury. “We go after her. Now.”
Kael moved to reinforce the wards. Lirael’s hands danced, muttering a spell with trembling fingers. Reyna cursed and checked her knives. Thorne tightened his grip on his longsword. No one asked what came next. No one needed to.
This wasn’t about a captain gone missing. This was Azaria. And she wouldn’t leave us. Not willingly. Not like this.
Something was deeply wrong.
We crashed through the forest, following the trail of broken branches and trampled undergrowth. My lungs burned. My legs screamed. But I kept running. Then?—
My magic latched on. The thread snapped taut between us. Her blood called to mine, and I felt her?—
Wrong.
The sensation slammed into me like a fist to the chest. I stumbled, nearly going down.
I caught myself on a tree, gasping. Her blood was burning.
Not the warm pulse I knew, not the steady rhythm that sang through my veins whenever she was near.
This was heat like fever, like poison, like something eating her from the inside out.
It scorched my senses. Made my magic recoil.
“Quinton!” Dain’s voice was sharp.
I shoved off the tree, kept running. “She’s close, go!”
The air reeked of death and blood. We burst into the clearing and saw them—hounds, massive and twisted, closing in on a figure pinned beneath corpses.
Azaria.
She was on the ground, on her back, her dagger raised against the dark.
Hound corpses littered the clearing—seven, maybe eight—but the ones still living were closing in.
Five of them, massive and coordinated, moving in formation around a lead hound that watched with red eyes burning with something worse than hunger.
She’d fought through the first wave alone. Her body was giving out. I could feel it through my magic—her pulse stuttering, her blood screaming with exhaustion and something else, something wrong that pulsed cold beneath every heartbeat.
“Move!” Dain roared and lunged.
Kael hit the nearest hound at a dead sprint, blade driving through its spine. Thorne’s longsword cleaved through another’s neck. My blood magic ripped the last three pack-hounds apart in a gory spray.
I moved for the lead hound. The one that had hung back. The one that was still watching her even as the squad tore through its pack. But Dain got there first. He drove his blade through its skull with a snarl that sounded more like a furious animal than him, and it dropped.
It was over in seconds. The silence afterward was deafening.
I wanted to go to her. Every part of me. But Dain was already there, along with Thorne. They heaved the dead weight off her: two corpses, heavy and slick with gore. She gasped, rolled, and scrambled upright.
She was smeared in blood, her braid coming undone, dagger still clenched in her hand.
She gagged. Vomited. Muttered something about the hounds stinking, doubled over again, retching until she could hardly breathe.
I breathed in. Blood, copper, churned earth. The smell of a battlefield, nothing more. Nothing that would make her react like that. She was smelling something we couldn’t.
Her face twisted. Her knees buckled. Dain was there in a heartbeat, catching her as a racking cough tore through her chest?—
Blood.
Red splattered the ground at her feet. More ran down her side, soaking her leathers, sticky and dark.
“Is anyone else injured?” Dain barked, holding her upright as her eyes rolled back.
“No,” Elias called. “Just her.”
Panic twisted in my gut. I moved without thinking; dropped to my knees next to a hound’s corpse, shoved aside the blood-slick paw, pressed my hand to its side. I closed my eyes and cast.
I knew it before the sensation fully formed.
The taste flooded my mouth—bitter and freezing, a cold that burned—and I was back in the lower pens of Draevenholt, watching the handlers drag out a man who’d gotten too close to the breeding cages.
The rot had been in his skin by then. Black lines crawled up his arms like ink in water. He hadn’t lasted long.
Abyssal corruption. I’d seen enough of it in those years they were grooming me for the rank of general.
Seen what it did to blood, to flesh, to the minds of the people it touched.
The generals carried it willingly, let it fuse with their magic, and wore it like armor.
For anyone else, it was a death sentence.
I hadn’t felt this darkness since I left Dravareth.
My eyes flew open, bile rising in my throat. “Fuck,” I spat, shoving off the ground.
Kael’s voice cut through the chaos. “What is it?”
“They’re saturated with abyssal magic,” I said, my voice sounding cold and hollow. I couldn’t look away from Azaria’s limp body in Dain’s arms. “It’s in their blood,” I said, my throat closing around the words. “It’s in her now.”
Silence.
Dain, voice like ice: “How bad?”
“Bad.”
Elias swore viciously. Reyna’s fire magic flared, sparks scattering.
“Thorne, Kael!” I barked, pointing to one of the hounds. “Secure that one—we’ll need it. Reyna, burn the rest!”
Flames flashed behind me as Reyna ignited the corpses.
Dain was already moving, Azaria cradled against his chest. I kept pace beside him. Her face was white, her lips blue, her head lolling. Her breathing was shallow and ragged. Crimson streaked her throat and pooled at her collarbone. Her hand twitched once, then fell still.
I couldn’t feel her the way I always did. Her blood—normally a quiet song under my skin—was dim and fading, corrupted like a candle guttering in the wind.
I knew what that rot did. I knew how fast it moved. And everyone I’d seen it touch in Dravareth had died. And we were a day’s ride from anyone who might know what to do.
“Hold on,” I muttered, matching Dain’s stride as we barreled through the trees. “Hold on, Azaria. A little longer.”
The camp loomed ahead. We crossed the wards.
“Clear the tent!” Dain shouted.
Elias yanked the flap back, and we rushed inside. Dain lowered her onto the cot as gently as he could. I dropped to my knees, searching for her pulse with magic and panic. Her blood still whispered to me, but it was faint. Twisted.
I clenched my fists, shaking.
Not her. Not like this.