Chapter 18 Malachi
Malachi
The halls of the upper wing were quieter now. My footsteps echoed too loud against the floor, shadows slithering in my wake. I didn’t bother to temper the sound as I walked.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
The words I’d whispered to Kaelith still echoed in the marrow of my bones. A threat. One that would not go unanswered. The look in his eyes when I said it—that momentary flicker of something real beneath the court-polished facade—was almost worth it. Almost.
But I knew better than to poke a predator and expect it to walk away.
He’d play it off for now, but Kaelith wasn’t stupid. He would retaliate.
I ran a hand over my face, exhaling slowly as I reached the corridor near her chambers.
My fingers twitched, still remembering the weight of her body in my arms—far too light, far too mortal.
Her scent still lingered in the fabric of my coat: wild rose, old paper, something faintly electric beneath it all.
She had collapsed the moment Kaelith said it—bride. He’d known exactly what he was doing. He always did.
The shadows around me curled tighter, reacting to the roil beneath my skin. I pushed them down. Controlled. Contained. Lurking, as they always did, just beneath the edge of my restraint.
She should’ve been just another complication. A pawn to move or remove. And yet…
I had felt it the moment we met—a tether. Something that pulsed in her bones. Threads of fate knotted around her like a snare, humming with power I hadn’t heard in centuries.
Eryndis. No one spoke her name anymore. But I knew the taste of her magic. The scent of secrets buried in twilight.
“You’re pacing,” came a voice from behind me. Lysara. Still dressed from dinner, her shawl had slipped from one shoulder, revealing the pale curve of a scar I knew well. A relic from another rebellion. Another lifetime.
“I’m not pacing,” I said.
“You are. Which means you’re either plotting something reckless, or regretting something you already said.” She crossed her arms, her crimson hair catching the warm glow of the sconces. "Please tell me it’s the latter. I’m too tired to clean up a war tonight."
“I warned him,” I muttered. “He needed reminding.”
“So you whispered threats in the prince’s ear in front of a hundred nobles and half the Keepers?”
“Just a few words.”
“Words that will cost you more than your pride, Malachi.” She stepped closer, her tone dropping. “Kaelith is a lot of things, but he’s not forgetful. And he’s not merciful.”
“I don’t need his mercy.”
“No,” she said softly. “But she might.”
That hit harder than it should have.
“She’s different,” Lysara murmured. “Whatever is buried in her—I felt it this evening.”
“I felt it long before that.” Dreamwalkers had vanished with Eryndis’s exile. Only those marked by her blood could bend a dream back on its maker. No mortal should have been able to break my hold. And yet she had.
“Then be careful. Prophecy and oath have broken stronger men. And tonight, you chose her before he could name anyone.”
Kaelith hadn’t specifically ordered someone to dance with Aurelia. But I knew if anyone else had, he would have murdered them for touching what was his. It was a test, and I knew the answer.
“You think I’m softening.”
“I think you already have.” She turned and left, fading into the dark.
I made my way back to the feast. Kaelith had dismissed most of the nobles, calling it a night of indulgence. A woman sat in his lap, trailing chocolate from her finger into his mouth. He bit her gently, then grabbed her hair, pulling her head back and exposing her neck.
His gaze lifted, locking with mine, before he sank his fangs into her pulse, draining her slowly, purposefully. He never broke eye contact.
Kaelith and I were Vampyres, born of the oldest blood—relics of the first children Atrox forged when the Nightmother turned from him. We were shaped from what he tore out of her—fragments of stolen divinity hardened into something eternal and hungry.
We were keepers of balance, sworn to Eryndis, our bloodline a bridge between death and divinity.
Our blood carried the echo of Atrox’s first dark—old magic that answered to neither tide nor flame nor bloom.
The goddesses granted borrowed power through their marks, but our kind drew from something deeper, older.
Balance was a word we told ourselves long after we’d learned to crave what tipped it.
Blood wasn’t sustenance—it was indulgence. Pleasure. Power.
When shared willingly, it bound blessings, amplified magic, braided two bloodlines into one. But when taken—drained—it fed something darker. A stolen life folded its blessings and memories into the one who drank it.
Everything the victim carried remained—another voice added to the chorus inside us.
That was how Kaelith had risen above the rest. His power here wasn’t just strength of arms or command of shadows—it was multiplicity.
He carried centuries of other people inside him. One man, echoing with dozens of voices, dozens of stolen magics. He could summon flame, weave illusions, breathe underwater as if Nerissa herself had blessed him. Every ability he harvested became his own.
Kaelith let the woman’s limp body slide from his lap, her exsanguinated form collapsing onto the stone floor with a sickening thump.
He stood, arms open in mock welcome. “Malachi, my brother. You’re missing all the fun. Come, let us have a nightcap in my chambers. Acantha—bring us two. Maybe Malachi will finally decide to join in the fun.”
We made our way to Kaelith’s chambers. He poured two glasses of wine, crimson and thick, but handed me nothing.
“Let me ask you something,” he said smoothly. “Have I not treated you fairly? Let you prowl close to the edge of the mist? Am I not your future king?” He turned toward me.
“You are my prince,” I said evenly. “Tell me,” Kaelith murmured, stepping closer, “why you imagined you had the right to threaten me over how I treat my future wife.”
His grin sharpened.
“‘Careful,’ you said.” He mimicked the exact cadence of my voice, soft and cold.
He laughed, savoring the heat beneath the mockery. “As if your warnings mean anything here.”
“Kaelith—”
“You will refer to me as your prince until I am your king!” he roared, slamming his goblet down. Wine splattered across parchment, dripping down the desk.
He ran a hand over his hair, adjusted his tunic, composed himself. When he smiled again, it was sharp, practiced. “You and I, we will shape history. But never forget this—I am the one who will decide how it is remembered. Who lives in its light… and who is swallowed in its shadows.”
I didn’t move.
“You remember the old temple?” Kaelith circled slowly, his steps predatory. “The cliffside where we played war with wooden swords? You always took the part I gave you. You always followed the script. Why can’t you do the same now?”
My jaw clenched, a muscle feathering beneath my cheekbone.
“That ended the day you stood beside your father while he slaughtered our families. While our people screamed.”
The words hung between us.
Kaelith was dangerous, not just because of his cruelty, but because of what he’d stolen, drained, and absorbed over centuries. His strength was a patchwork of other lives. Brilliant, yes. Vast. But borrowed.
I, on the other hand, was born closer to the source. My father had been the first of our kind—Atrox’s first creation when the Nightmother turned from him.
I was second-generation Firstblood. Unthinned. Unbroken. Not because my lineage was different—but because it had not yet been diluted by time, worship, and accumulation.
Kaelith, for all his stolen gifts, came from another branch entirely. Still Atrox-born, still vampyric—but many generations removed. A descendant shaped by centuries of feeding, layering ability upon ability like armor taken from the dead.
But I carried the dark uncut. The kind of power that wasn’t learned or harvested, but carved into bone.
If not for the oath that chained me to Nyxarra—binding my power to the will of its ruler—I could have ended him centuries ago. He had always known it.
For a heartbeat, something human flickered across his face. Remorse, maybe. But he had long since learned to turn grief into ritual, repeating it until it fed him, and ritual into power.
"Still so righteous," Kaelith murmured. "Still pretending you're not just as cursed as the rest of us." He lifted a hand, two fingers raised.
The bond hummed in my chest, the old oath that bound me to him stirring at the gesture. I had forged it centuries ago—to protect Nyxarra, not to obey its King. But the magic didn’t distinguish. The realm’s ruler and the realm itself had become the same thing the moment Talon seized the throne.
A pulse rang out from the bond, low and vicious. A command without words. The magic twisted deep, seizing the space behind my ribs as if a fist had reached inside and clenched.
I braced myself, tried to fight it, but pain bloomed anyway, splitting through my chest and radiating like cracks in glass. My lungs seized, every breath a jagged rasp. My vision blurred at the edges.
Warmth slicked my lip. Blood. A slow trickle traced the corner of my mouth, metallic on my tongue.
“I said,” Kaelith growled, voice lowering into something primal, “you will obey. You bound yourself to this realm. To me.”
“To Nyxarra,” I ground out, voice hoarse. “Not to you.”
Kaelith stepped closer, our faces inches apart, his voice low and poisonous. “Everything that breathes within in these walls answers to me. Including you.”
I didn’t flinch. Blood dripped steadily from my nose, dark against my skin. “And one day,” I rasped, spitting blood across his pale cheek, “you’ll choke on it—on every drop you’ve stolen.”
His eyes flared. In a blink, he reached for my belt, fingers closing around the hilt of my knife. In the next breath, he drove my own blade into my chest. White-hot pain ripped through me. I grunted but didn’t look away. Didn’t blink.
Kaelith twisted the knife before yanking it free. Blood spilled down my tunic, dark and vivid, the wound already knitting closed as ancient power stirred beneath my skin. I healed, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fucking painful.
He lifted the blade to his mouth, dragged his tongue along the flat of it, savoring the taste, then slid it, still slick with my blood, back into my sheath with a soft, final click.
“Get out of my sight.”
I turned and walked out, rage blistering beneath my skin. Every step felt like restraint. Every breath, a battle. My fists clenched at my sides, nails digging crescents into my palms, shadows curling tighter with every heartbeat. I wanted to tear something apart—stone, steel, the air itself.