Chapter 21 Malachi #2
The infirmary was quiet—lit by soft lights that hovered along the stone walls. I pulled a stool to the side and retrieved a basin, salve, and needle from the cabinet while Aurelia stepped in front of the mirror.
That’s when I saw it. Not just the gash at her temple. The mark on her throat. Two perfect punctures, rimmed in dark veins that spidered beneath the skin like black lightning.
I went very still. Only one person would bite a mortal and leave it unhealed.
I set the basin down harder than intended. “When did he do this?”
Her reflection stiffened. Her hand rose instinctively to cover her throat. “It’s fine.”
“It isn’t,” I said flatly, crossing to her. “Those wounds won’t heal on their own.”
She flinched when I reached for her but didn’t pull away when I angled her chin to the light.
The black spread slow beneath her skin, poison threaded through veins that should’ve been clear.
The type of bite meant to subdue prey, to freeze them in their tracks, or leave them docile if they managed to get away.
“Only Vampyric saliva will close it,” I muttered, grabbing a cloth and spitting into it. I pressed the dampened fabric to her throat.
She hissed. “This is disgusting. And it’s taking forever.”
“Normally,” I said through clenched teeth, “people… suck the poison out. Speeds up the healing.”
Her eyes cut to mine, sharp and unflinching. “Then just get it over with.”
Silence stretched between us. I searched her face for hesitation, for mockery. There was none—only exhaustion.
Slowly, I lowered my mouth to her throat. My fangs grazed the bruised flesh as my tongue pressed against the punctures, tasting copper and rot. Her pulse fluttered wildly beneath my lips. Heat coiled low in my gut, dangerous, unwanted.
I pulled back before I lost myself to it, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The black threads beneath her skin had already begun to fade.
“Better,” I said gruffly.
Her fingers rose to touch the mark, lingering where my mouth had been. Her eyes flicked to mine—conflicted, searching.
I stepped away before I had to name what passed between us. She busied herself with the blood at her temple instead, cloth in one hand, needle in the other, holding her hair back with fingers that were steady… mostly.
“Fuck,” she hissed as the needle slipped, jerking away from her skin.
I sighed, stepped forward, and gently took the needle from her.
“Here,” I murmured. “Let me.”
She hesitated—just for a second—then let out a breath and hopped onto the examination table, legs swinging over the edge as she leaned forward, parting her hair where the gash split the skin at her temple.
Aurelia Moirae should’ve been nothing more than a complication I needed gone.
And yet—there was this drive to her. To fight, not for herself, but for someone else.
She’d risked Nyxarra’s jaws for her brother, carried the weight of him on her back the same way I carried those I cared for. It was foolish. Dangerous. Admirable.
I didn’t know many who’d risk their lives for someone else without command or coin or power to gain. Especially not unmarked. Mortality was too fragile, and most people clung to it like survival was the point. Like simply being alive was the highest thing they could hope for.
But not her. She lived like someone who understood the difference between breathing and burning.
I stepped between her knees, close enough to feel the heat rolling off her skin. Carefully, I threaded the needle and began the first stitch.
I bent closer and anchored my hand against her jaw to steady her as I worked. “Hold still,” I said quietly.
“You’re awfully good at this,” she said, voice low. I didn’t answer right away, focusing on the needle’s path through her skin.
“Before the city fell, before King Talon took Nyxarra, they captured our healers during the Purge. We had to learn to care for our own.”
She was quiet. Watching me. “You?” she asked. “Personally?”
I nodded once. “I would never ask my people to do something I wasn’t willing to learn. I was their general, after all.”
She didn’t say anything. Just watched me finish the final stitch and tie it off with a quick knot. Her eyes flicked to my hand, her brow furrowed. She winced at the way the skin pulled tight around the sutured wound.
“Your palm,” she murmured. “Odd scar. That from stitching yourself up?”
I stilled. The thin, pale line cut across the center of my hand, a wound that would never fade. I flexed my fingers once, then let them fall still again.
“No,” I said at last. “Talon gave it to me. The truth blade always scars. A little token of gratitude for binding myself to Nyxarra—for taking the Keeper’s oath.”
Her gaze lingered on the mark like it might explain more than my words.
When I wiped away the last of the blood, her eyes flicked up to mine. And something lodged in my throat. It wasn’t just the way she looked at me—steady, quiet, unflinching—it was the way I felt under her gaze.
That was dangerous.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
I nodded once. “You’re welcome.”
She stood, brushing her palms on her thighs. But I saw the weight settle back into her shoulders as she reached the infirmary doors. Just before she stepped out, I said, “The ball. You should be prepared. Every interaction, every move is a play at power.”
Her hand stilled on the doorframe.
“There’s a chance King Talon will be in attendance,” I added.
She turned slightly, not fully facing me. “Should I be impressed or afraid?”
“Both,” I said. “He enjoys making people forget the difference.”
Talon. The oldest of the monarchs. Kaelith’s father, and by far the most unpredictable. I’d seen him smile while ordering executions. Raise a glass to peace while razing cities to ash. Promise safety, then bind an entire people to this land. My people.
I wasn’t sure if Talon had taken an interest in Aurelia yet, but Kaelith announcing a bride had been one of Talon’s conditions for handing over the crown.
“You know, Malachi,” she said matter-of-factly, “you underestimate me.”
She stepped closer, too close, until there were only inches between us. The smile on her lips wasn’t amusement—it was calculated. A mask, one I recognized too well because I wore my own.
Her fingers traced where my leathers met my belt, walking slowly upward as if daring me to flinch. Up my chest, pausing at my mouth. She tugged my bottom lip down with one finger, eyes fixed on the faint glint of fang. Testing it. Testing me.
“Sharp,” she murmured, voice soft but edged like glass.
Her eyes met mine, dark and sure. “I don’t need sharp teeth to bite back, Malachi.”
She turned and walked through the hall, her strong legs making purposeful strides toward the kitchen.
For half a breath I didn’t follow; my gaze had slipped lower.
When she called back, I dragged my eyes up and caught the look she left me: heat glinting beneath a sly curve of her mouth, a smirk that said she knew exactly where I’d been looking.
“Well, are you coming?”
I finally moved, my eyes snapping to the side like she hadn’t just caught me watching her walk away.
I’d lived through war. Survived blood oaths and betrayal. But her? She was the kind of danger I couldn’t fight with steel.