Chapter 41
CHAPTER
Azrian
Azrian led Sabine through the narrow alleys of the Terraces just as the sun peeked over the horizon.
Even before its light rippled over the red-tiled rooftops, the city’s arteries throbbed with the slow pulse of porters, vendors, and shop-boys unbolting their master’s doors.
The avenues, cobbled in honey-limestone and bisected by deep drainage gutters, ran in elegant parabolas along the hillside, each curve stitched with rows of artisan boutiques and cafes whose wrought-iron balconies dripped with wisteria and roses.
Above, cypresses and plane trees cast shifting shadows, striated and sharp, like a tiger’s pelt.
Sabine waited until they turned onto a narrow arcade shaded by a high loggia before speaking. “You’re certain of this contact?”
He nodded. “Caelen trailed her for three days and found no evidence of Registry surveillance. She was dismissed from her post for asking too many inconvenient questions and has been working underground ever since, so she has no real incentive to report us. It would only make her a target.”
Sabine’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Because aiding the Emperor’s Hand and his wife in what is potentially treason most definitely would not make her a target.”
Azrian allowed himself a fractional smile. “She would have to get caught, first.”
The press of bodies thickened as they moved up the arcade, the air spiced with lemon oil and fresh yeast from a bakery.
Azrian scanned every face: the gondolier with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, the two girls in matching green smocks carrying a bundle of silks, the brawny man sweeping the gutter with a broom.
They passed a series of glass-fronted shops, from a perfumery with its mosaic sign glittering above the door, to a florist where the buckets of blooms spilled onto the pavement like the aftermath of a parade, before reaching their destination.
It had a nondescript stone facade, the cream plaster pocked with age, green shutters drawn tight over the upper windows.
At street level, the windows were barred with steel, and the only sign of the shop’s nature was a painted board above the door: a stylized mirror, done in silver leaf, framed by a motif of eyes.
Azrian rapped twice, paused, then knocked three more times in the sequence Caelen had specified.
A silence, followed by the scrape of a bolt.
The door swung inward, revealing a room lit solely by the refracted sunlight bouncing through hundreds of mirrors.
The effect was disorienting—every wall, even the ceiling, was studded with polished glass panes in every size and shape.
The workbenches, arrayed along the perimeter, were scattered with shards, silvering solutions in stoppered bottles, and the odd tangle of clockwork tools.
Vinegar and a subtler undercurrent of something resinous, almost sweet, tinged the air.
The floorboards creaked in a three-count rhythm that would betray anyone moving too quickly through the space.
The woman behind the counter was older than Azrian expected.
Her hair, a mass of silver shot through with pale gold, was pulled back in a severe braid.
Her eyes were a shade of blue so pale they seemed nearly white, the irises ringed with a darker rim.
She wore a man’s shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and a heavy black apron stained with spots of silver nitrate and glue.
She held a pair of tongs, the tip still red-hot from whatever process she’d interrupted to answer the door.
She eyed him, cataloguing every detail of his appearance, before pointing to his bare lapel. “Surely, you did not believe removing your collar would keep me from recognizing Lord Death.”
His fingertips skimmed the place where his hand-like pin had previously sat. In truth, he hadn’t even considered that. He’d not worn the pin in weeks, since he made his vow to Sabine. “I do not come on behalf of the Empire. In fact, quite the opposite. I believe we share a common adversary.”
The woman’s bushy eyebrows rose. “I sincerely doubt that.”
“The Registry dismissed you for prodding too close to the truth, did they not?” Sabine asked.
“We believe you were correct in your assessment of their motives and that you can help us,” Azrian added.
The Light weaver stared at them for a long moment before bursting into laughter.
“If anyone had told me the Emperor’s hound, of all people, would be the one to stab him in the back, I would have never believed them.
” She set the tongs in a ceramic dish and wiped her hands on a rag.
“I am Merraine. What exactly brings you to my door?”
Azrian inclined his head. “We need your expertise with an unusual blood vow. Specifically, we need to know if it can be… reversed.”
The woman’s gaze flicked to Sabine, then back to Azrian. “You believe your bond is failing?”
“In a certain way,” Sabine said, her voice as cool as the ice floes in the canal during Frosttide.
Merraine moved to the nearest workbench, picking up a pane of glass the size of a dinner plate.
With a quick flick, she lifted it to the light, studying the imperfections in its surface.
“Blood vows can be undone, though not always without consequence. It all depends on your affinities, your bond, and your pain tolerance.” She gestured to the rear of the shop, where a tall, gilt-framed mirror leaned against the wall.
Azrian looked to Sabine. She gave a single, tight nod.
Merraine touched the topmost edge of the mirror with her palm, and it slid aside on silent runners, revealing a wedge of darkness beyond.
Sabine hesitated only a moment before stepping through. Azrian followed, every sense alert.
The passage was narrow, cut from the living stone of the hill, the air inside abruptly colder. The mirror slid shut behind them. Merraine wove a quick knot, producing a Light-affinity orb from her palm, illuminating the way as she led them down a tight spiral staircase.
At the bottom, the space opened into a chamber lined with shelves, each packed with glass vessels and dusty tomes. The floor was tiled in concentric circles. In the center of it, a ring of ancient chalk had sunk into the grout, resisting every effort to be washed away.
He drew up beside Sabine, who stood very still, her breath coming in measured puffs.
When he reached for her, she let him.
Merraine set the orb on a pedestal at the chamber’s center, then turned to face them. The woman inclined her head. “The ritual I’m about to perform is forbidden for good reason. It can unravel memories, induce fits. In your case, I suspect the outcome will be more dramatic.”
Sabine’s gaze snapped to Merraine. “Why do you say that?”
Merraine dusted her hands on her apron, then circled the ring of chalk, testing it with the tip of her shoe. “With affinities as powerful as yours, bonds usually take harder.” She motioned them forward. “Stand here, please. Opposite each other.”
Azrian took his place on one side of the circle. Sabine joined him, her posture ramrod straight, chin tipped up in challenge to whatever fate awaited her.
“When you are ready, join your hands over the center.”
Azrian extended his right hand. Sabine’s palm was cool against his, but the contact ignited a current that vibrated up his arm and into his chest.
Merraine began weaving intricate patterns that vaguely resembled a spider’s web.
Multiple silver Light threads crossed over and under each other at various angles, creating a network of knots.
Once the weave had reached several feet in size, she pushed it towards him and Sabine, blanketing their joined hands with it.
Azrian felt the magic unspool. At first, it was a gentle tug—like a child’s grip on his sleeve, urging him to look, to remember. But the pull intensified, and soon memories erupted behind his eyelids.
He and his brother, as children, weaving through merchant tents in Corven.
The day his mother delivered him into the hands of the Emperor.
His first training to break a bone.
Evara falling ill after their blood vow.
The first time he met young Caelen.
Each near-kiss he and Sabine shared, playing in agonizing slowness.
He wondered what she saw.
Sabine’s hand tightened in his. The Light peeled at them, layer by layer, stripping away every mask. It webbed itself around their joined hands, then crawled up their arms, sheathing them in an architecture of pure energy. His mark pulsed, burning at the base of his neck like a brand.
“Do not break contact,” Merraine warned.
Sabine was crying, silent tears sliding down her cheeks, carving clean lines through the pale dust on her skin. Still, she did not flinch.
The pressure increased, doubled, redoubled, until he thought his skull might split from it.
He gasped, and Sabine echoed the sound.
As suddenly as it had begun, the Light collapsed inward, drawing all the heat and fury into a single point between their clasped hands.
In its place, their affinities responded, flowing outward, meeting above their joined hands.
The filaments thickened, growing denser, until the air between them was filled with a living braid of color—obsidian and gold, swirling in a double helix that spun faster and faster, threatening to tear the room apart.
They melted together perfectly, in exact harmony, neither overtaking the other but simply swirling together like they’d always meant to join.
The memories came again, though this time, they weren’t his alone. He saw Sabine’s entire life laid out, the pattern of it: her sister’s birth, the day their parents died, the moment she decided that no person would claim her freedom, if she could help it.
The parallels of their lives were laid bare, the spaces each had left for the other to complete. For one terrifyingly perfect moment, he could hear Sabine’s heart beating in time with his own, taste the salt of her tears, the blood in her mouth, the ache in her lungs.
It felt like losing a part of himself. It felt like finding another.
It felt like coming home.
Then their magic sputtered. Subtle but unmistakable silver threads reasserted themselves around the helix, prying their magics apart with force.
Azrian doubled over. Sabine screamed.
The Registry’s blood vow snapped back like a steel trap. The double helix exploded outward, shards of black and gold peppering the floor.
He felt the pain as a spike through his head, then his chest, then everywhere.
He clung to Sabine, feeling her shudder and gasp against him.
The pain crested, then drained away, leaving behind a hollow so deep he was afraid he might never fill it.
Merraine reached forward to steady Sabine, and Azrian was grateful she’d kept her from falling.
“It’s stronger than I’d imagined,” Merraine admitted. “Come, let us return upstairs.”
They climbed the stairway with the slow caution of the newly wounded.
Merraine poured water from a flask, handed it to Sabine, then to Azrian. He drank, the coldness slicing down his throat with a taste like mineral and ozone.
He tried to speak, but the words tangled on his tongue.
Sabine managed first. “What happened?”
Merraine moved to the nearest bench, selected a fresh sheet of glass, and set it on the counter with ritual care. “I have seen many forced blood vows, and several genuine soulbonds. What you have is neither… and both. Which makes it all the more dangerous.”
The woman traced a finger along the glass, as if sketching a diagram in her mind.
“Your bond is unstable because the soulbond was not completed, and the Registry’s blood vow attached to it, like a parasite.
The magic is fighting itself, but not from incompatibility.
From… excess. Imagine two rivers, both in flood, forced to share a single channel.
They will not blend. They will not part.
They will simply rage until the banks are destroyed or a new course is cut. ”
“Can we attempt the ritual again?” he asked.
Merraine regarded him. “The blood vow cannot be removed with traditional methods. It’s like it… attached to your souls. If we remove it forcefully, it might as well kill you both.”
Sabine’s laugh was brittle. “Of course.”
Azrian tried to straighten his spine, but the drag of fatigue pulled at his limbs.
Merraine dabbed a cloth at the cut on Azrian’s palm—a wound he hadn’t even registered during the rite.
“There is an ancient practice, older than the Gilt, older than the Empire itself. A ritual lost to the Registry, though I suspect they know of it and guard its memory as jealously as any imperial secret.” She hesitated.
“I have never seen it performed, nor do I know its exact shape. But if there is one place in this Empire where you might find answers, it would be—”
Azrian closed his fist, testing the pain. “The Gloamreach.”
Merraine nodded, as if the name itself was a spell. “If there is hope for you, it is there, among the wild practitioners. They have less reverence for law, and more for truth.”
From outside, the Registry spire’s bell echoed through the open windows and shivered the glass in the frames.
Azrian stood, helping Sabine up. From the inner pocket of his jacket, he pulled a pouch of coin and passed it to the Light weaver, but she shook her head, sliding it back to him.
“No need for payment. After all, the ritual failed.”
“You still helped us uncover a piece of the truth,” Sabine insisted.
For the first time, Merraine’s smile looked warm, almost maternal. “Then pay me back by not giving up.” She touched each of their shoulders. “The Registry has been leaving a trail of dried grass behind them for centuries. We only need the right kindle to spark the flame of revolution.”