Cain
The synthetic blood tastes of preservatives and iron-scented regret.
It's a precise, chemical forgery, lacking the bloom of life that makes real blood hum, but it's all the Adaro family provides in this gilded cage.
I swallow the last of the pouch, my throat working against the coldness of it.
It's been three days since my last feeding, and my body's beginning to feel like a house with the heat turned off, brittle, hollow, and dangerously still. It's sustenance, but it isn't life.
I sit by the window of the tower, watching the moon carve silver lines into the stone floor.
The silence in this room is heavy, a physical weight that pressed into my chest until I learned to breathe around it centuries ago.
It's a silence designed for containment, thick enough to muffle the sounds of the world outside while leaving me alone with the roar of my own thoughts.
Beyond the heavy oak door, I can hear the familiar rhythm of the guard's boots.
Two minutes and fourteen seconds for a full rotation.
He's got a slight limp in his right stride, a leftover souvenir from a skirmish he thinks I don't know about.
I know the sound of his breath too, labored, human, and utterly predictable.
I've counted every brick in these walls.
There are four thousand, eight hundred and twenty-two, each one laid with the intention of keeping a monster preserved like a moth in amber.
I've cataloged the grain of the floorboards, the exact temperature of the evening air as it whistles through the iron grate, and the faint electrical hum of the wards that line the ceiling.
My family doesn't call this a prison. They call it a sanctuary.
They call me an asset. It's a polite way of saying they own the marrow in my bones and the magic in my veins.
"You look like a Victorian painting," a voice rasps from the floor. "The Pining Martyr, or something equally nauseating."
I don't turn around. I don't have to. Ellis is lounging near the small mahogany table, looking too comfortable for a man who should've learned better than to make himself comfortable in this room.
He's wearing that ridiculous leather jacket, the one he bought specifically to annoy our father, and his fingers tap a frantic rhythm against the wood.
He was the one who was supposed to be the heir, the one who was too soft for the family business and too loud for the family's secrets.
"And you look like a smudge on my furniture," I say, my voice smooth as aged whiskey, masking the sharp edges of my hunger. "Did you come here to offer critique, or are you just bored of haunting my peace?"
Ellis snorts, a sound like dry leaves skittering over pavement.
"Your peace has worse conversation than the laundry room.
At least the machines don't spend all day staring at the masonry.
" His eyes flick toward the door, then back to me.
He's pretending to be casual, but Ellis has never known how to make fear sit still in his body.
"There's a party downstairs. Adaro's got the crystal out.
The church delegates are here, smelling of incense and self-righteousness.
They're eating your favorite salmon canapés while they talk about you in the third person. "
I tighten my grip on the empty blood pouch.
The church. They've been sniffing around the perimeter for weeks, looking for their gathered divinity while my family smiles and negotiates the price of my soul.
It's a dance we've performed for generations, but the music's getting faster.
I can feel the tension in the air, a hum in the wards that suggests the leash is about to be tugged.
My family's always been good at selling things that don't belong to them.
"They want to see the prize," Ellis continues, his eyes tracking the movement of my hands.
"They're talking about stabilizing the asset.
That's church-speak for putting you in a smaller box with more locks.
You should see the woman they sent. She looks like she's made of starch and cold steel.
She's already measuring the dimensions of your future. "
"I've got no interest in their guest list," I say, though my skin's starting to itch with the proximity of them.
I can feel the weight of their expectations pressing against the stone of the tower.
"Let them drink their wine and discuss my utility.
I'm sure Adaro's enjoying the attention.
He always did like an audience for his cruelties. "
Ellis stands up, his image blurring slightly as he moves toward the window.
He was always the sharper of us, the one who poked at bruises until they bled.
"He's not just enjoying it, Cain. He's selling.
He's going to hand you over to them like a pedigreed hound.
Tonight. Before the sun comes up, you'll be on a transport to the Cathedral.
And you're just sitting here, counting bricks like a child waiting for a bedtime story. "
I turn my head then, my eyes locking onto his.
The blood magic under my skin flares, a sudden hot pulse of red that makes the air in the room vibrate.
It's an old, wild power, the kind that doesn't care for porcelain tea sets or mahogany tables.
The empty pouch in my hand shrivels into a black husk, consumed by the heat of my irritation.
A thin line of crimson light arcs from my fingertips, scorching a dark mark into the wood of the table.
"Don't," I say, my voice too even. "Don't tell me what I'm doing. Don't stand in my prison and make the mistake of thinking I've misunderstood the furniture."
Ellis stares at me, and for a second, I see the fear in him.
Even Ellis, the only person who still visits this tomb and speaks to me like I'm something other than an asset, is afraid of what the tower's made me.
The realization lands colder than the synthetic blood ever could.
I'm the nightmare they built, and now they're afraid of the dark.
"Right," Ellis whispers, his voice thin and cutting like a winter wind. "I'll leave you to your masonry. Just remember, Cain. Preservation's just a fancy word for rotting. You're not a secret. You're a corpse they forgot to bury."
He vanishes before I can respond, the air where he stood remaining cold and hollow for a long moment.
I'm alone again with the silence and the chemical smell of the blood.
I close my eyes and try to steady my breathing, pushing the flare of magic back down into the marrow of my bones.
My mind drifts, unbidden, to the two pieces of myself I've already found and lost.
My beautiful little witch Soren always brought the smell of ozone before a storm, the feeling of warm magic pressed against my chest, and a sharp, ringing laughter that could cut through any ward.
I remember the witch's heartbeat during our stolen rests, a frantic, living rhythm that made my own stillness feel like a crime.
Then there's Ira, the exorcist, the only man I ever willingly submitted to, the one who understood that protection was a duty, not a cage.
I found two of my three, and I lost them both to my family's greed, my own cowardice, and the cruel timing of a world that doesn't want us to be whole.
But there's a third pull now. It's been tugging at my blood for weeks, a persistent, low-frequency vibration that I've tried to ignore.
It's not romantic yet. It's survival, need, and old magic orienting toward the missing piece.
It's a hollow space in my soul that matches a shape out there in the city.
It's coming from a place that smells of stale hops and cheap spirits.
If I stay here, I'll be sold to the church and drained of everything that makes me Cain.
If I leave, I might finally find the piece that lets me breathe.
I stand up and walk to the window. The guard's at the end of the hall.
Two minutes. I can hear the click of his shoes and the wet rasp of his breath.
I open the heavy latch, the stone cold and unforgiving against my palms. I've spent centuries being an ornament, a commodity, a preserved secret.
Tonight, I think I'd rather be a disaster.
I don't climb down. I don't have the patience for grace. I drop.
The air rushes past me, a sudden, violent freedom that knocks the breath from my lungs.
I hit the ground harder than my healing body likes, the impact jarring through my knees and up my spine with a sickening thud.
The grass is damp and smells of clover, a sensory shock after the sterile dust of the tower.
For a moment, the world's just pain and wet earth.
Then the alarm bells start, a high, silver ringing that cuts through the night like a blade.
The tower lights flare, sweeping across the grounds in hungry arcs.
The first guard meets me near the rose garden.
He's young, barely a century into his immortality, and his eyes are wide with a mixture of duty and terror.
He raises his hands to cast a binding spell, his fingers trembling.
I don't give him the chance to find his courage.
I reach out with my mind, grabbing the blood in his veins and pulling.
It's a sharp, brutal burst of magic, a command that his body can't ignore.
I feel his pulse hitch, then stutter under the weight of my will.
He collapses like a marionette with its strings cut, gasping as his heart rhythm fails.
I don't stop to see if he's breathing. I don't have the luxury of mercy, and the part of me that was raised by monsters doesn't care if he dies.