“Your assessment was incomplete,” Brinda corrects, her gaze sharp, analytical. “The human slave you encountered. The one with the anomalous blood. We believed her to have been disposed of after your escape.” Brinda pauses, letting the silence stretch, a tactic for which she is renowned. “We were mistaken. She lives.”
The information is a stone dropped into a deep, silent pool. The ripples are contained, but they exist. The Anomaly. The source of my single greatest failure of discipline.
“An insignificant variable,” I state.
“Her insignificance has changed.” The Matriarch’s words are precise, each one a carefully placed scalpel. “She is not merely alive, Eoin. She has a son. He is five years of age. His hair is the silver of a winter moon.”
The air in the chamber seems to thin, to grow sharp and cold. A child. The logical part of my mind immediately rejects the premise. The Fading makes us sterile. It is a known fact. Myweakness, my shameful loss of control, could not have resulted in… progeny. It is a biological impossibility. A contradiction in terms. And yet, Brinda does not deal in rumor.
“He shows no signs of The Fading,” she continues, her voice dropping, and I recognize the tone. The sound of a scientist who has just made a breakthrough. “He is healthy. Vibrant. A perfect hybrid of Vrakken and human, with the Purna vitality of his mother. A specimen that should not exist, and yet, it does.”
I remain perfectly still, a statue of pale stone and silver hair. But inside, the logical contradiction is a fracture spreading through the ice of my control. My failure bore fruit.
“I have a mission for you, my most trusted Enforcer,” Brinda says, her eyes pinning me in place. “This… creature… could hold the key. Its unique biology may be the cure we have sought for centuries. You will go to the south. You will locate the female. And you will retrieve the specimen.”
Her words are carefully chosen.Specimen. Not child. Not son.Retrieve. Not rescue. This is not a paternal matter. It is a clinical hunt for a cure. It is a mission, clean and logical, the kind I have executed a thousand times before. She is giving me an equation to solve, a way to frame the illogical, chaotic truth in a way my mind can process. A way to redeem the greatest failure of my existence.
“At all costs,” she adds, her meaning clear. The female, The Anomaly, is expendable. Only the cure matters.
I bow my head, a shallow, formal gesture of acceptance. “It will be done, Matriarch.”
My face is an impassive mask, my voice the perfect monotone of her most effective weapon. She will see nothing else. She will not see the ghost of a memory that now burns behind my eyes. She will not feel the phantom fire, the echo of an addictive, terrifying power that I have suppressed for five long years. The power in her blood. The source.
7
ELZA
The clang of the forge hammer is the heartbeat of Haven. It is a steady, rhythmic beat that speaks of purpose, of rebuilding. From my position on the western battlement, I can see it all. Tarek, my second-in-command, drills new recruits in the main courtyard, their wooden swords clacking in the crisp morning air. The scent of baking bread and savory stew wafts up from the communal kitchens, a warm, comforting promise of the midday meal. Children chase each other through the pathways, their laughter echoing off the ancient, grey stone.
This is what I built from the ashes of my past. A sanctuary. A home. A fortress made not just of stone and iron, but of the shared vow that none of us would ever be powerless again.
My hand rests on the worn leather grip of the dagger at my hip. The habit is so ingrained I no longer notice it, the cool weight of the pommel a familiar pressure against my palm. A queen’s scepter is a symbol. A dagger is a tool. I have always had more use for tools.
“Mama!”
I turn, a smile breaking through my stern composure. Lyren barrels towards me, his small face flushed with cold andexertion, a wooden sword clutched in his fist. His silver hair, a stark inheritance from a man he does not know, whips around his face in the wind.
He stops just before me, puffing out his chest. “Tarek says I have the eye of a hawk and the speed of a viper.”
I kneel down, brushing a stray strand of silver from his forehead. “He is right. But you have the heart of a lion, and that is what matters most.” My gaze softens as I look at him. He is the sun in my world, the impossible, beautiful thing that makes the fight worthwhile. Most days, I can almost forget where he came from.
Almost.
He looks past me, down at the sparring recruits. “Mina is not holding her shield correctly. She leaves her whole left side open. Tarek should correct her.”
Ice, thin and sharp, trickles down my spine. It is not what he says, but how he says it. The tone is not that of a five-year-old child. It is a cold, analytical assessment, spoken with an unnerving, adult-like authority. For a fleeting instant, his dark eyes—so like my own—flash with a faint, silver light. A Vrakken trait.
I pull him into a hug, burying my face in his hair, trying to chase away the sudden chill. These moments are becoming more frequent. Flashes of an intensity, a possessiveness, that do not belong in a child. Flashes ofhim.
“Perhaps you can show her after your lesson,” I murmur, my voice tight.
Before he can answer, the pounding of feet on the stone stairs makes us both look up. It is Kael, one of my lead scouts, his face pale and his breathing ragged. He skids to a halt before me, forgoing any formal greeting.
“My lady,” he gasps, leaning on his knees. “A rider from the eastern watchtower. They spotted something.”
My hand, which had fallen from my dagger, finds its way back to the hilt. “Report.”
“A single being, approaching from the north. Moving… impossibly fast. Not on horseback. On the wing.”
