“Do you worry she’ll attack because you refused to promise Tallon’s death,” Nienna whispered, voice thin against the frail walls, “or do you fear she’ll harm herself?”
“What do you know of Velli magic?”
“Less than you, I imagine.” Her palms slid beneath the weight of my pauldrons.
I bent my knees and shrugged free of the mantle. She caught it and placed it beside hers. The bed groaned when I sat. I leaned forward, elbows braced on my thighs, and dragged a hand through my hair.
“We know too little. Few survive long enough to be captured. Trying to seize a creature that draws power from blood on a field where every man bleeds borders on madness.”
My grip tightened in my hair. She lowered herself beside me, her thigh warm against mine.
“Legends claim they are beasts who need blood to live. That’s false. They eat as we do—which is what drove them to Radaan long ago. Blood does something else. Some thread of magic within them filters it, refines it to bolster their own strength or control.”
Her brow furrowed. “Draconis magic does not work that way. We draw from our dragons.”
“Yours flows outward. It shields, it heals, it binds. Theirs hoards it. Once taken, it cannot be shared. That is what makes them ravenous. After tasting that surge, moving without it feels like swimming through molasses. Time crawls. Six years ago, wecaptured a young Velli. But getting anything from him was futile. He went mad—pacing the cell until his feet bled, screaming that the world had slowed to a crawl.”
“It sounds like an opioid.”
“Stronger.” I stared at the warped floorboards. “Withdrawal kills them if they do not ration their intake.”
“What has that to do with Lanie?”
I rubbed my brow. The air smelled of old wood and tallow. “They do not require blood to live. It brings pleasure. Euphoria. There’s something about hurting others—pain is woven into it. She endured more than his bloodletting. There is cruelty in the act. Torture.”
Images rose unbidden. Filed teeth buried in a soldier’s throat. Crimson slick across armor. Their crazed grins as their eyes rolled back in ecstasy. That was the moment to strike. When they drowned in power, their guard fell.
“Do you fear for her babe?”
My gaze snapped to her belly. Heat surged through me. Not ours—Lanie’s. “You believe she carries one?” No swell had marked her figure.
“You worry Egath lost control in his…” she folded her arms tight across herself, warding off a chill that did not belong to the room, “attentions. That he left her with child?”
I took her hand and drew her against me. “It’s not unheard of. To the Velli, the bloodletting alone is euphoric. Their baser urges are… less of a priority.”
“Have half-Velli children ever been born?”
A flinch slipped through me before I caught it. She felt the shift. My withering eye chose that moment to twitch, and I closed them, rubbing at the irritation. They still burned from smoke and fatigue—a convenient way for me to mask the tell.
“Never?” she pressed, leaning to study my face.
“They’ve never survived,” I bit out.
“Oh.”
My heart ached, though there was enough truth in my words to ease my conscience before Elohios. The mothers didn’t always survive.
It wasn’t the child or their labor that took their lives. It was people: fear, hatred, the terror that others knew what had sired the babe and what future that knowledge promised for the women. The hatred that surfaced after its birth, and theaccidentsthat seemed to follow.
No, it was never the child’s fault. And monsters didn’t always hail from Vellos.
“There is a woman in Glon,” I continued. “Amren. She bore the only half-Velli known to exist. She hides in a remote village under the Harvester’s watch. When she chose to keep the child, I shielded her as best I could. A girl.” My mouth curved despite the weight of it. I glanced at Nienna’s belly, wondering who stirred there. A son? A daughter? “The babe was healthy. Strong. Flat teeth.”
Just like Tallon.
Ice crept along my spine. I straightened. “Tallon is a halfbreed.”
“Does that condemn her as well?”
