Too many. Far too many.
It doesn’t matter.
Dena’s eye finds mine across the crowd. She knows me from the healing sessions I conducted after her training injuries, from the extra bread I smuggled into her sleeping quarters, from the whispered stories I told her about the world beyond the Vale.
She mouths something. A word I can’t hear over the pit’s constant wailing.
Please.
Everything I’ve built—ten years of careful preparation, networks of saboteurs, plans within plans—all of it balanced against one child’s silent plea.
There’s no choice here. There never was.
I shift my grip on the drum. Catch Kharvek’s attention across the pit. His head tilts—that assessment I’ve come to recognize.
Three beats. That was the signal we agreed on last night. Three beats on my drum, off-rhythm from the ritual’s cadence, and he would know a shift had occurred.
We’re not ready. The wards aren’t corrupted. The escape routes aren’t secured. The Matron could arrive at any moment.
But Dena is nine years old, and she’s going to die in the next few minutes unless I act.
I raise my drumstick.
The first beat lands wrong.
Not the prescribed rhythm—a sharp crack that cuts across Sister Vela’s chanting, draws startled glances from the other harvesters. I keep my expression blank. Confused. As if my hand simply slipped.
The second beat follows a heartbeat later. Another wrong note. Another crack in the ritual’s careful harmony.
Vela’s gaze snaps to me. Her lips thin. I know that look—have been under its scrutiny since I was fourteen, since Vela herself plucked me from the Red Children’s pens and handed me a stylus. She taught me everything the Sanctum needed me to know. She never taught me how to stop.
The third beat.
Kharvek moves.
FOURTEEN
IMARA
I’ve seen him hunt. Watched him work during the escape attempt, witnessed the precision of his violence from a distance. Nothing prepared me for this.
He doesn’t announce himself. Doesn’t roar or charge or give any warning. One moment he’s standing among the Harvest Guard; the next, his hands are buried in the chest of the guard beside him, scarification channels splitting open as he tears the orc apart from the inside.
Blood sprays. The guard’s body drops. And then Kharvek is among them, a force of destruction that leaves nothing standing in its wake.
The first four guards die before anyone understands what’s happening. Kharvek moves from body to body with brutal efficiency—one drained through contact, life-force flooding into his open channels; one with his neck twisted until it snaps; two more with their throats opened by hands that have become weapons.
Screaming. Not the pit’s eternal wail—fresh screaming, living screaming, the sound of a crowd realizing death has arrived among them.
I drop my drum. Shove through the panicking harvesters. Reach for the power flowing through my own scarification marks, the delicate channels carved along my arms and spine.
My blood magic isn’t like his. I can’t drain with a touch, can’t tear bodies apart with raw force. But I can do other things—precise things, subtle things. I reach out with my awareness and find the guard’s primary resonance channel—the silver inlay at the base of his neck—and I twist the magical current. The silver in his skin flares white-hot, short-circuiting his connection to the Sanctum’s power.
He stumbles. Clutches his chest. Falls.
Not dead—just interrupted. A clot in exactly the right place, dissolving in seconds but buying me the time I need to slip past.
Dena. I have to reach Dena.
