“You better.” Her voice cracks. “I didn’t sabotage a two-century-old ward system just to watch you bleed out in the aftermath.”
I reach up. Touch her face. Her cheek is bruised, her lip split, her hair matted with blood. She’s never looked more beautiful.
“You did it.” I can’t keep the wonder from my voice. “The wards. The distraction. You planned all of it.”
“I improvised most of it, actually.” A ghost of a smile crosses her face. “But yes. I did it. We did it.”
We. The word settles into my chest. Warm. Right.
I push myself up on one elbow. She’s immediately there, supporting me, her shoulder under my arm. We’re both too damaged to be helping each other stand. We do it anyway.
“Can you walk?”
“Can you?”
I take a step. My leg nearly gives out. Imara catches me, pulls me against her side, wraps her arm around my waist.
“Lean on me.” Her body is warm against mine. Solid. Real. “We need to get out of here before she comes back.”
“She won’t come back.” I’m certain of this. “Not yet. She needs to regroup. Figure out what’s still functional. We have time.”
“How much time?”
Before I can answer, the Matron’s voice echoes through the failing wards.
“If I can’t haveyour bloodline, no one will.”
The words seem to come from everywhere—from the walls, the floor, the very air. The Matron’s voice, calm and cold, filling the ruined Chamber the way poison fills a wound.
“What—” Imara starts.
Then I feel it. Deep in the stone. Deep in the blood-wards that pulse through the entire Sanctum like veins through a body.
Power gathering. Massive amounts of it. More than I’ve ever sensed in one place.
“She’s triggering the ritual reserves.” The realization hits me like a physical blow. “All of them. At once.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means—” I grab her hand. Squeeze hard. “Every sacrifice the clan has made in two centuries. Every death stored in these wards. She’s releasing them.”
Imara’s face goes pale. “A self-destruct.”
“Worse. A final ritual.” I sense it building—the pressure, the power, the accumulated screaming of countless victims about to be unleashed. “She’s going to consume the entire Vale. Everyone in it. Everything.”
The Sanctum shudders. Not a tremor this time—a sustained vibration that rattles our bones, that makes the debris around us shift and slide.
“How long?”
I reach out with my senses. Feel the ritual building. Count the pulses.
“Hours. Maybe less.”
“The stock in the Breeding Pens. The Attendants. The children?—”
“All of them. She’d rather destroy everything than let us walk away with anything.”
Imara’s grip on my hand tightens until it hurts. Her jaw sets. That steel beneath the softness—I see it clearly now.
