Beneath the darkness, the heretic glyphs blazed.
A fracture raced through the glamour.
Neither of them saw it.
She collapsed against Rhen, trembling as the final waves of pleasure moved through her. He wrapped one arm around her and held her against his chest while the violent tension gradually left her body.
For a few stolen moments, the world became quiet.
Across the stronghold, the tether inside Veya wrenched taut.
Her body bowed sharply from the mattress as pain tore through the blood Rhen had used to create her. Dax caught her before she could strike the wooden frame, one arm braced behind her shoulders while his other hand closed around hers.
“Veya. Look at me.”
She tried, but the room had already vanished beneath the force dragging her toward something happening beyond the locked suite.
Rhen’s presence surged through her, immense and violent, carrying an awareness that was not hers and had never belonged inside her. Another connection closed around him with absolute finality, and the unnatural opening between maker and progeny strained beneath the weight of it.
Then the pressure reversed.
The tether did not break.
It narrowed.
What had existed like an open wound beneath her ribs drew inward, forcing Rhen’s hunger, anger, and invasive awareness back along the bloodline until only a thin thread remained.
The sudden silence hurt almost as much as the pressure had.
Veya sagged in Dax’s arms.
He caught her face between his hands, forcing her to focus upon him.
“What happened?”
She pressed trembling fingers against the center of her chest and searched for the connection that had occupied her since the night she died.
“It changed.”
“Is it gone?”
Veya closed her eyes.
The thread was still there, ancient blood recognizing what it had made, but Rhen no longer filled the space behind her thoughts. She could not feel his rage, his hunger, or the foreign connection that had forced her tether closed. She knew only that he existed somewhere beyond the suite, distant and separate.
“No,” she whispered. “His blood is still there.”
Dax’s expression hardened.
“But he isn’t inside me anymore.”
“The pain?”
“Gone.”
Malakai stood near the foot of the bed, watching the old wards settle along the walls. He waited until Veya looked toward him before his hands moved.
The wards have stopped reacting to the tether.
