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I ignore the voices and cobble together a spell.

“From blood and air, to rock and flame.” As I incant, I fold my power into the words.“I banish you back from whence you came.”

My magic detonates, filling the space in a massive cloud of pale orange plumes. I can’t see anything, but it doesn’t matter, I can feel my magic pressing in on the demon.

“I assure you,” Luca says somewhere beyond the circle, “she cannot send the creature back.”

Old queen, forgotten queen…the voices murmur.

Harder and harder, my power tightens on the demon. I see the plumes of it push and push against the demon bleeding out.

Asmodeth tries to fight the magic, but he’s lost so much blood, and my power holds him fast.

My body trembles as I continue to exert force, pressing, pressing. I scream at the energy it takes, my limbs beginning to tremble as my power strains.

All at once, there’s apop, then Asmodeth is gone.

I’m breathing hard as I kneel on the now empty ground, which is scrubbed clean of all the black blood that pooled on it a moment ago. I can hear the steady drip of my own bleeding wounds. Aside from that, the room is deathly silent.

Eventually, Jacques says, “You said she couldn’t send the demon back?”

“That’s…never happened before.” Luca clears his throat. “It doesn’t matter. We can try summoning Asmodeth once more…though he might be too weak to make the journey. I have another demon in mind that might be perfect.” He begins flipping through the pages ofThe Book of the Damned.

I glare at the pair of them and gather my magic.

I’m too angry and too impatient to study this spell circle for some exploitable weakness. I want out now.

I rise from the floor and draw on my magic remorselessly. One of the most basic aspects of a spell circle is that power moves in two directions along them: clockwise for creation, counterclockwise for destruction.

My blood continues to drip from the wounds on my chest, but for what I intend, I know intuitively that I need more. I drag the knife I still hold across my wrist and let my blood flow freely.

This whole time, I’ve been pretending to be something wholesome when being wholesome meant denyingthispart of me.

I let the blood drip down my fisted hand to the ground, my bare feet stepping over the droplets as I begin to walk in a counterclockwise motion.

“To the gods that dwell beneath my feet,” I call out in Sarmatian, “give me power, and I will give you blood.” My voice sounds deeper, stronger, surer as I speak.

I sense something beneath me moving toward my offering. The blood on the floor evaporates, and thick, smoky plumes of my orange magic rise up, streaked with veins of inky black. Dark magic.

Distantly, I’m aware that my power is falling on the wrong side of good and evil. But too much of me thrills at the thick ropes of power I drag up from the earth. It’s so much more magic than what the ground usually offers up.

We hunger for more, mistress…more blood. We have missed the taste of you…

I let my blood continue to fall as I pace the perimeter of the circle. “From air, I breathe. With fire, I burn. From water, I drink. To earth, all shall return.”

Blood magic is destructive magic, and I drag that destruction along with every step I take. It batters at the ward, and I sense the walls that entrap me weakening. The ground begins to tremble, but this time, Memnon isn’t responsible for it.

“Sky above, spirits below, my blood you take.” The coven was a match; this is an inferno. “This ward unmake.” My gaze falls to Luca.“This spell I break.”

BOOM!

Power floods out of me, shattering the walls of the spell circle. It sweeps across the room, blowing the salt away and throwing the men backward.

I stand there, wounded and bloodstained, as my magic retreats into me, clearing the air.

Fearsome mate, I felt that,Memnon says down our bond. I swear I hear the sorcerer’s low laugh.The Fortunas made a mistake trying to capture a true Sarmatian queen. I hope you make them pay for it.

I am.With that, I pull away from our connection. I grip my dagger tightly and stride forward, the pads of my feet stepping on all those old, nearly forgotten bloodstains. Magic still lingers in those stains, stale and fetid but there nonetheless. I pull it into me, and the stains hiss as they simmer away.