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“You may run,” he said with a spiteful sneer. “But you will not get far. I will contain your Dragon while you uselessly flee and then I will force you to take what I want from him.”

When he turned his back to her, Amalia ran the other way.

Now that she was alone, trying to run up the spiralling staircase, she realised each leg lift ached her stomach. She stopped running when it felt like it was too much to bear and gave a sobbing cry as her fingertips found her wound to feel it. She wished she hadn’t.

Trying to stop the bleeding that hadn’t slowed, she used her free hand to press against the wall to help lift her up, to help her keep going, smearing her blood along her path.

It was dark in the stairwell with no torches lit and no sun shining to brighten it.

When she made it to the top of the tower, she fumbled to find the doorknob. Her wound protested when she twisted the knob with her slippery hand, like her strength came from the muscles in her stomach.

She stumbled to the ward and placed a hand against it before she slipped to her knees. Her body started to feel drained and weak.

Blood had run down and between her legs while she ran, and now it dripped to the ground while she knelt there, holding her aching stomach.

“Please...” she begged to her father. She didn’t know who else to turn to. “Please help me.”

Rurik watched the blade come down, but the path wasn’t straight, the direction had been curved. His eyes widened in unmasked shock when he realised the Witch had sunk the blade into herself. He followed it when she yanked it away and shakily dropped it against his stomach before it fell to the altar and then the ground.

What is she doing?He expected death, not to witness her inflict a wound upon herself.What game is she playing?Was this some strange part of the ritual?

“What have you done?!” Strolguil yelled, taking a step forward, and Rurik’s head shot to him in confusion.

Amalia raised her blood-covered hands in reaction and immediately began to chant. It caused his widened sight to return to her.

His eyes fell onto the wound low on her stomach and the blood he could see was already beginning to drip onto his torso. Then he looked up to her raised face.

She was shouting with her eyes clenched shut in concentration, her brows knitted tightly.

I know this chant.He’d heard her speak it before.

He felt something pulling from him, yanking out of his body, and he turned his head to his chest. Symbols were lighting up, glowing on his skin before they appeared to be lifting away.

They were being pulled from him, like tape, before they withered away like hot ash.

She is unhexing me.He could see them coming away from his body. And she wasn’t just removing one, but they were all coming away.

This required an unspeakable amount of power, required skill and experience to remove this many hexes in one go. The spell she was using generally needed to be repeated, taking them away one or two at a time.

He understood where she’d gotten this power from when he heard the crackling of electricity and saw the blue dragoncraft lightning moving through the gusts of winds surrounding them.

She has combined the use of her blood with the magic she stole from me when I came inside her.She had increased the strength of her magical capabilities to make sure she had enough of it to do this.

Why is she removing my hexes? Does she not know that this will free me?Then he would be able to take his anger out on her, would be able to capture and kill her.

He had threatened her with fire, she should be afraid to release him.

He was too dumbfounded to move when the blast of energy exploded outwards from her spell. He knew everyone else was unconscious for the moment.

Rurik thought she would say something to him, explain what the hell she was doing, but she wouldn’t look at him. She’d just gotten herself off his body and fled from the room.

His head followed her, seeing Strolguil leave to give chase, before he looked at his body. At the seed and blood and evidence that he truly hadn’t imagined what he’d just witnessed.

Then his eyes narrowed as his brows drew together.

He shot forward to sit, breaking the shackles with ease since the hex restraining his strength was gone. He also removed the cloth around his mouth by tugging it down.

Rurik used the pad of his thumb to rub it over the side of his still semi-hard shaft, staring at it in surprise.