Page 51

Chapter

Thirty-Seven

Bloom

Blood Magic

A muffled scream tore from my throat as I hit the bottom with a sickening crack of bone.

When they dropped me, I’d twisted in the air at the last moment, landing on my side, left shoulder first. Piercing pain exploded through me.

My shoulder and arm had shattered. At least it wasn’t my skull, though my head throbbed like hell.

This time, I hadn’t blacked out. If I did, I might not wake up, not with this much blood coating my skin. Darkness pulsed at the edges of my vision, stars flickering, but I fought to stay awake.

As I screamed for help, only hollow echoes answered.

No one was coming. Only I could save myself.

A silent sob escaped me. I wouldn’t die here. Not by those jackals’ hands.

Gritting my teeth, I forced myself up. Years of cutting had made pain an old companion. Pain wouldn’t cripple me now. Even through the agony, my lungs held steady. No need for the inhaler. Anger burned hotter than fear.

I’d never wronged anyone. Yet they always came, thinking weakness was an invitation, believing the wolf had the right to slaughter the lamb. That was the world now. That was what it meant to be weak.

Rage burned through me, white-hot, fueling my power. My wrists were bound, but my fingers were free. Flexing, twisting, they began to weave.

I called on everything Nero had taught me, everything my body remembered without thought.

The threads of magic were invisible to most, but to me, they shimmered like gossamer, drifting in the air, ready to be gathered.

My fingers pulled at them, drawing them tight despite the awkward angle of my bound hands.

First, I wove heat, tiny sparks flickering between my fingertips like fireflies.

The motions were delicate, deliberate, each movement layering energy into the pattern.

It was lace made of flame. The threads twisted, merging, brightening, until they coiled into a slender ribbon of fire no thicker than a candle’s wick.

The first spark caught. Then it surged, a thin stream of flame eating through the spell, then the ropes, searing them away. My hands were free.

No time to savor it. I exhaled sharply, ripping off the blindfold and the gag. Darkness swallowed everything. The air reeked of moss, damp earth, and rot. I gagged, and my breath turned ragged. I fumbled for my inhaler, but it was gone.

I clutched my throat, wheezing as my lungs seared from the inside. Slow your breathing. The command cut through the panic. Gradually, air trickled in.

My hands shook as they scraped against rough stone walls. A thread of light flickered from my fingers, pure instinct and fear given form. In its glow, the truth sharpened: I was trapped at the bottom of a well.

I clawed at the slick walls, searching for a grip.

Useless. The well yawned three stories above me, its mouth sealed by a heavy stone cap.

Even uninjured, climbing would’ve been impossible.

But with a shattered shoulder, a leg that screamed at every shift, and blood soaking my clothes, the odds turned cruel.

I couldn’t die here. Not like this. But the blood loss gnawed at my strength, making each weave of magic clumsier, harder.

Then pain exploded in my skull like a hammer driving into my brain, relentless.

A new idea struck me. Blood was power, more potent than any other magic. That was why blood magic was forbidden. I’d never woven with it before, but I was bleeding out. Why waste it? Forbidden or not, I’d use anything to survive.

My training was patchwork, but my magic flowed from instinct, from desperation, from intense emotions. I closed my eyes and focused on the blood seeping from my wounds. My fingers, slick with crimson, moved through the air, gathering the floating droplets into a swirling pool.

Blood didn’t behave like fire or wind. It was heavier, darker, humming with hunger and something primal.

It was life force. Each drop carried my memories, my pain, my desperate will to survive.

The threads I pulled from it were thick, almost syrupy, vibrating with a low, deep thrum that made my bones ache.

I wove them into spirals—tight, coiling, and layered. My hands moved as if remembering a ritual long buried. The pattern felt foreign yet inevitable, like a nightmare half-recalled. The air thickened with the scent of iron and lightning. Metallic heat coated my tongue.

The air thinned, each breath shallower than the last. Soon, there’d be nothing left to breathe.

My limbs became leaden, but I kept weaving.

While agony infused every part of me and terror pounded with each heartbeat, I let fury charge every cell as I thought of the deaths of all the victims who looked like me.

These murderers stacked redheads like firewood, nameless and forgotten.

They thought I’d join the pile, just another body dumped in this rotting well.

I was going to disappoint them.

I wouldn’t be a cold case. I’d survive. And then I’d burn them alive, watch their flesh blacken and peel. Not with my hands—no, with fire I’d weave until their screams choked on ash.

Rage burned hotter. My fingers flew, weaving blood into power. Crimson light erupted, hurling the well’s lid aside as the magic lifted me, carrying me toward the open mouth above.

My mouth tasted of rusty metal and sawdust, but victory swept through my tight chest.

I expected my assassins to be waiting. Let them see my magic firsthand. Let them realize their intel was fatally incomplete. Nero had been right to order me to keep my power a secret. Now, I’d ensure these fuckers died before they could whisper a word of it.

“Fuck! She’s coming out!” Footsteps pounded toward the well.

“Impossible!” the woman cried in disbelief.

My feet touched earth.

The wilderness sprawled before me, a graveyard of jagged rock and gnarled trees, their skeletal branches clawing at the sky. Boulders jutted from the ground like broken teeth, veiled in a creeping mist that smelled of damp decay. Beyond them, mountains hunched against the bruised horizon.

And the well stood ringed by ancient standing stones, their carvings writhing when glimpsed from the corner of the eye.

Five figures, four hulking men and a woman with a braid like a hangman’s rope, stared at me, their Viking garb splattered with mud and old blood.

I didn’t need a mirror to know what they saw: a girl in a shredded dress, skin painted crimson, grinning like a nightmare pulled from the well they’d thrown her into.

“Take the little bitch down,” the woman snarled.

They charged. Fifty yards. Forty.

My blood hit the earth—and the groundmoved. Thorned vines shot up where each drop fell, coiling around my legs in a grotesque embrace. A dozen serrated tendrils rose, swaying like cobras tasting the air. They were mine. Born from my rage, my pain, loyal as hounds and twice as vicious.

I laughed coldly. “Come and die!”

My magic was almost spent. My body screamed. But I’d burn out laughing as I watched thembleed.

Shadows swept across the rocks. I stumbled, but an arm hooked around my waist, steadying me.

Nero.

At his presence, my thorned vines slithered back into the earth, conserving what little strength I had left.

A hellhound’s howl split the air, followed by screams.

Morrigan and the hellhound tore into the bounty hunters, herding them with ruthless efficiency as Nero’s shadows closed in.

I blinked up at my savior. Fear and exhaustion carved lines into his face, blood streaking his black armor. Battle wounds mapped his body—deep gashes on his arms, his forehead, his sharp cheekbones. The kind of injuries that would’ve killed a lesser man.

“You came,” I breathed.

“Always, my brave flower.” His voice cracked, relief, fury, and raw gratitude glistening in his winter-green eyes.

Then his gaze snapped to the carnage behind us.

The fight was already over.

Five bodies. Not corpses yet. Not quite.

One man hung in ribbons of flesh, the hellhound’s work.

Another clutched his split belly, entrails slithering through his fingers.

A third whimpered through a mouthful of blood, his tongue severed, his eye sockets hollow.

The fourth twitched limbless in the dirt.

And the woman’s ribcage yawned open, organs glistening under the fading light.

A butcher’s tableau.

I didn’t look away.

“These fuckers will die slow.” Nero’s voice could have frozen hell itself . “Let their corpses rot here as a warning. Touch what’s mine, and this is your fucking dark fate.”

He’d just shown me the depths of his brutality. Yet I didn’t flinch. Didn’t recoil. Even with blood still cooling on my skin and violence curdling in my stomach, I clung to him tighter.

Because this carnage? It wasfor me.

A thought flickered in my pain-filled head: we should interrogate them, trace this back to whoever sent them, but their broken bodies were beyond answering. And I was too spent to care.

Only one truth mattered now, blazing through the pain and exhaustion—Nero wasn’t the killer. He’d never murdered any of those redheads.

I shouldn’t have doubted him. If he wanted me dead, I’d have been dead a long time ago. He might be brutal and complicated, but he was always direct and never subtle.

Those victim photos weren’t trophies. They were evidence. He’d been hunting these butchers all along, carrying some terror he couldn’t name. And when he’d found me alive by that well, the look in his eyes made my heart break for him.

No one could fake that storm of rage, joy, and relief.

Tears cut tracks through the blood on my cheeks, salt burning in fresh wounds. I didn’t wipe them away.

“I’m sorry I was late.”His breath was ragged against my skin.“Fighting bigger monsters for days. But I’m here now. You’re safe.”

Safe. For this moment, at least. Tomorrow’s threats could wait. I’d celebrate today’s win, as I was still breathing but they weren’t, their broken bodies twitching out their last agonized breaths.

Nero leaned forward, pressing his forehead to mine likehewas the one who needed anchoring. His arms trembled around me. I let him take what he needed, my warmth, my breath, the proof that I was alive.

“You look terrible,”I murmured. “You have dark circles under your eyes like a punched-out panda. And you need a bath badly.”

A rough chuckle vibrated through him.“You sure know how to flatter a man.”

I blinked at him. “It’s not a compliment.”

His mouth crashed into mine, desperate and not caring who was watching. I couldn’t savor it, even though I wanted to. The last of my strength abandoned me, my body going limp just as his arms locked around me like a vise.

The world faded. Somewhere beyond the gathering dark, Nero’s roar shook the earth:

“Heal her, Morrigan! Now!”