Page 186 of Stormvein

“We each made our choices. The difference is that I embraced mine, while you have always been suffocated by yours.” He looks back at Ellie. “You can save them all, Elowen. Even him. I give you my word that he will remain alive at Blackvault, while you fulfill what you were created to do.”

I glance at Ellie, and find her already watching me. The light around her has steadied, flowing in purposeful patterns now. Whatever shock she felt at Sereven’s revelations has changed, become something harder, more focused.

“You’re lying. The moment we walked through these doors, you had already decided our fate.” She takes a step forward. “Just like you decided the fate of every child you murdered.”

Tendrils of silver light extend from her skin, reaching toward me, toward the crystal.

“I know what I am now.” The words carry acceptance, defiance, and resolve. “But more importantly, I know what I’mnot. I’m not your weapon. I’m not your vessel. And I’m not going to let you use me to hurt anyone else.”

“Sacha will tell you that I never lie.” His gaze shifts briefly to me. “If I promise to keep him alive and Stonehaven will be spared, then that’s exactly what will happen. But the choice is yours.” One corner of his mouth tilts up. “But the offer has a lifespan, and I need an answer now. What will it be? Stonehaven’s destruction or further enlightenment?”

He’s right about one thing. He rarely lies outright. Instead, he omits. Twists. Redefines terms until the truth serves his purpose. A promise to keep me alive at Blackvault means nothing if ‘alive’ is defined as barely functioning, mind broken by torture.

While he’s focused on Ellie, I study the crystal in his hand. The weapon that’s torn through my powers twice before, and will do so again the second I move against him. The strange pull it exerts is growing stronger by the second, a steady pressure beneath my skin, pulling my shadows toward it no matter how much I try to stop them.

“You claim to know everything about her,” I say, buying time while I figure out our options. The doors behind us, the windows to our left, and the guards who are waiting beyond the chamber. “Then tell me. Who were her parents? Were they Veinbloods?”

“No,” Sereven says. “Completely normal like all the others. Common people, with no particular talents or abilities. But they harbored Veinbloods, and tried to help them escape. So we killed them, and others like them, and took their children.” He gestures dismissively. “That was always the point. Veinbloods couldn’t be trusted to carry power. They wanted to use it. Children with no power of their own made better vessels. They are empty cups waiting to be filled.”

The casual cruelty in how he speaks of people as tools, as containers, sends a fresh wave of revulsion through me. I’vealways known the Authority’s methods were brutal, but hearing him speak so openly about them brings the horror into sharp focus.

“Most of them did what they were meant to,” Sereven says. “They contained the power. It broke down over time. And when it was done, they died.”

He says it like it’s nothing. Like it was clean. Like children weren’t sacrificed for the Authority’s experiments. Like families weren’t destroyed in service to their vision of order.

“Some earlier trials failed, of course. Too much power, too fast. The vessels couldn’t contain it. But eventually we found the right balance, and the process worked perfectly.”

His gaze settles on Ellie, that disturbing pride returning. “And then you happened. The power didn’t break down. It bonded. It changed you. And then the masters stole you away.”

"Is that why you looked so afraid when you saw her at Blackstone Ridge? You didn’t know enough about her powers when you had her as a child, and now she’s returned, fully grown, with abilities you can’t predict or control. Your perfect vessel developed a will of her own.”

“If only you showed this much perception when you were younger. Maybe the war would have gone differently.” His tone is flippant, but I can see the truth in his expression, in the careful way he’s holding the crystal. The subtle tension in his shoulders, the constant awareness of Ellie’s position in the room.

He fears her. The High Commander of the Authority, the man responsible for thousands of deaths, fears what Ellie has become. What she represents. Power that escaped his control, that developed beyond his understanding. A creation that outgrew its creator.

The realization shifts something in the balance of power in the room. Sereven may have the crystal, but he stands beforesomething he doesn’t fully understand. Something he can’t predict.

“You killed children.” The revulsion is clear on Ellie’s face and in her voice. Not just for what was done to her, but for all the others who weren’t saved. Who didn’t survive. Who served their purpose and were discarded. “The masters who saved me knew what you were doing. That’s why they hid me from you.”

Her horror is changing into something harder, more focused. “They didn’tstealme from you. Theyrescuedme from becoming another dead child.”

“They interfered with processes they didn’t understand,” Sereven snaps. “They denied this world a force for true order?—”

“They saved me from becoming your weapon!” Her shout echoes off the walls. “They gave me the chance to discover my own path.”

She steps forward, moving up until she’s beside me, shoulder to shoulder. “Thisis my choice.” She reaches for my hand, her fingers intertwining with mine. “Heis my choice.”

The contact sends a surge of energy through me, and where we touch silver and shadows meet. But something about the merging is different this time. The connection forms too quickly, too completely, and the power builds between us faster than I can direct.

Pain shoots like lightning bolts through my veins, and sparks burst out from my skin in chaotic blasts that match the crystal’s pulsing energy. I fight to rein in my shadows, to regain control, but they’re being pulled toward the crystal against my will.

“Ellie—” My voice is strained as I fight against it.

Sereven raises the crystal. “What are you doing?” His voice carries genuine alarm. “Stop.” For the first time in longer than I can remember, the Authority mask falls away, revealing something desperate beneath it. “You don’t understand what you’re unleashing.”

But neither Ellie nor I is in control of what’s happening now. Our powers are swirling together, twisting into patterns too complex to follow, all of it flowing toward the crystal in Sereven’s hand.

My strength is being siphoned away, shadows ripping out from my body in streams I cannot stop.