Page 51 of Stormvein

“... need to draw the infection out …” Mira. Practical, even when facing death.

“... if we don’t stop the blood poisoning …” An unfamiliar voice. Female, worried.

Most frequently, most consistently, mostdesperately,itisEllie’s voice. Hers remains closest, her presence unmistakable even through fever’s distorted lens.

“Sacha, please …” Her voice breaks on my name.

“... you can’t die now …” Exhaustion thins her words.

“... we just got you back …” Determination battling with fear.

Something cool touches my forehead, a cloth perhaps, held in gentle hands. It offers brief respite from the burning heat, but cannot reach the fever raging within. I fight to respond, to show some sign of awareness, but my body refuses to obey even the most basic commands. I remain trapped between life and death, between consciousness and oblivion, between surrender and resistance.

My awareness fades in and out. Sometimes I’m cognizant only of the pain, the fever, the struggle for each breath. Other times, I float above it all, detached from any physical suffering, watching my broken body from a distance.

In those moments of strange detachment, I see Ellie most clearly. Her face is drawn with exhaustion and worry, new lines etched around her eyes and mouth from days without proper rest. The silver light still pulses beneath her skin, more pronounced than before, visible even through my fever-clouded vision. She remains at my side at all times, her hands shaking but gentle as she tends to wounds that will never heal properly.

“Don’t you dare die on me, Sacha,” she whispers when she thinks I can’t hear. “Not after everything we’ve been through.”

Her fingers brush against mine. A small gesture of connection that leaves a trail of warmth through the numbing cold that claims more of me with each passing moment. I want to respond, to turn my hand to capture hers, but the pathways between intention and action have severed.

And then the visions fade completely, leaving only darkness and the distant echo of whispered names.

Elowen.

Stormvein.

Echoes without a source. Yet they persist, repeating in the void like heartbeats, like breath, like something integral to myvery existence. Like the promise of what might be if I can survive this crucible of fever and pain.

I sink deeper into the abyss, letting it claim me completely. The pain recedes into blessed numbness. Consciousness slips away, but Ellie’s presence remains. An anchor, a tether to life I am not yet prepared to abandon. Her eyes are the last thing I perceive before the void reaches out to envelop me in its waiting embrace.

Chapter Twelve

ELLIE

What you protect reveals more than what you proclaim.

Writings of the Veinblood Masters

The cave reeksof blood and death, the stench seeping into my clothing, my skin, my hair, until I can taste it with every breath.

I press another cool cloth against Sacha’s burning forehead, my hands shaking so much I almost drop it twice. We’ve been in this cave for three days. Three days of watching infection claim him inch by inch, his body failing despite everything we do. Three days of praying to gods I don’t believe in, begging for a miracle I don’t deserve, but he does.

“His fever is climbing again,” I tell Mira as she enters, bringing fresh water from the underground pool. She arrived in the middle of the night two days ago with the rest of the fighters who’d been out spreading false trails across the mountains. “I can’t get it down.”

She kneels beside me, looking as exhausted as I feel. The strain of the past few days has taken its toll on all of us, but Mira and Varam show it more than the others. These are his people. They got him back, and now they have to watch him die anyway.

“Let me see.”

She peels back the layers of blood-soaked bandages covering his torso. The smell hits me. The unmistakable sweet-rot scent of dying flesh that no amount of herbal poultices can mask. The sword wound in his side is still weeping pus, the edges pulling apart instead of knitting together. The brand on his cheek, that hateful Authority symbol they burned into him, has blackened at the edges where the flesh is dying. His skin is mottled purple and red where the corruption has spread beneath the surface, mapping the path of his approaching death.

My stomach heaves, but there’s nothing left to bring up. I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday, maybe longer. Time is blurring together in this dim cave, marked only by different people taking shifts at the entrance, and venturing out trying to scavenge food we can eat.

“The infection has spread to his blood.” Lysa crouches beside us, her tone barely masking the despair. “We need to send someone to Stonehaven for supplies.”

“We can’t. What if there really is someone betraying him there? We can’t risk it.” I dig my nails into my palms until I feel skin break.

“We don’t know that for certain. Maybe they always planned to have soldiers following the convoy,” Lysa says, though her expression betrays the same fear. She glances back toward the cave entrance where Varam stands guard.