Page 50 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

Chapter Twenty-Three

SACHA

The tower falls, but the silence it taught lingers.

Reflections on Captivity — Sacha Torran’s Journals

I turn back to Lisandra. Her back is already flush against the wall, and her eyes keep darting toward the fallen sword, measuring the distance, the odds, the seconds she doesn’t have.

But it’s too late for her to do anything. As soon as the door closes on Ellie’s back, I move. My hand closes around her throat. I don’t squeeze … but I could. Shadows rise, eager for retribution. They coil around my forearm, dark tendrils pulsing with my rage.

Twenty-seven years of imprisonment.

Twenty-seven years of planning vengeance against the one who betrayed me.

Only to find that he wasn’t the only one.

Her pulse thrums against my palm, fast and frantic, like something dying. Prey caught in a predator’s jaws, knowing escape is impossible but trying anyway. The rapid flutter travels through my hand and up my arm, a reminder of how fragile life can be.

How easily it can be snuffed out.

“Twenty. Seven. Years.” I speak each word as if I’m chiseling it from stone. Each syllable is filled with the accumulated rage of darkness spent trapped for decades. “While I rotted in that tower, you led Stonehaven. You spoke with my voice. You took my place. I trusted you.”

Voidcraft darkens the veins in my hand until they turn black, traveling up my arms. But it doesn’t stop there. It continues over my shoulders, across my chest, and up my throat.

Dangerous. Deadly. Barely contained.

Her lips part, but I’m already pressing my thumb against her windpipe …

just enough to make her fight for every breath.

Just enough to remind her of what it feels like to struggle for air.

To feel life balanced on the edge of a blade.

To experience a fraction of what I endured because of her betrayal.

Her protest dies in a strangled gasp. I lean closer until I can see every detail of her face. The fine laughter lines around her eyes, now deepened by fear. The sweat beading at her temples and above her top lip. The pallor of her skin as blood drains from it.

The stone beneath our feet groans, hairline cracks spreading outward from where I stand. The very foundations of Stonehaven are responding to my power, to my rage. A fortress built on a mountain riddled with caves and tunnels, all of them filled with shadows I can feel, I can touch, I can command .

“No justifications,” I say, my mouth inches from hers. “No noble intentions. You knew . You’ve seen the Authority’s prisoners. You’ve seen the aftermath. Don’t pretend you were blind to what awaited me.”

Her eyes widen, pupils dilating until only the thinnest ring of color remains. The scent of fear rolls off her in waves—sweat, desperation, guilt . The body’s recognition of death’s proximity, even before the mind accepts it.

Her hands lift, but she doesn’t touch me, doesn’t try to pull my hand away from her throat. Even now, she remembers what I am … who I am. The Shadowvein Lord. The Vareth’el . The man whose power is feared by the Authority.

The man whose return was prophesied. Whose vengeance was foretold.

A shadow tendril slides down my arm and wraps around her wrist. She gasps, trying to jerk away, but the darkness holds her fast. Another leaves my calf and coils around her ankle.

A third separates from my throat and brushes against her cheek.

They explore her, tasting her fear, sampling her desperation.

“You should kill me.” Her voice is broken. “You want to.”

The shadows weaving around my body pulse at her words, responding to the truth in them. They squeeze her wrists tighter, wind further up her legs, eager for my command.

Yes, I do want to. Every fiber of my being demands her death. The very shadows that define me hunger for it. For justice. For balance restored.

I study her face, searching for the mask, the lie, the angle she’s trying to play. But there’s nothing left except hollow resignation, and the echo of her betrayal ringing through the silence.

“Should I?” I tighten my grip ever so slightly. The bones beneath her skin shift under my fingers. It would be so easy. All it would take is one squeeze to bring me one moment of release. The hunger for it burns inside me, dark and wild.

I could let it go. I could let my shadows consume her. I could use Voidcraft to erase her from existence. The room would fill with darkness for a heartbeat, and when it receded, nothing would remain of Lisandra but memory. Not even dust. Not even a whisper.

My body reminds me of the agony they carved into me. The chains. The blades. The whips. The cold floor soaked in blood that never seemed to stop.

Each memory flashes through my mind in vivid detail. The Authority brand pressed into my chest and cheek, searing flesh and soul alike. The breaking of bones. The isolation that should have driven me mad.

The shadows want balance. The void wants blood.

They rise from my skin, pooling around Lisandra’s feet like a dark tide, climbing her legs, her torso, reaching tendrils toward her face. The stone beneath us continues to crack, the entire room vibrating with the force of power barely contained.

The bruises on her throat darken, spreading beneath her skin. Not from the pressure of my fingers, but from the shadows that have slipped through her pores, into her veins, carrying darkness into her very blood.

“Do it.” Her voice is barely audible. “Finish it.”

And that is what stops me. Because she wants it.

She wants to die. She wants me to become her executioner so she doesn’t have to live with the aftermath of her betrayal. It cuts through my rage like a blade, cooling the fire of vengeance.

I can see it clearly now. Death would be an escape for her. A quick end to guilt and shame. A coward’s exit from the consequences of her betrayal.

No, that’s not how this is going to play out. That’s not what she’ll get.

I force it back, assert control over the darkness that wants to consume her. The effort makes my jaw clench, my muscles tighten. The darkness in Lisandra’s veins fights my command to retreat, eager to consume her from within.

But I am the Vareth’el. I command the void. It does not command me.

My struggle is visible. Shadows writhe around us, the temperature fluctuating wildly as I regain control. The stone stops groaning. The cracks stop spreading. The darkness recedes.

Blackstone Ridge. Sereven. The deadline. The demand for proof.

She’s still useful. And I will use her.

My fingers loosen. She collapses against the wall, chest heaving, hand flying to her throat, where bruises are already showing their presence. Dark impressions of my fingertips mark her skin like a brand. She gulps air in desperate gasps, her body shaking with relief and terror.

The blackness in her veins remains, though. A subtle pattern visible beneath her skin. A reminder of how close I came to letting the void take her.

“No. Death would be a mercy you haven’t earned.”

Relief flashes in her eyes, and I hate seeing it. She thinks she’s survived something. But she hasn’t even begun to pay for what she’s done. Death would be quick. What I have planned won’t be.

The shadows around me settle slightly, though they continue to attempt to lift and twist from my skin, responding to the storm of emotions I refuse to display openly. Control has always been my strength. Even in the darkest moments of captivity, I maintained it. I will not lose it now.

“Don’t mistake my restraint for forgiveness.

” I take a step back. The floor beneath my feet is scorched where I stood, blackened in a perfect circle as if the stone itself was burned by proximity to the void.

“Your betrayal deserves execution. But I’m not giving you the satisfaction of making this about you.

Death would only serve your conscience, and not the needs of the Veinwardens. ”

She straightens slowly, fighting to recover her composure. Her hand remains at her throat, fingers probing where my grip has left its mark. The darkness beneath her skin has begun to recede, but slowly, reluctantly . “What will you do now?”

“Now?” I bend and pick up her sword. The metal catches the torchlight, gleaming dully. A reminder of how close she still is to death. “Now you’ll stand before the people whose families you sold to slaughter. You’ll look every grieving person in the eye and you’ll tell them what you did.”

The blade feels wrong in my hand. Too lightweight compared with my shadowblade.

That responds to intent, to will. It merged back into my body during my last desperate stand at Ashenvale, and I’ve yet to reform it.

But I will, and when I do, it will once again become an extension of self in the way steel never can.

For now, there’s a certain poetry in holding her weapon, in controlling the instrument she brought to end my life.

“They’ll understand I had no choice. I did what I had to do to protect Stonehaven!”

The defiance in her voice ignites my rage anew. Shadows explode from my skin, ripping outward in a visible wave of darkness. The torch gutters violently, nearly extinguished in the surge of power.

I round on her, my control slipping for a moment. The full force of my fury visible for that one brief second. Not in my expression, but in the darkness that surrounds me like a living cloak. In the void-black of my eyes, pupils expanded to consume iris and white alike.

My arm extends, and the tip of the sword nicks her throat.

“You did what was easy ,” I snap. The words carry physical force, each syllable accompanied by a pulse of shadow that slams into the wall around her, cracking stone, leaving impact craters in a perfect circle that doesn’t touch her.

“You made a decision. One man for a thousand. If it were just me, I could forgive your decision. But it wasn’t.

You didn’t just betray me , Lisandra. You betrayed every fighter who’s ever fought in this war.

Every scout who didn’t come home. You lit the pyre and walked away before the flames touched your feet. ”

She flinches as each word strikes her. The shadows pulse with my voice, making the very air vibrate. Her mouth opens, then closes.

What defense could she possibly offer? What justification could possibly suffice?

“I never wanted you to suffer,” she says quietly. The admission is small, pathetic against the enormity of what she’s done.

“And yet I did. Intentions don’t outweigh actions. That’s the part you never understood. Not even back before my imprisonment. Not when there’s blood in the dirt.”

She flinches. The truth of it strikes deep. I’ve known Lisandra for decades. Fought alongside her, planned with her, trusted her with the lives of our people. She was respected. Valued . And yet all this time, she has never understood the most fundamental truth of leadership.

We are judged not by what we intend, but by what we do.

I lean in, lowering my voice. Darkness follows, curling around us both like smoke. “You broke something you can never fix. But that doesn’t mean you’re done.”

Her gaze lifts, confusion and uncertainty filling her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You betrayed me, and served Sereven. Now, you’ll bow to my purpose.”

The darkness shifts, coalescing into something that isn’t quite solid, but is more than shadows.

Voidcraft weaves through it, a manifestation of power long suppressed but now fully restored with the return of my ring.

It takes shape, becomes something with wings, perching on my shoulder. My familiar.

Confusion is followed by understanding, and then fear. “You want me to lead you to him.”

“Not just to him. To the trap I’m sure he’s planning. The force he’ll have waiting to make sure you do exactly what he told you.”

Her spine stiffens, the last vestige of the commander she once was falling away. The woman who led Stonehaven has gone. Only the traitor who will now become bait remains. “And if I refuse?”

A cold smile lifts my lips. The shadow-raven on my shoulder spreads wings that seem to extend far beyond physical possibility, filling the room with darkness once more. “You won’t. Because you know what Sereven does to failures.” My voice drops. “But you’ve never witnessed what I do to traitors.”

I don’t need to elaborate. The shadows speak for themselves, writhing and coiling with barely contained hunger.

Her fear breaks free again, and this time she doesn’t hide it.

It’s naked in her eyes, in the trembling of her hands, in the shallow, rapid breaths that make her chest rise and fall like a frightened bird’s.

“He’ll have soldiers waiting. Dozens. Maybe more.”

“I hope so.”

She opens her mouth, perhaps to argue further, but the door creaks open before she can speak. The sound cuts through the tension in the room, momentarily disrupting the cloud of shadows that has gathered around us.

The shadows retreat reluctantly, though they continue to swirl around my feet, writhing up my legs, and pulsing beneath my skin. The raven remains on my shoulder, head tilted, eyes focused on the door.

Ellie enters, almost vibrating with tension that eases the second she sees Lisandra still on her feet and breathing. Her gaze finds mine, relief visible in her eyes. She thought she might return to find Lisandra dead. I can’t deny that it was a reasonable assumption.

Varam strides in behind her and stops cold.

His gaze moves from me to Lisandra, and narrows at the bruises forming on her throat.

The distinctive imprint of fingermarks against skin.

The evidence of how close I came to ending her life.

A frown creases his brow at the fading patterns of darkness visible beneath her skin, the scorched circle on the floor, the cracks in the walls.

“Lord Torran?” His voice is careful, one hand drifting down to the weapon at his hip. He’s cautious. Uncertain of what he’s walking into. “What is happening here?”

I straighten, assuming once more the mantle of the Vareth’el. Not just a man seeking vengeance, but the Shadowvein Lord, a leader with responsibilities to his people.

“We have found our traitor.”

His attention whips back to Lisandra, jaw dropping. Incomprehension gives way to shock. And then the information locks in place. Understanding dawns, followed immediately by rage that twists his features.

“ You? ” The word drips with disbelief. Fury colors his voice. “ You betrayed us?”