Page 91 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

How can he perfect the process without access to more Veinbloods?

“Or I could kill you here and now.” Shadows gather around my hands, despite the crystal’s pull. “End this here.”

“You could try,” Sereven acknowledges with maddening calm. “But what would be the point? My death won’t stop what’s coming, Sacha. Kill me, and another will take my place. The Authority will continue regardless. The plans for Stonehaven are already in motion.”

His voice contains absolute belief in his cause, the same confidence I once admired in him when we fought side by side.

“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’m not . 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’ve always 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 before something 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’t steal me from you. They rescued me 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. “ This is my choice.” She reaches for my hand, her fingers intertwining with mine. “ He is 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.

“Sacha,” Ellie gasps, her fingers tightening around mine. “I can’t stop it. It’s pulling everything out.”

Silver light erupts from her in waves, no longer flowing but surging outward. Her face contorts with effort as she strains to contain it, blood trickling from her nose. But the power responds to the crystal’s call instead of her will.

Sereven attempts to back away, but the combined energy of silver and shadow has already surrounded him, weaving a web too tight for him to escape. With each pulse from the crystal, the web constricts, binding him tighter.

“What have you done?” The demand carries none of his usual authority, just raw panic as the energy field intensifies around him.

His fingers loosen on the crystal, trying to release it, but it doesn’t drop. The stone remains pressed against his palm as though it’s been fused there. Blood drips from between his fingers, and the smell of burning flesh reaches me.

The doors burst open behind us, and guards rush in, drawn by the lights and shouting. But the second they cross the threshold, lightning strikes, destroying them where they stand, leaving nothing but black smears on the ground.

Sereven tries to push forward, and is forced back into the center of the swirling vortex of silver-threaded shadows, the crystal in his hand blazing brighter and brighter with each second that passes.

“You can’t hold me here forever.” There’s raw panic in his eyes now. Something I’ve never seen in all the years I’ve known him.

“We don’t need forever.” I force the words out from between gritted teeth. “Just long enough to get free of here.” But my control is slipping further away, and I have no idea on how I’m going to achieve our escape. “Ellie. You need to leave.”

Her fingers squeeze mine. “I can’t. I can’t let go. Something is wrong. I can’t … It’s not listening to me.”

The silver-shadow energy intensifies, weaving tighter around Sereven and the crystal.

The stone’s blue glow becomes impossible to look at, shifting from sapphire to violet where it meets our combined power.

The air grows heavy with the smell of lightning.

Our breath shows in small white puffs in front of us.

The floor beneath our feet turns white with frost.

The merged power has become a force of its own, no longer responding to our will or even the crystal’s pull. It spreads out from surrounding Sereven, reaching out for us and the crystal as well.

“No!” Sereven’s voice rises to a shout as he attempts to break free. His fingers flex around the crystal, but the silver-shadow tendrils weave around his fingers, pressing between them, threading through them. They sink into his flesh, binding him to the crystal even as he struggles to release it.

Naked fear fills his face when he lifts his head to search me out. For the first time in our long, bloody history, he looks at me without contempt or calculation, but with desperation.

“Sacha, you must stop this. You have no idea what will happen if?—”

He cries out, back arching as the crystal pulses against his palm. The light shifts from violet to black where the energies meet, then through the spectrum back to white. It sends shock waves through the chamber.

“You don’t understand what you’re doing.” Sereven’s voice is tight with strain as the crystal begins to vibrate in his grasp. Blood is flowing freely from his nose, ears, and the corners of his eyes. “The power contained within … if it’s released without proper channeling …”

My shadows are being pulled from me in torrents, leaving a hollow emptiness in their wake. I fight to break the connection, to cut off the flow, but our joined hands seem fused together, and I have no control over what is happening.

“Make it stop,” Ellie cries out, voice breaking as she meets my gaze. Tears cut silver tracks down her cheeks, freezing to crystal before they fall. “I can’t control it anymore.”

The crystal’s vibration reaches fever pitch, blue light pulsing, a high-pitched noise spilling from it. The sound hurts my ears, sets my teeth on edge. Sereven’s face contorts with effort as he tries to release his grip.

“Sacha!” In that moment there’s nothing of the High Commander in his voice. “Stop this before it’s too late.”

In that moment, he doesn’t sound like the man who betrayed me at Thornreave Pass, or the Authority Captain who locked me away, or the High Commander who oversaw my torture. He sounds like the person I grew up with.

For a heartbeat, I see him as he was. Standing in Ashenvale’s great hall, teaching me to hold a blade, explaining the political landscape with patience I rarely deserved.

Then he throws his head back.

“I should have ended you when I had the chance, little brother.”

I try to respond, to regain control, but the magic has taken on a life of its own—a consciousness born from the merger of our powers and whatever resides within the crystal.

Tables, maps, goblets ... all rise into the air as the energy field intensifies, suspended in defiance of natural law.

Papers, weapons and furniture hover in eerie stillness before being flung violently against walls.

The officers he sent out have all fled now, abandoning their commander in the face of powers they cannot comprehend or fight.

Self-preservation overriding years of conditioned loyalty.

Only Sereven remains, trapped within our silver-shadow vortex, the crystal blazing between his fingers.

His features distort behind the energy field, stretched and compressed as if reality itself is becoming unstable around him.

Ellie screams. The sound carries power beyond mere noise, resonating at frequencies that shatter glass and splinter wood.

Her fingers slip from mine, breaking the physical connection but not the energy bridge between us.

Blue light explodes outward in concentric waves, meeting the silver and shadow in a violent collision that shakes the entire keep.

And then everything turns white.

The End