One Of Them

More screams echoed through the stone corridors, bouncing off the walls until I couldn't tell which direction they were coming from.

"The dormitories." Raven was already moving, his silver-streaked hair flying behind him as he ran. "It's coming from the student dormitories."

We ran. My legs burned, my bruised throat ached with each gasping breath, but I kept running. Caspian moved faster than humanly possible, disappearing around corners before I could even see where he'd gone.

The Thornblood House dormitory wing was chaos.

Students poured out of their rooms, some screaming, others just standing there with blank, shocked faces. A girl with dark braids collapsed against the wall, sobbing. Two boys were trying to hold back a third who kept lunging toward one of the rooms, screaming a name over and over.

"Jacob! Jacob, please, wake up!"

Caspian was already inside the room. I followed, pushing through the crowd, and immediately wished I hadn't.

A boy—Jacob, presumably—lay on the floor beside his bed. His skin had gone gray, his eyes open but unseeing. Black veins spread across his face like cracks in porcelain, and where his hands clutched at his chest, the same black rot I'd been seeing on the walls had spread across his shirt, eating through the fabric.

The curse hadn't just killed him. It had consumed him.

"How many?" Caspian's voice was tight as he looked at me. "How many more?"

I forced myself to look around with my Truthsight fully open. The death omens were everywhere—above at least thirty students in this wing alone. Some were faint, barely visible. Others pulsed so dark and heavy they seemed to drain the light from the air.

"Thirty in this hallway," I whispered. My voice came out broken. "Maybe more. I can't see through walls."

"Thirty." Raven pressed his hand over his mouth, like he was physically trying to keep the horror from spilling out. "That's... that's almost half of Thornblood House."

"Check the other houses." Caspian was in full command mode now, his face a mask of cold control. But I could see his hands shaking slightly as he closed Jacob's eyes. "Now."

We split up. Raven took Nightfall House. Dorian—who'd appeared from somewhere—took Silvermist. Caspian took Shadowveil. I went with Instructor Kaine, who'd shown up with a group of guards, to check the servant quarters.

The numbers kept getting worse.

Forty-seven in Nightfall House. Thirty-six in Silvermist. Twenty-eight in Shadowveil. And in the servant quarters, where humans slept in cramped rooms with thin walls and threadbare blankets, I saw death omens above every single person.

All of them. Every human servant in the academy was dying.

"We need to evacuate them," I said to Kaine. My voice was shaking now, matching my hands. "Get them out of here. Send them home. Something."

Kaine's dark eyes were hard as stone. "They're bound by their service contracts. They can't leave."

"They're dying!" The words came out too loud, too sharp. "Their contracts don't matter if they're dead!"

"Everything matters if they're dead." Kaine grabbed my arm, pulling me away from the servants' quarters and into an empty hallway. "Listen to me, girl. Those contracts are blood magic. If the servants break them by leaving, their families die. Every single person who shares their blood. That's how the old families keep control."

My stomach turned. "That's... that's slavery."

"Yes." Kaine's face didn't change. "Welcome to the vampire world. It's built on blood and chains and pretty lies that make people feel better about the horror. Now stop trying to save people and start figuring out how to break that curse before we all end up like Jacob."

She left me standing there, feeling sick and helpless and so angry I wanted to scream.

By the time we all reconvened in the council chamber, the death toll had risen to three. Jacob from Thornblood House. A girl named Sarah from Silvermist. And a human servant named Michael who'd been working in the kitchens.

The council chamber was exactly what I'd expected—gothic and imposing, with a long table carved from black wood and high-backed chairs that looked like thrones. Magnus Silvermist sat at the head of the table, his steel-gray hair perfectly combed, his face showing nothing. Around him sat six other council members, all ancient vampires with auras so corrupted by black rot and lies that they barely looked human anymore in my Truthsight.

Caspian stood before them, hands clasped behind his back. "The situation is accelerating faster than predicted. We have three deaths today. Potentially one hundred and forty-one more in the next week based on the death omens Miss Ashford has identified."

"And you believe her?" An older woman with white hair piled high on her head leaned forward. She wore crimson robes and had a face like a hawk. "A human girl with a convenient 'gift' that can't be verified?"

"I've verified it, Councilwoman Thorne." Dorian stepped forward, adjusting his reading glasses. "The Truthsight is real. I've tested it myself. She can see the curse's progression with accuracy we've never had before."

"Then she's more valuable than we thought." Magnus smiled, and it made my skin crawl. "If she can track the curse so precisely, she can also tell us exactly when and where to perform the sacrifice for maximum effect."

"No." The word came out before I could stop it.

Every head turned to stare at me.

"No?" Magnus raised one steel-gray eyebrow. "I'm sorry, did a servant just refuse a direct order from this council?"

"I'm not a servant." I stepped forward, even though my legs wanted to give out. "I'm a person. And I'm telling you—there's another way. My grandmother left instructions. A loophole in the blood bond that could break the curse without anyone dying."

"Ah yes, the mythical loophole." Magnus leaned back in his chair. "Tell me, Miss Ashford, if such a loophole exists, why didn't your grandmother use it herself three hundred years ago?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it. I didn't have an answer.

"Because it doesn't exist," Magnus continued. "She filled your family's head with false hope to make the burden of your inevitable sacrifice more palatable. It's a kindness, really. Better to die thinking you could have had another choice than knowing from the beginning that you were always meant to be sacrificed."

"You don't know that," Raven said. His amber eyes were bright with anger, his whole body coiled tight. "You're so desperate to protect your own power that you'd rather kill an innocent girl than risk the truth coming out."

"Watch your tone, half-breed," Councilwoman Thorne snapped. "You speak to your betters."

"My betters?" Raven laughed, and it sounded broken. "You're murderers. All of you. You built this academy on a massacre, maintained it through slavery and blood magic, and now you want to add one more death to your ledger rather than admit what you've done."

"That's enough!" Magnus slammed his hand on the table. "Remove the half-breed from these chambers. Now."

Two guards moved toward Raven, but Caspian stepped between them. "He stays. He's here on my authority."

"Your authority," Magnus said slowly, "is becoming a problem, Prince Noctis. You seem to have forgotten that the council can override even a prince's decisions when the safety of the academy is at stake."

"Try it." Caspian's voice was deadly quiet. "Override me. See what happens."

The tension in the room was suffocating. I felt like the air itself might shatter.

Then Dorian cleared his throat. "If I may suggest a compromise?"

Magnus's eyes narrowed. "Speak."

"Give Miss Ashford three days." Dorian gestured to me with one hand. "Three days to read her grandmother's journal, to explore the possibilities of the blood bond, to see if there truly is another way. If she finds nothing, if the deaths continue to accelerate, then we revisit the question of sacrifice. But if there's even a chance she's right, don't we owe it to everyone—human and vampire—to explore it?"

"Three days." Magnus studied me like I was a bug he was considering crushing. "And if she runs? If she tries to escape?"

"She won't." Caspian's voice was firm. "I'll ensure it personally."

"How?" Councilwoman Thorne demanded. "She's already tried to refuse her duty. What makes you think she won't try to leave?"

"Because," Caspian said, and his gold eyes met mine, filled with something I couldn't name, "she's not just connected to me through a blood bond. As of tonight, she's officially claimed as my ward. Any attack on her is an attack on me. Any attempt to harm her will be met with my full retaliation. And any attempt by her to leave will result in my own death, as the bond requires."

My breath caught. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm making it official." Caspian pulled out a small knife from his jacket. "A binding ward claim. Your life tied to mine. If you die, I die. If I die, you die. The council can't sacrifice you without killing me in the process."

"That's insane," I breathed. "You can't—"

"I can and I will." Caspian drew the knife across his palm, blood welling up dark red. "Unless you'd prefer to trust the council's mercy?"

I looked at Magnus's cold smile. At Councilwoman Thorne's hungry eyes. At the other council members who looked at me like I was already dead.

Then I looked at Caspian, at the determination in his face, the fear he was trying so hard to hide.

"Do it," I whispered.

Caspian took my hand. Drew the knife across my palm before I could brace for the pain. The cut was shallow but it burned like fire.

He pressed our bleeding palms together, and the world exploded into color.

The blood bond—already present, already connecting us—suddenly flared to life. I felt everything. His fear. His determination. His guilt. His desperate, terrified hope that maybe, just maybe, I could find another way.

And underneath it all, buried so deep he'd probably been hiding it from himself, I felt something else.

Something that felt dangerously like love.

The bond settled into place with a snap that I felt in my bones. When Caspian released my hand, I could still feel him—a presence in the back of my mind, a warmth that hadn't been there before.

"It's done," Dorian said quietly. "The ward bond is complete. Miss Ashford is now under Prince Noctis's direct protection. Harming her means harming him."

Magnus's face had gone dark with fury. "You've just tied your life to a sacrifice meant to save thousands. What happens when the Blood Moon rises and she has to die?"

"Then I die with her." Caspian's voice didn't waver. "But I don't believe it will come to that."

"Your faith is touching." Magnus stood, his black robes sweeping the floor. "Three days, Prince Noctis. That's all you get. If Miss Ashford hasn't found this mythical loophole by then, we proceed with the original plan. Ward bond or not."

He left, the other council members following like shadows.

When we were alone—just me, Caspian, Raven, and Dorian—I finally let myself feel the full weight of what had just happened.

"You tied your life to mine," I said. My voice came out flat, shocked. "You're going to die if I die."

"Yes." Caspian was wrapping his cut palm with a clean cloth, not meeting my eyes.

"Why?"

He finally looked up at me. "Because it was the only way to keep you alive long enough to find the answer. And because..." He stopped. Started again. "Because you deserve the chance to live, Sera. Even if it costs me everything."

Before I could process that, before I could even begin to understand what it meant, Raven grabbed my uninjured hand.

"We need to go," he said urgently. "Now. Before the council changes their mind."

"Go where?"

"Anywhere but here." Raven pulled me toward the door. "Because three days isn't enough time to find a loophole, and we all know it. Which means in three days, both you and Caspian are going to die unless we figure out something the council doesn't expect."

We ran through the corridors, my head spinning, my hand burning where Caspian had cut it.

The bond pulsed in my mind like a second heartbeat. I could feel Caspian even though he wasn't beside me anymore. Could feel his fear mixing with my own.

And underneath it all, I heard my grandmother's voice whispering through the journal I still clutched in my free hand:

"The bond is the key. But to use it, you must be willing to give up everything. Including yourself."