Chapter 2: The Boy with the Burning Blood.

 

-ELARA-

(Five Years Later)

Rogue City didn't smell like rain and pine like the forests of Camelot. It smelled of wet dog, desperate unwashed bodies, and the metallic tang of blood that never quite scrubbed out of the cobblestones.

"Hold still, Leo," I murmured, dipping a toothbrush into the tin cup mixture of charcoal dust and walnut oil.

Leo sat impatiently on a crate at the corner of our cramped, one room apartment while I painted the thick, black sludge over his hair.

"I hate this black goop," he scrunched his nose. "It itches.”

"I know, baby," I said, brushing a lock of his hair aside. Beneath the artificial black, his roots were glowing a bright, shimmering gold. A mark of his Camelot blood. The mark of the man who wanted us dead. "But we have to be invisible. Remember the game? We are shadows."

"Shadows don't have gold hair," Leo recited the rule we lived by.

"Exactly.".

At five years old, Leo was already too smart for his own good. He didn't look like me. He had his father’s sharp jawline even beneath all that baby fat. And sometimes, when the light hit him just right, I even saw Kael’s arrogance in the way Leo tilted his chin.

I pushed the thought away. Kael was dead to us.

"There," I said, wiping a smudge of soot from his cheek. "Now you're safe.”

Now, he didn't look like Kael anymore. Ironically, with his hazel eyes, he looked more like a Lycan.

Suddenly, a heavy fist pounded against the rotting wood of our door, making the entire apartment shake. Leo flinched, instinctively sliding off the crate to hide behind me.

"Elara!" A rough voice bellowed from the hallway. "Open up. Or I take this door off its hinges."

My blood ran cold. Vargus.

He wasn't just our landlord; he ran the entire lower district of Rogue city. I owed him three months rent, and yesterday, one of his lackeys had left a dead rat on our doorstep as a warning.

I opened the door just a crack. Vargus filled the frame, his beady eyes narrowing as he sniffed the air.

"You're late, herbalist," he growled, revealing yellowed teeth. 

"I have the credits," I lied, keeping my body between him and Leo. "I just need to sell a fever potion.

 Tomorrow. I'll have it tomorrow." 

A dry laugh escaped Vargus' lips. He leaned in, his foul breath hitting my face.

"You said that last week. My patience is gone.

You have twenty-four hours, Elara. If I don't see five hundred credits by sunset tomorrow, I'll take the little boy.” 

I instinctively tucked Leo behind me as Vargus let only his hands transform as he screeched his claws across the wood door.

He looked over my shoulder, his gaze landing on Leo.

"I'll sell you to the slave rings in the South," Vargus hissed. "A young pup. He’d fetch a high price."

He slammed his hand against the doorframe one last time, then turned and stomped away.

I closed the door and locked it immediately, my hands still trembling.

“Mom?" Leo whispered in a frail tone. "Is Vargus coming back?"

"No," I said, forcing a smile I didn't feel. "We’re going to be fine. We're even eating meat tonight. Chicken." 

Leo smiled, a genuine, toothy grin that made him look like a child instead of a tiny adult. "Chicken! Can we—”

He broke off mid-sentence as his body began to jerk violently.

" Leo?" I screamed and crossed the room to him in two strides.

Leo gripped the edge of the crate with white knuckles. His face, which had been pale a moment ago, was suddenly a deep, alarming red.

" It burns," he whimpered between short, raspy breaths. " Mom, it burns!"

"I've got you.”

I scooped him up, his skin scorching hot against my arms.  I laid him on our thin mattress and ripped his shirt open.

Mana Burn.

Angry, glowing red lines traced the veins in his chest, pulsing rhythmically with his heartbeat. It looked like magma trying to crack through stone. 

This was the curse of his bloodline. He had the wolf of an Alpha King trapped in the fragile body of a child. His magic was too strong, it was cooking him from the inside out.

" Make it stop," Leo sobbed, his back arching off the mattress. " Please!"

" I ’m trying, baby, I’m trying!"

I scrambled to my workbench and grabbed the vial of valerian extract I had been saving for emergencies like this.

I filled a dropper and rushed back to him. “Open up, Leo. Swallow this."

He choked down the liquid. I held him steady, singing a lullaby I used to hear the maids sing in Camelot.

One minute. The red lines usually faded by now. 

Two minutes. He was getting even hotter. 

Three minutes. Leo’s eyes rolled back in his head.

" No," I whispered, panic clawing at my throat. " No, no, no. This is the strongest dose."

I grabbed him and wrapped him in a blanket to cover his newly dyed hair. I didn't care about the rain. Or Vargus. Or the thugs that patrolled at night.

I kicked the door open and ran.

********************

Old Martha’s clinic was nothing more than a basement with a flickering neon sign, but she was the only healer in the Rogue City who didn't ask questions.

" Hold him down," Martha barked, yanking her grey hair into a bun as she pressed a stethoscope to Leo’s chest.

"The valerian didn't work, Martha. It didn't even touch it. What’s happening?"

Martha didn't answer. She injected a clear liquid directly into Leo’s arm. Slowly, the glowing lines on his chest began to dim and Leo’s breathing evened out, shifting from jagged gasps to a shallow rhythm.

Martha slumped back against the peeling wallpaper, wiped the sweat from her brow, and looked at me with a grim expression.

"That was the last of my synthesized inhibitor, Elara," she said roughly.

"I can pay you," I said quickly, reaching for my pocket. " I have credits—"

"Credits won't fix this, Elera," Martha snapped and gestured to Leo’s sleeping form. "Look at it. I've never seen a mana burn this strong.

The inhibitors aren't strong enough anymore. His own power is eating his organs."

The whole room began to spin. “So… what are you saying?"

"I'm saying, the next attack will kill him," Martha said bluntly. " Two days. Maybe three. Then his heart explodes."

I grabbed the edge of the metal table to keep me from falling. My chest heaving heavily as panic surged through me. 

"There has to be something. I’m a herbalist. Tell me what to brew. I’ll find the ingredients."

Silence stretched between us a little too long, the sound of heavy rain hammering against the windows filling the room.

"There is one thing,” Martha said and looked at me. “But you can't get it. It's impossible.”

"Try me."

"The Moonfire Orchid."

The name sucked the air out of the room. Every herbalist knew the legend. The Moonfire Orchid was a magical flora that grew on the grave of the first Lycan King. It possessed enough raw lunar energy to stabilize even the most dangerous magical illness, or  reverse a curse written into the soul itself.

It was the perfect cure.

But it was also a Lycan national treasure.

"It grows in the Lycan Royal Sanctuary," Martha continued, her voice dropping to a whisper as she paced around. " In the Obsidian Palace. They say King Darius keeps it alive with his own blood."

"King Darius," I repeated, the name tasting like ash.

The Monster of the North. The Lycan King who executed half of his council simply because they bored him. His territory was a fortress. No one had ever broken in and lived to tell the tale. No one yet.

"He kills intruders for sport, Elara," Martha warned, seeing the look in my eyes. " If you go there, you die. And the boy dies anyway."

I looked at Leo. He looked so small on the metal table, his skin grey and clammy. I brushed a lock of dark hair off his forehead. He was the only good thing that had come from the wreckage of my life. He was the only reason I had kept breathing after Kael destroyed everything I had.

If I did nothing, he died in three days. If I went to the Lycan Palace, I probably die tonight.

But probably wasn't definitely.

I leaned down and kissed Leo’s forehead. "I need you to watch him, Martha."

"Elara, don't be stupid," the old woman hissed.

I straightened up, wiping the tears from my face. The fear was still there, pounding in my chest, but beneath it was something harder. Something cold and sharp, forged in five years of poverty and exile.

"I’m not being stupid," I said, my voice steady. "I’m being a mother."

I walked to the door, opening it to the rainy night.

"Keep him alive for twenty-four hours, Martha. I’m going to go rob a King."