Chapter 25

(Elouera’s POV)

The fever came back around midnight, making my whole body feel hot.

I lay on my back in the dark, staring at the stone ceiling. My chest rose and fell quickly as I struggled to breathe. Every breath hurt, like I was breathing in tiny shards of glass.

The salty mixture Stirling made me swallow in the Sinks had kept me alive. But it couldn’t stop the poison that was already spreading through my blood.The Night-bloom was settling into my marrow.

I pushed myself up on one elbow, but my arms were shaking so badly that the silk sheets twisted around my waist. The room started to spin.

On the table beside the bed was a small metal cup filled with cold mint water. Moonlight from the balcony window shone on it. I reached for the cup, but my hand was too weak to hold it. My fingers hit the cup instead, knocking it to the floor with a loud clang.The water soaked into the Persian rug, black as ink in the dark.

I pulled my hand back, tucking my arm against my stomach. Three weeks. Bram’s raspy warning sounded inside my skull, loud enough to drown out the wind howling against the glass. Within three weeks, their heat will cease forever. It turns them into a hollow, obedient shell.

I had to know if Master Bram had found a way to reverse it.

When Stirling had carried me back from the lower sectors, he had smuggled me through the private royal stables, dumping my limp body onto the settee in my chambers before any of Holden’s guards could ask questions. But I hadn't been asleep. I had feigned unconsciousness, watching through heavy eyelashes as Stirling stood over me for twenty full minutes, his breathing heavy, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

He knew. Jace knew, too. The scent of an unsuppressed Omega, my real scent, wild honey and fresh rain had bled through my damp linen bindings during the fever spike in the Sinks. They hadn't spoken the truth aloud yet, but the silence hanging over the palace was stretched so thin it felt like a drawn bowstring ready to snap.

A sharp, rhythmic rapping at the narrow servant’s door in the dressing alcove made me freeze.

It wasn't the royal guard's heavy boot-heel, nor was it the lazy, arrogant tap of Callan's knuckle. It was the signal. Master Bram’s street courier is a young, mute boy named Pip who moved through the city's drainage chimneys like a water rat.

Relief flooded my chest, so intense and sudden it brought burning tears to the corners of my eyes. Bram had done it. He had analyzed the remaining powder from the crushed black pill. He had sent the chemical breakdown and hopefully, the formula for an antidote.

I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress, my bare feet hitting the freezing floorboards. I dragged my wool cloak over my nightshirt, wrapping it tight around my chest to hide the frantic heave of my lungs, and stumbled into the dark shadows of the alcove.

I slid the brass bolt back. The heavy oak paneling groaned as I pulled the narrow door inward three inches.

"Pip?" I whispered into the pitch-black stairwell.

No answer. Only the smell of damp brick, old grease, and the sharp, metallic tang of iron.

My stomach dropped into a cold, bottomless pit. That smell wasn't damp stone. It was fresh, uncoagulated blood.

I pushed the door fully open, pulling a thin silver stilettos from the inner lining of my cloak. The dim candlelight from my bedroom spilled out onto the top landing of the spiral servant's stairs.

Pip was there.

The boy was sprawled awkwardly across the third stone step, his small, thin body twisted at an unnatural angle. His dirty canvas messenger satchel was torn open, its leather strap severed by a clean, downward blade stroke. His eyes were wide, fixed sightlessly on the vaulted arch above him, reflecting the pale moonlight.

From his neck, a deep, jagged line pooled crimson down the front of his rough woolen tunic, soaking into the parchment envelope he was still clutching tightly in his right fist.

My breath caught in my throat, a ragged, silent sob tearing through my ribs. "Pip..."

I dropped to my knees beside him, my silver blade slipping from my numb fingers to clatter against the stone. He was so small. He was barely twelve years old. He had survived the rot of the Under-Market only to be slaughtered on the back staircase of an imperial palace because he was carrying a piece of paper meant for me.

I reached out with trembling hands, my fingers brushing against his cold, waxy skin as I gently pried the blood-soaked parchment from his stiffened fingers.

The wax seal on the back was Bram’s private mark, a crude pressing of a raven’s skull. But the seal had already been broken. The parchment was torn at the top edge, dark red thumbprints smudging the tiny, precise handwriting Bram used for his dangerous alchemy.

I unfolded it with shaking hands, holding it up toward the faint light of my doorway.

Most of the words were obscured by Pip’s blood, but Bram’s final three lines burned through the dark like fire:

...not merely a calcifying agent. The mercury is a catalyst for an ancient Imperial Binding. Once the third dose is ingested, the subject’s mind becomes entirely susceptible to the Alpha scent of the one who administered it. The antidote requires...

The rest of the page was ripped away. Missing.

Someone had stood over this boy's dying body, read Master Bram’s analysis, and torn off the formula for the cure before leaving the rest of him to bleed out on my doorstep.

A heavy, deliberate footstep echoed from the dark spiral stairs below.

The sound of an iron-shod riding boot hitting the stone. Slow. Unhurried.

I scrambled backward on my hands and knees, pulling the blood-stained fragment of paper against my chest, my head whipping toward the darkness below.

A shadow rose out of the stairwell, tall, broad, and terrifyingly calm. The candlelight from my room caught the silver filigree embroidered along the high collar of his dark velvet coat, then illuminated the sleek, silver wheels of the mechanical cane he carried in his left hand.

Archduke Holden stepped onto the landing.

He didn't look at the dead boy lying at his feet. He didn't even look at the blood pooling around the hem of his pristine trousers. His warm, amber-green eyes were fixed entirely on me, holding a quiet, terrifying softness that made my skin crawl.

In his right hand, tucked casually between his long, gloved fingers, was the torn half of Bram's letter, the missing half containing the antidote.

"“You were always too curious for your own good, Elouera,” Holden said softly. His voice was calm and warm, but there was no kindness in it.

He raised his hand and held the piece of parchment over the candle on the stairwell wall.

The paper caught fire at once. Orange flames quickly ate through Bram’s handwriting, turning the only copy of the cure into black, burning ash right in front of my eyes.

Holden smiled as he let the ash fall onto Pip’s chest.

“The third dose is due tonight, my child,” the Archduke whispered. He stepped over the dead boy and reached for my face with his leather-gloved hand. “And this time, you’ll swallow it yourself