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14. Royal Magic
publish date:
2026-09-26 08:00:57(Morrison)
The working that had tried to kill my wife was dead, but it had left a body, and I'd spent two days reading it.
You can't unmake a spell without leaving residue, the same way you can't fire a gun without leaving powder. I'd caught this one in a containment shell before it finished, so most of it had died intact instead of s
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The 200 Year Blood Swap 20. Concluding The Experiment
(Maxine)I felt like I had been fucked by nothing but his hands on my bare skin."Controlled discharge. I can regulate it." He answered my question, then demonstrated. I lost an entire sentence. "Down to the thread."“Cheat!” I panted, wrecked by a touch of magic.He chuckled. Because it was cheating, in the most delicious and interesting way. Given that this had clearly become a game I didn’t intend to lose, I got a hand between us and returned the favor the low-tech way, with nothing but intent and a working knowledge of how to make a disciplined man lose the thread of his own discipline.
The 200 Year Blood Swap 19. The Experiment
(Maxine)I don't remember much of leaving. I remember Theo's hand on my wrist, telling me not to do anything he'd have to be impressed by from a hospital bed. I remember Morrison taking every logistic off me without being asked, the physicians and the doors and the car, because he'd read my face and understood I had nothing left to spend. I remember the private wing in the old city, the door closing, the silence, and standing close to the one person who'd told me the truth when everyone else had shrugged.For a while neither of us said anything. I stood in the middle of a borrowed room in my own kingdom and tried to stay upright like a person, and failed at it in stages."Someone did this to him." The words came out wrong. "For a year I made peace with it. I told myself it was nobody's fault,
The 200 Year Blood Swap 18. The Diagnosis
(Maxine)Watching a Marwick prince walk into a vampire medical facility was the most entertainment I'd had in weeks, and I'd recently been married without laying eyes on my groom, survived an assassination attempt, and been haunted mid-feed.The facility treating Theo was carved into the cliffs below the old city, all cold stone and colder staff, the kind of place built to keep whatever happened inside it from ever getting out. Morrison drew stares the second we came through the doors. A mage. Here. In the one building in the vampire kingdom where our sickest and most valuable bled quietly behind sealed doors.Vampires don't do hospitals the way the rest of the world does. No cheerful reception, no pastel walls pretending everything's fine. Ours are quiet, ordered,
The 200 Year Blood Swap 17. Too Clean
(Maxine)Morrison had listened to the entire call from the edge of the room, out of the camera's line, arms crossed, saying nothing. He waited until I ended it. He waited until I set the screen down. He waited long enough that I knew he was loading a question I wasn't going to enjoy."You want to say something," I said. "Say it.""The theory's clean," he said. "That's what bothers me. It's too clean.""It's clean because it's true.""It's clean because it explains everything and costs your family nothing. Stolen blood. No suspect. Nobody in your house has to have done a single thing except get robbed." He kept his voice level, which was worse than
The 200 Year Blood Swap 16. The Family Problem
(Maxine)Telling my father that his family's blood had turned up inside a spell built to kill me was not a conversation I'd penciled in for my week.He took the call from his study, seated in front of the wall of Varco portraits he liked to be photographed with, which told me he'd decided this was an official matter before either of us said a word."Maxine." No are you all right. No we saw the reports. Just my name, filed and dated. "I understand there's been a development.""A development." I kept my voice as smooth as his. Two can pla
The 200 Year Blood Swap 15. Unexpected Blood
(Morrison)"I know she's one of eleven people with the access. That isn't the same sentence,” I say in defence of Seraphine."Her heartbeat changed when she looked at the marks. I told you that. It jumped, and then she throttled it flat, which is what people do when they've just seen something they don't want you to know they recognize." She came to the table. "I don't catch that by accident. I've built a life on catching exactly that.""Vampire hearing isn't an infallible lie detector," I said. "Hearts speed up for a hundred reasons. Fear. Recognition. A cold room. A woman in her sixties who climbed four flights of stairs to look at something that shouldn't exist." I heard how badly I wanted it to be true even as I said it. "It isn't proof."
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