جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 20

"What do you mean sunrise?" Caspian grabbed Elysia by her shoulders, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "The timeline was three months. The Blood Moon isn't for another eighty-seven days.""It changed." Elysia's voice came out broken, gasping between sobs. "My brother—Felix—he just collapsed. His skin is turning black. The rot is spreading through him so fast I can see it moving. And he's not the only one. Twenty students in the last hour. Twenty."She looked at me, her emerald eyes red-rimmed and desperate. "Please. I know I've been horrible to you. I know I sent my cousin to—" She choked on the words. "I was wrong. I was so wrong. But my brother is dying, and he's only fifty years old. He's never hurt anyone. Please, if there's any way you can help, any way at all—"Her knees buckled. Caspian caught her before she hit the ground, lowering her gently into a chair. Her perfect ice-blonde hair was tangled, her emerald dress torn at the hem. She looked nothing like the cruel,

Pain.That's all there was at first. Pure, blinding pain radiating from my chest where the dagger had pierced through skin and muscle and maybe something more important. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything except feel the fire spreading through my veins.Then I felt Caspian.Not just through the bond—I felt him everywhere. His fear. His rage. His desperate, clawing love that had finally broken free of three hundred years of guilt.And I felt something else. Something changing."Stay with me." Caspian's voice, ragged and broken. "Sera, please, stay with me. Don't go. Don't leave me again."Again. He was seeing my grandmother. Watching her die all over again.I tried to open my eyes, but my body wouldn't cooperate. Everything felt wrong—too heavy, too light, too hot, too cold all at once."The true bond is completing." Dorian's voice, urgent but steady. "I can see it. The transformation is beginning.""What do we do?" That was Raven, his words sharp with panic. "How

The figure lowered its hood.I wished it hadn't.The face beneath was beautiful in the way a knife is beautiful—sharp and dangerous and made for cutting. High cheekbones, pale skin that seemed to glow faintly, eyes that were completely black from edge to edge with no white, no iris, just endless dark."What are you?" I asked. My voice came out steadier than I felt. Behind me, I could feel Caspian tensing, Raven's hand going to his weapon."I am Morrigan." The creature's voice was female, melodic and cold. "Speaker for the Old Court. The ones who ruled these lands before vampires. Before humans. Before the academy was built on ground that was never yours to take."She stepped forward, and the twisted shapes behind her moved in sync. Things with too many limbs, faces that shifted and changed, bodies that hurt to look at directly."The Old Court," Dorian breathed from somewhere behind us. I hadn't heard him arrive, but there he stood, his face gone pale behind his reading glasses. "I tho

"You're lying." The words came out before I could think them through. "My grandmother wouldn't have sent me to free you. She spent her life fighting vampires.""Did she?" Cael stepped out of the coffin, his movements fluid despite being imprisoned for two millennia. "Or did she spend her life fighting what vampires had become? There's a difference, Seraphina."His blood-red eyes swept over me, assessing. "Dhampir. Interesting. The bond transformation actually worked. Your grandmother theorized it was possible, but I didn't think anyone would be brave enough—or desperate enough—to try it.""How do you know about the bond?" My hand moved to the silver scar over my heart, the only physical mark left from Magnus's dagger."I told you. Every vampire carries my blood. When Caspian completed the true bond with you, I felt it." Cael's smile was sharp. "I felt him trade his immortality for your life. Felt him choose love over power for the first time in three hundred years. It was..." He paused

Three days in the Ashlands felt like three years.The black sand got into everything—my hair, my clothes, between my teeth when the wind picked up. The heat during the day was brutal enough to make even my dhampir body sweat. At night, the temperature dropped so fast I could see my breath misting in the crimson moonlight.And through it all, Cael walked beside me in silence, his blood-red eyes distant. Maintaining the connection to Caspian was costing him. I could see it in the way his jaw stayed clenched, the way his hands occasionally trembled before he forced them still."You can rest," I said on the third morning. We'd stopped beside the ruins of what might have once been a fountain. "Break the connection for a few hours. I can feel him through the bond—he's stable.""No." Cael's voice was rough from disuse. "The moment I let go, the aging resumes. I can endure this.""For eighteen months?" I sat down on a chunk of broken stone, my legs aching from three days of nonstop walking. "