(Maxine)Not dark. Elsewhere.We were standing in a stone hall that stank of iron and old smoke, the two of us, together, which should have been impossible and somehow wasn't. In the middle of the floor a woman knelt inside a ring cut into the stone. A vampire. I knew it the way you know your own reflection: pale, dark-eyed, snarling through a gag of woven silver that stopped her doing anything about the men pinning her down. Across the ring, a man fought four others to reach her. A mage, robed, blood pouring from his nose with the effort of whatever he was hurling at them, screaming a name I couldn't hear. Between them, someone had painted a working on the floor in two scents of blood, hers and his, and it was doing something to the air that made the marks on my wrist burn—Except… I didn't have marks on my wrist.The woman turned her head. Past the men, past the spell, straight at us. Straight at me. Her eyes were older than the hall, older than the treaty, older than anything that
Last Updated : 2026-09-24 Read more