My throat went dry. The hunger in me surged like a tide against stone. “I don’t want to become anything.”
“Want is irrelevant,” Malachi murmured. “The blood has already chosen.”
“You’re saying it’s not exhaustion or trauma. You’re saying this is not something that will pass.” I stepped back, voice rising.
Malachi nodded once. My vision flared red.
Malachi let out a breath—half laugh, half sigh—as his hand dragged down his face. “Somewhere in you—deep, blood-deep—something answered. Not desire. Not choice. The Blade of Eryndisreveals inheritance, not want. If you’d had no ancestral tether to vampyric blood, the blade wouldn’t have answered at all—it can’t force desire or create instinct where none exists.”
A cold ripple crawled through my stomach. “You’re saying I asked for this?”
“No.” His answer came fast, sharper than before. “I’m saying your blood recognized what he offered. The blade can only open what already exists in a person. Dormant magic. Old instinct. An inheritance even you don’t understand.”
My mouth went dry. “What did it open?”
“The truth that your body would rather live than die. That the shadow in your blood remembers immortal power, even if you don’t. You didn’t want Kaelith. You didn’t even know what the bond meant. But your magic did. And when the blade cut you, it reached for the only thing that could keep you alive.”
A tremor ripped through me, part fury, part dread. “So you’re telling me?—”
“I’m telling you this wasn’t consent,” Malachi said. “It was survival. Instinct. The blade didn’t make you choose him. It revealed what was already sleeping under your skin.”
The nausea hit hard and fast. I pressed a palm to my ribs as the truth twisted sharp as glass. Because if Malachi was right, if some hidden, ancient part of me had reached for Kaelith’s blood, then the damage was already done. And I didn’t know whether to scream… or break.
I staggered back, catching myself on the wardrobe. “I’m going to become like him. Like you. A Vampyre.”
“Yes and no. You’re becoming something,” he said carefully. “Something… new. Your bloodline is old, tied to things we don’t fully understand. Which means your transition may not follow the rules we know.”
I tried to hold onto something solid. Anything. But the words echoed in my mind like a warning I couldn’t outrun. Heat burned under my skin, not from the change gnawing through me, but from fury. At Kaelith for forcing this on me. At Malachi for speaking of it like it was inevitable. At myself for drinking, for letting even one part of me answer when I should have resisted. My hands ached with the want to tear something apart, to punish the world for daring to twist me into a shape I hadn’t chosen.
“No one knows what’s happening to me,” I said, my voice sharp, shaking with the edges of a rage I couldn’t swallow.
“You’re strong, Aurelia. That’s what he fears. That’s why he did this. So your strength wouldn’t rise against him, butforhim.”
“And what about you?” I asked, voice low, dangerous. “What do you think I’ll become?”
His gaze didn’t flinch. “Exactly what you were always meant to be.”
Gods, I hated how much I wanted to believe him.
I turned away, pulling open the wardrobe doors with more force than necessary. “Anything else I should know?”
“We need to make a stop on the way to Synnex,” he said.
My chest tightened. “A stop?”
“If I didn’t tell you now, you’d see it soon enough,” he said evenly. “There’s rumor of a village to the west. Survivors of the rebellion. Kaelith gave orders to… handle it.”
I wheeled on him. “Handle it? As in destroy it?”
“Quietly. Discreetly.” He looked sick even saying the words.
“There is nothing more to the west. I traveled its edges, knew the maps. It’s just… darkness.” Even as I said it, the memory rose: the flicker in the fog, the shapes I’d sworn I’d seen, the prickle along my spine as if I was being watched. The old warnings about lands best left forgotten. Not forgotten, I realized now. Buried. Erased.
I shook the thought away. “I really couldn’t care less, Malachi. I just need to get to Aeryn.”
“It won’t take more than a couple days’ time,” he replied. Seemingly uninterested in my concern.
“Days?” The word tore from me. “I’ve been gone nearly a month!”