Gavin kept his voice even, though a hint of awkwardness crept in.
“I’ll need quite a lot.
Can you still do that price for bulk?” The steward looked pained.
“How much are we talking, my lord?
For a truly large order I’d need to get approval from higher up.” Gavin didn’t hesitate.
“Fifty full sets.” The man’s eyes widened.
He swallowed.
“Fifty… that’s possible, but we don’t have that much in stock right now.
I can give you seven sets immediately.
The rest we’ll pull from our vault in Oldtown.
It’ll be here before the tourney ends, I swear it.” Gavin nodded once.
The steward looked relieved and snapped his fingers at a servant, giving quick orders.
Then he gestured toward a chair.
“Please, my lord, sit.
I’ll have the goods brought out and your coin counted while you wait.” Gavin and Tommen left with a heavy cart pulled by two sturdy horses.
When they reached the Cotoin camp, a knot of soldiers was already waiting.
They swarmed the cart the moment it stopped, eager to help unload.
Two massive chests were carried into Gavin’s tent with surprising care.
One hundred thousand gold dragons in cash.
After Tommen and the other men who had bet alongside him took their thirty thousand share, Gavin still had seventy thousand left.
A staggering sum.
Enough to buy a small castle if he wanted one.
He had the thirty-thousand chest carried outside the tent and told a few respected older soldiers to divide it fairly.
The winners crowded around at once, faces flushed with excitement, laughing and clapping each other on the back.
More than one man called out Gavin’s name with open gratitude.
Gavin barely noticed.
His mind was already on the ritual.
The materials were here.
And perfect timing had dropped a body straight into his lap.
One of the three gladiators he had fought that morning had died of his wounds.
The curved-blade fighter.
Dasio.
Gavin pulled Tommen aside, voice low.
“What did the other two say?” “They’re not his kin, Captain.
Just three men hired together for the tourney.
They don’t want the body.
Said we can bury him however we like.” Gavin let out a slow breath.
“Good.
Get a cart ready.
I’m taking him myself.” Tommen blinked, surprised.
“Captain, I can handle the burial.
No need for you to—” “Do it,” Gavin said, tone leaving no room for argument.
“Tell me when it’s ready.
We move tonight.” Tommen nodded, still puzzled, and hurried off.
The moment he was gone, Gavin stepped into his tent and began laying out the ritual supplies with careful, urgent hands.
— Deep in the woods hours later, the only light came from a single torch and the pale moon filtering through the leaves.
Gavin had driven the cart himself.
He had refused Tommen’s company with a firm excuse and a promise to return before dawn.
Dasio’s body lay on a cleared patch of ground.
Gavin stripped the dead man naked.
The killing wound was a hideous thing—deep, ragged, punched straight through the gut.
Even in death the edges looked torn and angry.
Gavin worked by torchlight, drawing the intricate blood runes across pale skin with steady fingers.
He moved slowly, checking every line twice.
Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his temples, but he never rushed.
One mistake and the whole working would collapse.
Two hours passed before he finally sat back on his heels and wiped his brow.
The runes gleamed faintly in the torchlight, complete and correct.
He unpacked the transfusion rig next—a simple leather bladder filled with the prepared potion, connected to a thick, flexible length of cow intestine.
Crude by the standards of his old life, but it would serve.
In this world the magic did most of the work anyway.
Dawn was already graying the eastern sky when he finished setting everything up.
Gavin felt no fatigue.
If anything, the long night had left him sharper.
He watched the potion drain into the body until the bladder was nearly empty.
Then he drew his dagger, opened the vein in his left wrist, and let his own blood—rich with the fire of his bloodline—pour into the pouch.
He counted carefully, fighting the dizziness that came with rapid blood loss.
When he judged the amount sufficient, he stoppered the flow, bandaged the wrist roughly, and pulled a small vial from his coat.
Inside was a mixture of his blood and the fast-acting healing draught.
He drank it in one swallow.
The effect was immediate.
The deep cut on his wrist sealed itself in under a minute, skin knitting smooth with no scar left behind.
Gavin flexed his hand, impressed despite himself.
Thirty minutes of potency at best once magic blood was added.
He would have to be careful with timing.
He turned his full attention back to the transfusion.
The blood moved slowly through the crude tube.
Gavin kept one hand resting lightly on Dasio’s chest, eyes locked on the runes, silently willing the ritual to hold.
Minutes dragged.
The first light of true dawn crept through the trees.
Then it happened.
Thick black blood suddenly welled from the terrible gut wound, dark and viscous, nothing like ordinary blood.
The sign that the old blood was being forced out and replaced.
Gavin’s breath caught.
He pressed his palm flat against the dead man’s chest and focused every scrap of will he possessed, waiting for the black flow to stop.