I had no potions left and no magic of my own.
Only the heat of the Iron Body still sitting in my bones.
I dropped fully behind Seraphina, grabbed the collar of her ruined dress, and tore it down the back. Cold air hit her bare skin. She tried to speak but only managed a choked sound.
"Don’t... touch me..."
"Breathe," I said.
I pulled my own blood-stained shirt off and pressed my chest against her freezing spine. Her skin felt like ice. I locked my arms around her waist and held her tight against me.
The black veins on her throat pulsed harder. Her body was rigid, every muscle locked by the curse and the cold.
I closed my eyes and pushed the heavy heat of the Iron Body outward, forcing it into her back. I did not know any spells. I only knew how to push.
Isolde’s voice rose from the chair.
"What are you doing to her?!"
She grabbed a piece of unburned wood from beside the hearth and swung it blindly toward the sound of tearing cloth. The wood slammed into my left shoulder. Pain shot down my arm and into the half-healed cut.
"Sit down!" I barked. "If I let go she dies right now!"
Isolde froze. The wood trembled in her hands. She backed up until she hit the chair and dropped into it, breathing hard. Her sightless eyes were wide.
I pressed harder. The heat from my body poured into Seraphina’s spine.
The curse fought back at once.
Freezing needles stabbed into my chest where our skin touched. The black veins on her neck surged backward, seeking the new heat. They crawled off her pale skin and latched onto my arms, burning like acid as they dug in.
I groaned. Blood filled my mouth. The curse was tearing into my own pathways, looking for a new host.
Seraphina dragged in a sudden, ragged breath. Her golden eyes snapped open. She felt the heat restarting something that had almost stopped inside her.
[System Warning]
[Hostile mana invading user pathways]
I ignored it and held on. I forced more of my vitality into her while the black lines twisted around my forearms and climbed toward my elbows.
"You... Voss dog..." she rasped. Her head fell back against my shoulder. Even half-dead, the words still carried hate. "Let... go..."
"Just breathe."
The timer in my vision dropped lower and lower. Sweat ran down my face and mixed with the blood from my shoulder. Then the numbers stopped.
[Target stabilized]
[Action Logged: Vitality Transfusion & Curse Absorption - Risking personal pathways to stabilize Target’s core]
[Grade: A - Exceptional Investment]
[Reward Granted: Basic Mana Stitching (Skill) & Curse Ward (Passive)]
Warm light washed over my arms. The Curse Ward activated. The black veins hissed and slid off my skin, sinking back into Seraphina’s spine where they belonged.
The icy pain in my chest vanished. Her skin lost the blue color and returned to pale white. Her breathing slowed into a steady, exhausted rhythm.
I released her and fell backward onto the cold stone, gasping. My whole body shook from the cost. Dark bruised lines covered my forearms where the curse had bitten me. They faded slowly under the new passive ward.
Seraphina slumped sideways onto the floor. She still could not move her arms or legs, but she was alive. Her golden eyes tracked the fading marks on my arms without speaking for a long moment.
"Why?" she whispered at last.
"I told you. I’m keeping us alive."
"You took the royal curse into your own body." Her voice was flat, analyzing every detail. "A Voss bastard risking himself for a ruined hostage. You want Aldemoor’s loyalty that badly?"
"Believe what you want. You’re breathing. That’s enough for now."
Isolde spoke from the chair, quiet and sharp.
"You saved her. But you didn’t hesitate to kill the men outside. What do you actually want from us, Cassian?"
I pulled the dead assassin’s gray cloak over my bare shoulders. The wool still smelled of blood and rain.
"I want to survive the winter," I said. "Neither of you can give me money or soldiers right now. Stop looking for schemes that aren’t there."
Isolde pressed her lips together. She did not believe me. In the world she had grown up in, no one helped without a price waiting behind the kindness.
I checked the new skill in the System while my breathing slowed.
Basic Mana Stitching - Allows the user to manually connect and repair disrupted mana pathways through physical contact. Drains stamina heavily.
It would not cure her paralysis. It only gave me a way to stabilize her if the curse flared again from cold or shock.
Gray light was starting to show through the barred window. The heavy rain had slowed to a steady drizzle. The first night in the ruined estate was over.
I picked up the bloody dagger from the floor and stood. My muscles ached from the cold stone and the curse absorption. My shoulder still throbbed under the new skin.
"The sun is coming up. I’m going to search the rest of the estate for clean water and check the gates."
Isolde’s voice came fast.
"Don’t leave me alone in here."
She tried to sound commanding, the way a noble daughter was trained to speak, but the fear underneath was clear. A blind woman locked in a ruined keep with two corpses just outside the door and a man she still did not trust.
I looked at her, then at Seraphina still lying on the floor.
"I’m not going far," I said. "And I’m locking this door from the outside until I get back."
Seraphina’s eyes stayed on me. The hostility was still there, hard and bright. But something else sat under it now - calculation, and the clear memory of the heat that had pulled her back from the edge when no one else would have.
I stepped into the main hall, closed the heavy door of the office, and slid the rusted bolt across.
The two bodies still lay where I had left them. The air smelled of blood and wet stone. Outside, the locked gates and the burned carriages waited under the gray morning light.
Somewhere beyond those gates, the road back toward the capital still existed. And with it, whatever Cordelia and the Cardinal would send next.
I tightened my grip on the dagger and started walking deeper into the ruined estate, listening for any sound that did not belong.