I slipped out of the washroom before anyone thought to look too closely.
The girl I had dragged from the balcony lay unconscious on the floor behind the locked door, wrapped in my stolen servant’s coat and painted in Mr. Vell’s blood. She would live. That was more mercy than most people received from me in those years.
A maid hurried past with both hands pressed to her mouth, eyes wild from the panic spreading through the manor. I caught her by the arm and pulled her close before she could scream.
“The young lady fainted,” I told her, pitching my voice low, urgent, human. “She’s in there. Lock yourself inside with her. Don’t come out until the guards clear the house.”
The maid stared at me, confused and shaking.
I gave her the gentlest smile I could manage.
It felt strange on my face.
“You’ll be safer in there than out here,” I said. “Trust me.”
That was a filthy thing to ask from anyone.
Still, she nodded quickly, slipped into the washroom, and locked the door behind her.
Good.
One fewer innocent in the hallway.
The amulet in my breast pocket hummed like a trapped hornet.
The family had gathered.
Not all the guests. Not the whole glittering mess of nobles and parasites still being herded through the manor by guards. No, this was something more contained. More deliberate.
The brood had pulled itself into the main parlor.
I drifted toward the doorway with a silver tray in hand and a servant’s posture on my shoulders. Head slightly bowed. Eyes lowered. Steps quiet. The sort of invisibility rich people trained into the people around them without ever realizing how useful it could become.
Inside, six guards stood posted around the room. More waited in the halls, moving guests out slowly, checking sleeves, satchels, wands, scroll cases, perfume vials, and jewelry for whatever could explain the “explosion” I had screamed about.
Fools.
The lie had been stupid enough to be convincing.
People will believe almost anything when covered in blood by someone who looks frightened.
Beyond the guards, the family was doing what families do best when trapped together under stress.
Complaining.
Lord Oriel stood near the fireplace, all noble composure and silver-streaked black hair, one hand wrapped around a jeweled goblet he had not touched.
“This is being handled,” he said.
Brandilyn stood beside him, veil lowered now, her pretty charity-founder smile gone brittle. “Handled? Mordain is dead, Uncle. At my opening festival.”
A veiled woman in gold silk—Nyssara, if my guess was right—let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “Gods forbid the branding suffer.”
Brandilyn’s green eyes flashed beneath the glamour. “Watch your tone.”
“My tone is the least of your problems,” Nyssara said. “One of ours dies on a balcony and your first concern is presentation.”
Another man, narrow-faced with ink-stained fingers, adjusted his cuffs near the sideboard. Keryndros. Or Keran Drosk, to the mortals in the room. “Arguing is inefficient. Mordravax was not careless. If someone reached him, they either knew what he was or got very lucky.”
Velmora sat in a high-backed chair as if the panic were a minor inconvenience at a boring court function. “Luck does not usually rip a man’s jaw off.”
The room went still for half a breath.
Oriel’s jaw tightened. “Lower your voice.”
“Why?” Nyssara asked. “Half the manor is already shrieking.”
A young man near the window—Veyr, probably—looked sick beneath his polite little clerk’s face. “We should leave.”
“Brilliant,” Brandilyn snapped. “And where do you suggest we go while guards are searching everyone leaving the manor?”
“Somewhere not dripping with Mordain.”
Nyssara clicked her tongue. “Children.”
A woman in gold with jeweled pins in her black hair pushed away from the wall. Her glamour was elegant but unstable at the edges. Impatient. Irritated. Too used to money solving problems before they inconvenienced her.
Ithra Nys.
Nyssara’s daughter.
“I need a break from this shit show of a party,” she said, shoving past one of the guards before he could decide whether stopping her was worth dying for.
Oriel turned his head. “Ithra.”
“No.” She lifted one manicured finger without looking back. “I am going to freshen up, and then I am leaving this broken-down turd palace by the sea for somewhere the streets are actually filled with gold.”
“Sit down,” Keryndros said.
“Choke on your contracts, Keran.”
That was the thing about dragons.
Dress them in silk, bury them beneath glamour, teach them etiquette, give them aliases and noble papers and scented oils—eventually the hoard still shows.
Hers was wealth.
Status.
The obscene certainty that the world existed to make room for her.
She swept out of the parlor before anyone could stop her.
As she passed me, the amulet in my pocket gave a sharp, eager pulse.
There it was.
Draconic blood.
And beneath it, faint but unmistakable, a shimmer of divine residue and old magic threaded through her glamour. Candlelight caught the side of her throat as she turned, and for the smallest moment emerald scale glinted beneath cosmetic enchantment.
She did not see me.
Not really.
I was only a servant in borrowed clothes with lowered eyes and a tray of untouched wine.
That was her downfall.
I waited until she had a ten-foot lead, then followed.
She moved quickly through the west wing, heels sharp against polished stone, muttering under her breath about wasted time and provincial nobles. I stayed behind her, close enough to hear, far enough not to alarm.
At the end of the hall, she glanced back.
Caught me.
For one second, I expected suspicion.
Instead, she smiled.
Not kindly.
Predatorily.
She crooked one finger.
The gall of her.
She thought I had followed because I wanted her.
Because she was beautiful.
Because she had decided the world worked that way and had never been punished hard enough to learn otherwise.
So I followed the invitation.
I let her make that last mistake.
She slipped into a washroom, and I cracked the door open behind her.
Ithra stood before a mirror, touching up her painted mouth with a little gold brush. She did not turn around.
“Well, hello, handsome,” she said, watching me through the reflection. “What made you follow me?”
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I lowered my gaze.
I played nervous.
Human.
Stupid.
“Well,” I said, letting the words stumble just enough, “you caught my eye. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful as you, ma’am.”
I nearly vomited on the lie.
She smiled wider.
Of course she did.
I shut the door behind me with my right hand hidden at my back. In the thin space behind my spine, I opened a sliver of storage magic and reached through the fold for Judgment.
The hilt met my palm like an old sin.
I drew it slowly while taking one careful step forward.
I looked up.
Her grin remained fixed, wickedness dressed in porcelain. The glamour began to fall now that she thought she had already won. Brown eyes bled back to green. Black hair darkened beneath the gold pins. Emerald scales unfurled along her neck and disappeared beneath the back of her gown.
Then her aura struck.
Draconic fear pulsed from her in a wave meant to freeze the blood, lock the limbs, break the will.
It washed over me like warm rain.
I stood still anyway.
Let her believe it worked.
Ithra’s smile sharpened. “You are cute,” she said. “Shame you have to die.”
Before she could turn, I moved.
Judgment slid through her back and out her chest in one clean thrust.
Her eyes went wide in the mirror.
I clamped my free hand over her mouth before the scream could escape.
She thrashed hard enough to send crystal bottles, powders, brushes, and little gilded tools clattering across the vanity. Blood ran down the blade and over my wrist, hot and bright and full of the answer I had been chasing for years.
A knock came at the door.
“Ithra?” a man asked. “It’s Veyr. Are you finished pouting, or have you drowned yourself in perfume?”
The amulet went mad.
Another one.
Close.
Very close.
I tightened my grip on Ithra’s mouth and felt a laugh rise in my chest.
I swallowed it.
Barely.
My right hand clenched so hard around Judgment’s hilt that my nails bit into my own palm. I needed stillness for one more breath. One more heartbeat. The heat of him pressed near the door—skin, blood, magic, draconic inheritance. My senses lit up like kindling thrown into a forge.
Everything could end tonight.
The thought was intoxicating.
All of them in one manor. All those hidden scales. All those careful names. All that smug survival Tamara’s mercy had purchased for them.
I could kill them all before dawn.
I could take one throat after another until Midwinter drowned in emerald blood.
Veyr leaned closer to the door.
I heard his hair brush against the wood as he tried to listen.
I did not pull Ithra from the blade.
Instead, I shifted my stance.
One foot back. Shoulder low. Judgment angled like a spear meant for a battlefield.
I closed my eyes.
I felt him.
The warmth of his body.
The quickening pulse.
The draconic blood beneath mortal skin.
When his heartbeat jumped, I threw.
Judgment crossed the room in less than a breath, carrying Ithra’s body with it like a ragdoll pinned to divine steel. The blade punched through the door and into Veyr’s skull from the side.
He died instantly.
The crash was loud enough to turn half the manor’s head.
Screams followed.
Men. women. guards. servants. Someone shouted for Lord Oriel. Someone else called for healers. Footsteps thundered toward the west wing.
I stepped out of the ruined washroom doorway and freed Judgment from the doorframe and Veyr’s skull with one hard pull.
His body slumped.
Ithra’s slid off the blade after him.
Blood spread across the polished floor in a widening sheet.
At the end of the hall, guards rounded the corner and froze.
There were six of them at first.
Then more behind.
Swords came up. Wands lifted. A young guard whispered a prayer he did not have time to finish.
I spun Judgment once in my hand, letting the blood arc across the wall.
Then I raised my free hand and curled my fingers toward them.
“Come on, then,” I said, smiling through the old hunger roaring awake inside me. “Get over here and meet your god.”
Unlike the abbey, the slaughter in that hallway was not senseless.
That was what I told myself, at least.
There was timing to it. Control. A cold rhythm in the way Judgment moved through armor, throat, wrist, and rib. These men and women were not zealots frothing at the mouth with some righteous little hymn on their tongues. They were guards. Paid blades. People doing a job for unsavory masters because coin spends the same whether it comes clean or soaked in blood.
I did not hate them.
That almost made it worse.
One lunged first, shield raised, fear making him too fast and not careful enough. I stepped inside the strike and opened him beneath the arm. Another tried to get behind me. Judgment reversed in my grip and found his neck before he found courage. A wand sparked. I cut the hand holding it from the wrist and drove my shoulder into the caster hard enough to break him against the wall.
No joy.
No thrill.
Just work.
A duty answered with duty.
By the time the last guard hit the floor, the hallway was slick beneath my boots. Blood ran into the seams of the polished stone, dark and eager, while the manor screamed around me. I spun Judgment once, sending a red arc across the wall, then started toward the parlor with heavy, deliberate steps.
Behind the doors, the family was unraveling.
Their voices carried through the wood.
“This is ridiculous,” Brandilyn snapped. “One dead alchemist and suddenly we’re trapped in Oriel’s parlor like frightened cattle?”
“One dead alchemist with his jaw missing,” Keryndros replied. “Precision matters, Brandilyn.”
Nyssara laughed, sharp and humorless. “Oh, good. We’re discussing precision while my daughter is still out there.”
“She chose to storm off,” Velmora said coolly. “That has always been one of Ithra’s less charming habits.”
“And Veyr?” Keryndros asked. “He followed her.”
“Then perhaps they are both learning consequences,” Velmora said.
Oriel’s voice cut through them, smooth and commanding. “Enough. We do not panic in front of mortals.”
“They are already panicking,” Brandilyn said. “The whole manor smells like fear and cheap wine.”
“Then smile,” Oriel said. “That is what mortals expect from nobility while others bleed.”
I reached the parlor doors and pushed them open.
The room went silent.
Lord Oriel stood near the center, dressed in Calimport’s wealth like it had grown on him—dark silk, gold thread, jeweled rings, noble posture. Around him, the others turned in stages, irritation giving way to confusion, then fear as they saw me.
Blood on my face.
Blood on my hands.
Judgment bare at my side.
Oriel took one step forward. “What is the meaning of—”
I pulled Ishavelle’s trinket from my pocket.
The amulet began to shake violently in my palm.
Not hum.
Scream.
A high, shrill whistle split the air, sharp enough to make several of them flinch. Then it stopped all at once.
Oriel looked down at it.
Recognition flashed across his face.
There you are.
Slowly, he reached beneath his robes and drew out a second token—white platinum, polished clean, marked with Tamara’s symbol. The charm glowed in my presence, bright and warning-pure, like a little piece of her sanctimony had been waiting all these years to accuse me again.
I smiled.
“She gave you a warning system against me,” I said. “How fitting.”
Oriel stepped back despite himself. “How…?”
His composure cracked further.
“Why do you have that?”
I slicked my blood-covered hand through my hair, pushing it out of my eyes, and let my aura roll out of me.
Not fully.
Enough.
The room buckled under it. Not physically. Not yet. But spiritually, instinctively, every creature with draconic blood felt the old shape of me press against their bones. Their glamours flickered. Eyes sharpened green. Scales shimmered beneath mortal skin. Two of them moved closer together before pride remembered itself and forced them apart.
“From who I assume was your sister,” I said. “Right after I split her in two in front of everyone in Elturel.”
The words hung there.
Then I laughed.
I could feel it rising in me—the old dragon, the old god, the thing Tamara had tried to bury beneath isolation and regret. It stretched inside my ribs like something waking from a long, cold sleep.
“And tonight,” I said, voice rough with delight, “on this beautiful Midwinter night, I end Liliana’s line by killing every single one of you.”
Fear moved across their faces.
There was something deliciously honest about it.
For all their disguises, titles, perfumes, charities, ledgers, and careful mortal names, they were still dragons at the core. And dragons know when a bigger thing enters the room.