The Blade

The blade was cold against my throat.

I'd felt steel before, pressed to my skin by thieves, by guardsmen, by men who thought they could take what they wanted from a woman traveling alone. But this was different. This blade knew what it was doing.

And so did the man holding it.

"Don't move."

His voice was low. Controlled. The kind of control that came from practice, not restraint. I'd heard that voice before, in the nightmares my mother used to whisper about. The hunters, she'd said. They sound calm when they kill you.

I stayed very, very still.

Moonlight filtered through the trees, catching the edge of his weapon. Silver-coated. Blessed by whatever gods still answered prayers against my kind. One nick and the poison would be in my blood, slowing me, weakening me until he could do whatever he wanted.

"I'm not armed," I said. "If you want coin..."

"I don't want coin."

He stepped around me, keeping the blade against my pulse. I got my first real look at him and wished I hadn't. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Built like someone who'd spent his life learning how to hurt things. His eyes were gray, not the warm gray of overcast skies, but the gray of old iron. Of cells. Of chains.

Witch hunter.

The thing inside me stirred. The hunger I'd spent nineteen years caging stretched against my ribs, curious about the blood pumping through his veins. So close. So warm.

I swallowed it down.

"Then what do you want?"

He studied me. I could feel his gaze cataloging everything, my threadbare cloak, my muddy boots, the pack I'd dropped when he grabbed me. I looked like nothing. Like no one. I'd made myself look like that on purpose.

But he wasn't looking at my clothes.

He was looking at my eyes.

"They said I'd find one of you eventually." His voice hadn't changed. Still calm. Still controlled. "Twenty years of hunting, and I thought they'd all burned. But here you are."

My stomach dropped.

"I don't know what you're..."

"Your eyes flashed red when I grabbed you." He pressed the blade harder, not enough to cut, but enough to remind me he could. "Don't insult us both by lying."

The hunger surged. My vision flickered at the edges, not red yet, but close. Too close. I could feel my control slipping, the thing in me scrabbling for purchase.

No. Not now. Not ever.

I breathed. Counted. Forced the monster back into its cage.

"Are you going to kill me?"

"That depends."

He said it like he was discussing the weather. Like my life was a logistics problem he was working through. In his world, I supposed it was.

"On what?"

For the first time, a crack appeared in those iron-gray eyes. Not compassion, I wasn't fool enough to hope for that. But something. Desperation, maybe. The kind that made men do terrible things, or occasionally useful ones.

"My sister is dying."

I blinked. "What?"

"My sister." The words came out jagged, like they had to fight their way past his teeth. "She's been cursed. No healer can break it. No priest. No mage. For six months, I've watched her fade, and every expert has told me the same thing."

He leaned closer. Close enough that I could smell him, leather, iron, woodsmoke. Close enough that the hunger noticed and wanted.

"They say it's blood magic."

The world tilted.

Blood magic. The curse that killed. The power that had earned my kind the pyres. The very thing I'd spent my entire life hiding.

"I'm not..."

"Don't." His voice hardened. "I know what you are. The question is whether you're useful."

I should have denied it. Should have kept lying until he got frustrated enough to kill me quickly. But I could hear it now, the desperation behind the iron control. This wasn't a hunter who'd finally cornered prey.

This was a brother watching his sister die.

I knew that feeling. I'd watched my mother waste away in a cold cellar, too afraid to use the power that might have saved her. Too afraid of being caught. She'd died clutching my hand, making me promise to never, never let them know what I was.

I'd broken a lot of promises since then. But not that one.

"Even if I could help," I said carefully, "why would I? You'd just kill me after."

"Probably." He didn't lie. I had to respect that, even as it made my stomach churn. "But I'm offering you a chance you won't get anywhere else. Fix her, and I'll let you disappear. Fail, and you burn."

"And if I refuse?"

The blade pressed closer. A bead of blood welled against the silver edge. Pain lanced through me, bright, sharp, wrong. The poison was already working, making my thoughts slow and sluggish.

"Then you burn tonight."

I weighed my options. They were bad. All of them were bad. But one of them involved still being alive tomorrow, and that was more than I usually hoped for.

"One condition."

His eyebrow rose. As if he couldn't believe I was negotiating with his blade at my throat.

"I'll look at your sister. If it's blood magic, if I can break it, I'll try. But you don't chain me. You don't cage me. And you don't let anyone else know what I am."

"You think you're in a position to make demands?"

"I think your sister is dying." I met his eyes. Held them. Let him see that the desperation went both ways. "And I think you've already proven you're willing to deal with a monster to save her."

His expression changed. Not softening, men like him didn't soften. But reassessing. Calculating new odds.

"If you run..."

"I won't."

"If you hurt her..."

"I won't."

"If you use your power on anyone except her..."

"Then I'll deserve whatever you do to me."

For a long moment, he just stared at me. I could see him working through it, the risk, the reward, the hundred ways this could go wrong. But underneath all that cold calculation, I saw something else.

Hope.

Terrible, desperate, aching hope.

He lowered the blade.

"My name is Commander Ezra Thane," he said. "You'll address me as Commander or sir. You'll stay where I put you. And you'll save my sister, or I'll make sure you wish you'd let me kill you tonight."

I touched my throat. My fingers came away bloody. The poison burned in my veins, making me weak when I needed to be strong.

"My name is Nyx. Just Nyx. And I have one question before we do this."

"Ask."

I looked up at him, this man who hunted my kind, who'd killed my kind, who was now betting his sister's life on the very thing he'd been taught to destroy.

"What's your sister's name?"

He didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice was different. Quieter. Almost human.

"Mira. Her name is Mira."

Mira. A real name. A real person. Not just a curse to be broken or a bargaining chip to be traded. Someone he loved enough to make a deal with a monster.

"Then take me to her, Commander." I straightened, ignoring the way my head spun from the poison. "Let's see if I can bring your sister back."

He turned without another word. Walked into the darkness between the trees.

I followed.

Behind us, the moonlight caught something on the forest floor, a drop of my blood, already darkening. Already calling to the power I'd sworn I'd never use.

But I could feel it now. The curse he'd described. Somewhere ahead, a girl was dying of magic I understood better than anyone alive.

And the thing inside me was hungry for it.