EVER BOUND

NINETEEN

Malric

The fire danced low in the hearth, feeding off wood that hadn't burned in over a century.

Malric sat in stillness, the curve of his spine coiled like a serpent at rest, robed in layered fabrics blacker than pitch. Not a single thread shimmered. Even the edges of his silhouette seemed to absorb light. He watched the flames with mild interest, as if reading them, as if decoding some divine joke etched in smoke. The shadows they cast didn't flicker—they stood still, thick and heavy around him, clinging to the walls like dried blood.

He had never liked fire.

It reminded him of what he used to be.

What Silas had made him.

The flicker of that name—Silas—pulled a memory from the grave like a bone yanked from earth. Silas Thorne, the proud Highlander who once called him brother. The one who turned him, the first-born of his line. Malric had once worshipped that man. Had killed for him. Had bled for him. For three hundred years, he followed like a loyal hound, never asking why, never questioning the path.

Until Silas tried to kill him.

Malric's jaw clenched, the old wound pulsing behind his temple like a migraine. He lifted one long-fingered hand and traced the faint scar that curved beneath his collarbone—an old parting gift from the ritual that was supposed to end his life. A death he should have met. A death Silas had ordered.

But he'd survived. Through ash and agony and magic so black it peeled the flesh from bone, Malric had endured. He had sacrificed what made him a vampire long ago, traded it for something older. Purer. Hungrier. He was no longer one of Silas's brood. He was something beyond time now—a Warlock of the Forgotten Path.

And now... Thea had awakened.

That was the part that fascinated him most.

Not her beauty. Not the absurd loyalty Silas still held toward her.

It was her power.

She had always been powerful, even in past lives. But something about this incarnation burned hotter—more untamed, more volatile. Malric could feel it like heat rising through his bones. Every time she touched the earth, the air shimmered. Every time she spoke, her voice carried like thunder through ancestral memory.

She wasn't just a woman. She was a vessel.

And Malric wanted to claim her before she understood what she truly was.

⸻

He stood now, slow and deliberate, the hem of his robe dragging across the stones of his makeshift sanctum. Candles in iron cages flickered as he passed, one guttering out altogether.

"She dreams again," he whispered, smiling.

On the far wall, suspended in the void of shadow, hung a mirror. Oval, ornate, older than kingdoms. Its glass didn't reflect—it showed. Even now, an image moved behind the warped silver: Thea, curled on the edge of a chair, flipping through a journal in Silas's room. Her brow furrowed in concentration, one finger tapping her lip. There was no fury in her eyes. Just... confusion.

She was forgetting the rage that once ruled her.

Good.

Love had always made her weak. Silas softened her, and softness made her pliable. Thea at full strength was nearly impossible to control. But a Thea searching for purpose? A Thea lost in half-remembered dreams and questions of who to trust?

That was a Thea who could be turned.

⸻

He swept his hand over the mirror, and the image changed. Now it showed the training yard, where two of Silas's newest loyalists—Varya and Declan—were sparring. Malric narrowed his eyes. Varya had been a surprise. The blood knight had once despised Thea, speaking of her as an anchor weighing Silas down. But now she watched the girl like a sentry guarding treasure.

That wouldn't do.

He needed the men fractured. The loyalties broken. The prophecy didn't account for unified resistance. And yet... here they were, converging like moths to flame.

"I should've killed her at birth," Malric muttered, his voice bitter with old venom.

But the lines had changed. The Fates were unpredictable. And this time, he wouldn't make the mistake of underestimating her.

He crossed to his altar, where an ancient book rested, bound in human hide and inked with blood that never dried. The air around it was wrong—heavier, as if reality itself strained to contain it. His fingertips hovered above the open page.

"Ex ossibus, vinculum. Ex sanguine, servitutem..." he chanted softly.

The symbols writhed.

At his feet, a figure materialized—black smoke coalescing into form. It wore a half-face mask of bone and a robe that never stopped fluttering despite the still air. One of Malric's soul-bound Shades.

"Report."

The shade did not speak, but the truth poured into Malric's mind like oil:

Three more men had defected. They'd broken from his influence and returned to Silas. One had even begun seeking absolution, asking Thea for forgiveness.

Pathetic.

"They forget who I am," Malric said aloud. "They forget that without me, Silas would have been destroyed centuries ago. That this entire age of blood was my doing."

He had moved the world from the shadows. Turned lords against kings. Whispered betrayal into the ears of prophets. He had done more for the cursed than Silas ever dared to do. Yet they called him the heretic. The lost son.

Let them.

When this was over, there would be no more kingdoms. No more factions. No more bloodlines. There would only be Malric... and her.

⸻

He moved to the far chamber, where the ritual circle lay carved into the floor like a brand. Sigils burned faintly, etched in silver. At the center stood an iron cage—empty now, but not for long.

His final ritual required three components:

1. The bones of a fallen sire.

2. The soul of a cursed immortal.

3. And the heart of the girl born with the mark.

He already had the bones. His own, from the body Silas tried to incinerate.

The soul would be Silas's.

And the heart? Thea's—still beating. Still powerful.

But not removed. No. He didn't want her dead. He wanted her his.

Bound by oath and magic. Turned to his cause.

He would not kill the last of her line.

He would claim it.

⸻

Malric turned his attention to the candles that ringed the ritual space. One by one, they ignited, though no flame touched them.

He thought of the dreams he had seeded in Thea's mind—memories that weren't hers, half-truths whispered as she slept. It was so easy to twist the past when a soul had lived so many lives. Silas's betrayal. The wedding night. The curse. He had touched every thread, rerouted it, made her question what was real.

And she still did.

Why did I hate him? she had asked.

Was it really betrayal... or something else?

The cracks were showing.

⸻

He raised both hands and summoned the storm inside him. Black threads of magic poured from his palms, curling like smoke through the air.

The mirror across the room darkened again. This time, it showed Silas, pacing near the cliff edge, jaw clenched, eyes distant. The man looked weary. Like a king at the edge of a crumbling kingdom. Malric smiled faintly.

"Still holding on," he whispered. "Still hoping love will be enough."

But love had never been enough. Not in their time. Not now.

What the world needed was power. Not sentiment.

And Thea—his Thea—was born of both.

⸻

Malric turned to the shade. "You know what must be done."

The shade bowed its head, vanishing in a gust of smoke and ash.

Outside the sanctum, the wind howled. Clouds gathered.

He returned to the mirror one last time, the edges glowing as Thea's face reappeared—this time not through scrying, but memory. She was younger here. Fiercer. Her eyes were molten with rage. This was the Thea who had tried to kill him once. The version who'd nearly succeeded.

But that girl was gone.

What remained was curious. Still unsteady. Still torn.

Good.

He whispered into the silence, voice soft as rot:

"Bring her to me... alive."

And the shadows obeyed.