The red thorn

Chapter ten

Elora looked down at her hands. The faint wisps of smoke rising from her fingers smelled of scorched copper and ozone. She had just shattered a sanctuary that had stood for centuries, and every instinct screamed at her to flee as far as her legs could carry her.

"I don't trust you," she said, her voice dropping to a low, lethal hum that surprised even herself. "You're a creature of his blood. You admitted it."

"I am," Silas replied, not shrinking back a single inch. "I was born to a noble lineage that exists solely to serve as Dracula’s footstools. I’ve watched him butcher my own kin for showing an ounce of ambition. You want revenge for a mother you lost yesterday, Elora? I want vengeance for three hundred years of servitude."

He withdrew his hand, letting it fall to his side, but his eyes remained fixed on her.

"The Coven wanted to leash you. Dracula wants to end you. I want to use you to break the board entirely. You don't have to trust me, thorn. You just have to survive me."

A sudden, high-pitched screech echoed from the cavern entrance behind them—a sound that was half-human, half-bat. The trees above them rustled violently as a flock of pale-winged beasts burst from the canopy, circling the mountain peak.

Morwen’s bloodhounds had been unleashed.

"Decision time," Silas said calmly, stepping toward the thick, overgrown tree line of the northern path. "Stay and explain your feelings to Morwen’s pets, or come with me to the Dead Marshes, where the sun doesn't reach and his scouts can't track your scent."

Elora looked back at the mountain one last time. The life she knew in Oakhaven was ash. The refuge she was promised in the Coven was a cage. There was no going back, and there was no path forward that didn't involve blood.

She pulled the hood of her white robe over her head, stepped past Silas, and set her eyes on the northern trail.

"Lead the way," she said. "And if you ever try to put a leash on me, I’ll blow your heart through your spine."

Silas’s laugh was short, sharp, and genuinely amused. "I wouldn't expect anything less."