Chapter 7
1296 Words
The waggon Lilith was taken from the convent was more like a cage than a carriage.
It was the type that was used to move livestock or grain sacks.. Her hands were loosely bound in front of her with rope that still smelt of blood and wet wool, and she sat on a splintered floor with her back against the rusting bars.
The road was silent, rocky, and sharp with stone.
She had been dragged from the cellar and no one had spoken to her since. The guards treated her like a rotting carcass—eyes averted, noses wrinkled. She was aware of the sunken cheeks, matted hair, and bruised skin they saw. A girl more ghost than human.
But her eyes still burned.
And she hadn't buried her anger.
The orphanage loomed like a forgotten ruin at the end of the valley, shrouded in fog and wild vines. Its iron gates hung crooked. Its tower leaned as if in mourning. The building crouched near the edge of the Execution Fields, the very place where witches were still burned every month.
Lilith could smell the soot on the wind.
The scent of death, always nearby.
————
A Sister from the orphanage—a short, stiff woman named Agnes—met them at the gate. She looked at Lilith with a mixture of pity and revulsion.
"This the Pax girl?"
"Yes," one of the guards muttered, untying her hands roughly. "From the Ashridge convent. Disobedient. Spirit of rebellion. Some say cursed."
Agnes snorted. "They all are, down here."
Lilith didn't speak.
She walked through the gates of her own will, dragging her weak body up the moss-slick steps and into the rotting mouth of her new prison.
Inside, the walls were damp. The air stank of mold and unwashed bodies. From the corners came the murmurs of children, hollow-eyed and silent, watching her with curiosity and almost fear.
They hadn't seen someone like her before.
Not someone with platinum hair and mismatched eyes and the kind of rage that clung like smoke.
She followed Agnes to a tiny room close to the east wing's end, which had no blankets, one straw mattress, and bare stone walls.
"You're to clean the halls and oversee the feeding. You'll answer to me, not God. Sleep early. Rise earlier. No questions. No talking back. You breathe wrong, and I'll have you scrubbing ash from the execution pit. Understand?"
Lilith looked her in the eye.
"Perfectly."
That night, she lay awake on her mattress of thorns, the sounds of coughing and crying echoing through the cracked stone.
No prayers.
No bells.
Just the breath of children who'd been left behind by a world that didn't care if they lived or died.
And for the first time in years...
Lilith didn't feel out of place.
She belonged here.
Among the ruined.
Among the forgotten.
Among the kindling.
-----
The sigil still pulsed.
Not like it had on the first day, angry and red but quieter now, settled into his chest like a parasite. It throbbed just beneath the skin, a heartbeat that wasn't his. A curse in rhythm with his breath.
Valentine had stopped counting the days.
There were no windows in the cell. No sun. No moonlight. Only the passage of guards, the drip of water from somewhere in the dark, and the tightening ache of starvation.
His wrists were raw where the manacles dug in. His once-sharp muscles had begun to wither, and his magic—his beautiful, living power—remained sealed behind an invisible wall, unreachable.
Yet he wasn't broken.
Not completely.
Not yet.
In the silence, he replayed everything.
His father's death.
Caelum's voice screaming false truths into the air.
The guards. The binding. The scent of his mother's perfume when she'd whispered to him in the dark, telling him she would find a way to undo the sigil.
Hope was dangerous. But so was he.
He'd stopped trying to summon fire. But that didn't mean he'd stopped feeling it. It flickered somewhere, deep under the spellwork, muffled and mute but alive.
And every time he felt that faint spark rise up...
He remembered what they had taken.
On the sixth day, they brought in a priest to examine him. Not to heal. Not to question.
To confirm that the sigil still held.
"It's binding properly," the man reported, voice thin and dispassionate. "He's as safe as a corpse."
Valentine met his eyes and smiled.
"Come closer," he rasped.
The priest flinched.
"Why?" he asked, warily.
"So I can tell you what I'll do to you," Valentine whispered, "when this binding breaks."
As sleep eluded him that night, Valentine recalled a story his mother had told him years before, when he was a young boy afraid of his own power.
"Magic isn't what you summon, Val. It's what survives when everything else is taken."
He closed his eyes and whispered her name.
"Mother... hurry."
——————
The announcement came at dawn.
A single parchment, sealed in red wax and pinned to the great gates of Morne Hall:
"On the seventh night hence, Valentine Morne shall be put to death by Hollowing in accordance with ancient decree. All nobles of the realm are to bear witness. Let this act cleanse the bloodline of treachery."
It was signed not in ink, but in blood.
Caelum Morne
Aragorn of the Ashmire".
Warden of the Flamebound Decree
The court buzzed with whispers, but none raised objections. Not aloud.
The few who might have were already dead.
In the throne room, Caelum stood before a massive iron mirror, his new robes pressed to perfection, a high collar framing his face like a blade. Elspeth stood nearby, pale and unreadable, her arms folded tight.
"He's nothing now," Caelum said, staring at his reflection. "The sigil will keep him chained until the final breath."
"He was your brother," Elspeth said softly.
"He was a threat."
Caelum turned to her, gaze cold. "You agreed to stand with me. Or has your loyalty begun to drift?"
She held his stare. "No. I'm with you."
"Then speak it like a vow."
Elspeth swallowed. "I am with you."
"Good." He turned back to the mirror, adjusting his mantle. "Because the age of sentiment has ended. We are no longer heirs. We are rulers."
Below the manor, past hidden doors and forgotten staircases, Drusilla Morne knelt in front of an altar that hadn't been touched in over a century.
This place was not on any of the estate maps.
A place of ancient ceremonies, moonblood scrolls, and hushed incantations handed down by women who feared neither God nor man, it had been her grandmother's haven.
By the light of a single blue-flamed candle, she unrolled a cracked leather folio filled with spells forbidden by both Church and coven.
Her fingers trembled as she found it.
"Unbinding Through Flesh and Fire."
The ritual was brutal.
A carving knife. A blood exchange. A fragment of the sigil-holder's soul lured through fire back to its source.
It could kill her.
Or worse, permanently break her connection to her son.
She didn't hesitate.
Back in the dungeons, Valentine lay in chains, barely conscious.
But something stirred.
Heat. Not from within him—but from outside.
His pulse quickened. The sigil on his chest flickered once. Then again.
It was as if it was being called by name somewhere.
In the ritual chamber, Drusilla drew the blade across her palm, letting her blood fall into the shallow bowl. Then she whispered:
"I do not call to heaven. Nor to hell.
But to the soul bound in silence,
Return to the one who bore you."
The room howled. The candle flared.
And in the dungeon...
Valentine's eyes snapped open.
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