Chapter 38
title: "The Bastard's Bargain" wordCount: 2545
Sera slid a vial of blood across the table toward Caelan. "If you're going to betray me, do it now before we're both dead."
The glass caught the lamplight, turning the contents the color of garnets. Caelan's fingers twitched toward it, then stopped. His hands were shaking again—had been since the garden, since the water rose and Thalia pulled them through some impossible fold in space that left his stomach somewhere near his spine.
"What is this?" His voice came out rougher than he intended.
"Insurance." Sera remained standing, one hand resting on the pommel of her sword. They were in her private study, a room he'd never seen before tonight. Books lined three walls, floor to ceiling. The fourth was a window overlooking the eastern gardens, where even now he could see torches moving in search patterns. "My blood. Freely given. If you need to break the wards—"
"I don't."
"Let me be clear." The words came out clipped, each syllable a door slamming shut. "I am not using blood magic again."
Thalia looked up from where she crouched by the fireplace, her hands still glowing faintly with residual magic. "You can barely stand."
"I can stand well enough."
"You're bleeding from your nose."
Caelan wiped his upper lip. His fingers came away red. He'd been bleeding on and off since the garden, small hemorrhages that spoke to how thoroughly he'd burned through his reserves. The blood magic had kept him alive this long, kept him moving when his body should have collapsed days ago. Without it—
He pushed the vial back across the table. "Keep it."
Sera's expression didn't change, but things were different now her posture. A softening, maybe, or just exhaustion. She looked as wrung out as he felt, her perfect court mask cracking at the edges. "Venn will have tripled his guard by now. He knows we're coming."
"Good." Caelan forced himself to his feet, ignoring the way the room tilted. "Then he'll be looking at the front door."
"And we'll be where, exactly?" Thalia stood, brushing ash from her hands. "Because I can fold space maybe one more time tonight before I pass out, and I'd rather not waste it on a suicide run."
"The vault." Sera moved to the window, her reflection ghostly in the glass. "Venn keeps his most valuable assets in a vault beneath the estate. If he's planning something large enough to justify purging both the imperial family and the blood mage underground, the evidence will be there."
Caelan's chest tightened. "You think he's planning a purge?"
"I think he's planning to become a hero." Sera turned back to face them, and her eyes were hard as flint. "A false flag attack. Blood magic artifacts used against imperial targets. He saves the day, executes the perpetrators—both the mages he claims are responsible and the royals too weak to stop them—and the Council names him regent. The empire endures, just under new management."
"Burn it down and start clean," Thalia muttered. "That's his play?"
"That is his play."
Caelan's mind raced through the implications. Venn had always been ambitious, but this—this was treason on a scale that would reshape the entire empire. "How long do we have?"
"Hours. Maybe less." Sera's hand tightened on her sword. "The Autumn Conclave begins at dawn. Every major house will have representatives in the palace. If he strikes then—"
"Maximum casualties, maximum chaos." Caelan's stomach churned. "And maximum justification for whatever comes after."
Thalia crossed to the table, her movements sharp with barely contained energy. "So we break into his vault, find the evidence, and what? Bring it to the Council? They're half in his pocket already."
"We don't bring it to the Council." Sera's voice was ice. "We destroy it. Every artifact, every weapon, every piece of his plan. We burn it all and leave him with nothing but accusations he cannot prove."
"And then?"
"And then we deal with Venn himself."
The words hung in the air like a blade. Caelan studied his half-sister's face, looking for the trap, the angle, the moment when this fragile alliance would shatter. But all he saw was exhaustion and something that might have been grief.
"The vault will be warded," he said finally.
"Yes."
"And guarded."
"Yes."
"And we're going in anyway."
Sera's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Do you have a better idea?"
Caelan looked at Thalia, who shrugged. "I'm in. But if we're doing this, we're doing it now. Before I lose my nerve or my magic, whichever comes first."
"Now," Sera agreed. She moved to a cabinet, pulled out a leather case. Inside were three dark cloaks, the kind servants wore when moving through the palace at night. "Captain Venn is holding the perimeter at the garden. I've sent word that we're securing the inner palace. That gives us perhaps an hour before anyone questions why we're not where we're supposed to be."
Caelan took one of the cloaks, the fabric heavy and coarse against his ink-stained fingers. "You planned this."
"I planned for contingencies." Sera fastened her own cloak, the motion practiced and efficient. "Venn has been consolidating power for months. I would have been a fool not to prepare for the possibility that he might move against the throne."
"Against you, you mean."
"The throne and I are the same thing." But her voice wavered, just slightly, and Caelan caught a glimpse of the girl who'd knelt beside him at their mother's grave. "Put on the cloak. We're leaving."
The streets between the palace and Venn's estate were emptier than they should have been. Caelan noticed it immediately—the absence of the usual night traffic, the shuttered windows, the way even the beggars had vanished from their usual corners. Someone had cleared the area. Someone who wanted no witnesses.
"He's already moving," Sera murmured. They walked in a tight triangle, Sera leading, Thalia at the rear, Caelan in the middle trying not to stumble. His legs felt like water, his vision swimming at the edges. The nosebleed had stopped, but he could taste copper at the back of his throat.
"Can you make it?" Thalia's hand found his elbow, steadying him.
"I can make it."
"That's not what I asked."
He didn't answer. Ahead, Venn's estate rose against the night sky, all sharp angles and defensive architecture. Lights blazed in every window. Not the warm glow of evening entertaining, but the harsh illumination of a fortress preparing for siege.
"He knows," Caelan said.
"Of course he knows." Sera didn't slow her pace. "But knowing we're coming and knowing where we'll strike are different things. The vault entrance is on the eastern side, hidden behind the wine cellar. Servants use it to move supplies without disturbing the main house."
"You've been here before."
"I've been everywhere before. I'm the empress." The title sat strangely on her tongue, like she was trying it on for the first time. "Or I was. Or I will be again, if we survive the night."
They circled to the eastern wall, where the estate's grandeur gave way to functional service entrances. Sera produced a key from somewhere in her cloak, and the door opened without a sound. Inside, the corridor was dark and narrow, smelling of wine and old stone.
Thalia's hand began to glow, casting pale light across the walls. "How far?"
"Fifty paces, then down." Sera moved like a shadow, her footsteps silent. Caelan tried to match her grace and failed, his boots scuffing against stone. Every sound felt like a thunderclap.
They found the stairs exactly where Sera said they would be, spiraling down into darkness that Thalia's light couldn't quite penetrate. The air grew colder with each step, and Caelan's breath misted in front of his face. His hands were numb. Everything was numb except the pounding in his skull.
At the bottom, a door. Iron-banded, ancient, covered in wards that made Caelan's teeth ache just looking at them.
"Can you break it?" Sera asked Thalia.
"Maybe. Give me a minute." Thalia pressed her palms against the door, her magic flaring bright enough to make Caelan squint. The wards resisted, pushing back with visible force. Thalia gritted her teeth, pushing harder. "These aren't standard imperial wards. Someone's been creative."
"Venn has resources we don't know about," Sera said. "Keep trying."
"I am trying. Wait, no—there." Something in the ward structure shifted, and Thalia's magic poured through the gap like water through a crack. The door shuddered. "Almost—"
The ward shattered with a sound like breaking glass, and the door swung open.
Beyond was a vault that made Caelan's blood run cold.
Artifacts lined the walls in careful rows, each one radiating the sick-sweet stench of blood magic. Weapons, mostly—swords and daggers and things he didn't have names for, all of them humming with stolen life. But there were other things too. Vials of blood, hundreds of them, labeled with names and dates. Ritual components. Books bound in leather that Caelan suspected wasn't animal hide.
"Gods," Thalia whispered.
Sera moved deeper into the vault, her face carved from marble. "This is enough to level half the palace."
"This is enough to level the entire city." Caelan's hands clenched into fists. He recognized some of these artifacts. Had seen them used, back when he was still learning the craft. Each one represented lives consumed, power stolen, the kind of magic that left nothing but ash and screaming. "How long has he been collecting?"
"Years." Sera stopped in front of a table covered in maps and documents. She picked up one, scanned it, set it down with shaking hands. "He's been planning this for years."
Thalia was already moving, her magic gathering in her palms. "Then we destroy it. All of it. Burn it down and—"
"Wait." Caelan caught her wrist. "If you use magic here, with all these artifacts—"
"I know the risks."
"Do you? Because I've seen what happens when blood magic artifacts detonate. The blast radius alone—"
"Then what do you suggest?" Thalia's eyes were wild, her control fraying. "We can't just leave it here."
"We take what we can carry. Evidence. Proof." Sera was already gathering documents, shoving them into her cloak. "And we collapse the vault behind us. Bury it where Venn can't reach it."
"That won't stop him," Caelan said.
"No. But it will slow him down."
A sound echoed from above. Footsteps. Many of them.
Sera's head snapped up. "We're out of time."
"The door—" Thalia started.
"Is the only way out." Sera drew her sword, the blade singing as it cleared the scabbard. "And they're between us and it."
Caelan looked around the vault, his mind racing through options and discarding them just as fast. No weapons he could use without triggering the blood magic. No other exits. No—
His eyes landed on a sword hanging on the far wall. Plain steel, no enchantments, just a well-made blade that someone had stored here for reasons he couldn't fathom. He crossed to it, lifted it from its hooks. The weight was wrong, the balance unfamiliar, but it was better than nothing.
"You can't fight," Thalia said.
"Watch me."
The footsteps were closer now, accompanied by voices. Orders being shouted. Steel being drawn.
Sera positioned herself at the door, her stance perfect, her face empty of everything except cold calculation. "When they come through, I'll take the first wave. Thalia, stay behind me and use your magic only if you have a clear shot. Caelan—"
"I know." He moved to her left, the sword heavy in his hands. "Try not to die."
"The same to you."
The first guard came through the door at a run, and Sera's blade took him in the throat before he could raise his weapon. The second guard stumbled over the first, and Caelan's sword found his chest, the impact jarring up his arms. The third guard was smarter, hanging back, and then there were more of them, pouring through the door in a tide of steel and shouting.
Sera fought like water, flowing from one strike to the next with a grace that made Caelan's clumsy parries look like a child's play. But there were too many, and they kept coming, and Caelan's arms were already burning with exhaustion.
A blade got past his guard, opened a line of fire across his ribs. He gasped, stumbled, and Sera was there, her sword deflecting the follow-up strike that would have taken his head. "Stay up!"
"Trying!"
Thalia's magic lashed out, a whip of light that sent three guards flying backward. But the effort cost her—Caelan saw her sway, saw the light in her hands flicker and dim. She was running on empty, same as him.
More guards pushed through the door. These ones wore different uniforms, heavier armor. Venn's personal guard, the ones trained to kill mages.
"Sera," Caelan said, his voice tight with pain.
"I see them."
The guards spread out, forming a semicircle that pushed them back toward the artifact-lined walls. Caelan's heel hit something, and he glanced down to see a vial of blood, cracked and leaking. The smell made his head swim.
One of the guards lunged at Sera. She parried, riposted, but another guard was already moving to flank her. Caelan tried to intercept, but his legs wouldn't obey fast enough, and the guard's sword was coming down, and Sera was turning but not fast enough—
She threw herself sideways, taking the blade meant for Caelan in her shoulder instead of his heart.
The sound she made was small, almost surprised. She went down hard, her sword clattering from her hand, blood spreading across her cloak in a dark stain.
"No!" Thalia's magic exploded outward, a desperate burst that sent every guard in the room crashing into the walls. But it took everything she had left—she collapsed to her knees, gasping, her hands dark and empty.
Caelan dropped beside Sera, his sword forgotten. Her eyes were open, focused on his face with an intensity that made his chest ache. Blood bubbled at the corner of her mouth.
"The water remembers," she whispered.
"Don't." His hands found the wound, pressed down, trying to stop the bleeding. But there was so much blood, hot and slick, and it kept coming. "Don't you dare."
The guards were getting up. Thalia was trying to stand and failing. And Sera was dying, her blood soaking into Caelan's hands, and he could feel it—the power in her blood, the life draining away, the wards that had kept his magic locked down for days beginning to fray and fail.
His hands began to glow.
Not the sick red of blood magic, but something else. Something that felt like the pool in the garden, like water rising, like his mother's hand in his hair when he was small and the world made sense.
The wards were failing because Sera was dying, and he could save her. Could pull her back from the edge with the very power he'd just sworn off. But using it might kill them both, might detonate every artifact in this vault, might—
A guard's boot scraped against stone, moving closer.
Caelan's hands burned brighter, and Sera's eyes locked on his, and he had to choose—