# Chapter 6: Blood Tithe Escalation

Damien’s hand lingered on her bandaged wrist, the blood-ink pact thrumming between them like a shared heartbeat, as the solar’s arched windows framed the storm-lashed towers of Blackthorn Keep. The air in the room was heavy with the scent of ozone and the metallic tang of drying hemomantic residue. Outside, the sky was the color of a fresh bruise, purple and swollen with the coming gale, but inside, the silence held a different kind of pressure.

Isabella leaned back into the velvet cushions of the chaise, the exhaustion from the ritual still weighing her limbs like lead. Yet, beneath the fatigue, a spark of triumph flickered. The bond was set. She could feel Damien’s pulse—not just the physical thud of his heart, but the jagged, protective edges of his spirit. It was a sympathetic resonance that made her skin itch beneath the linen wraps.

"You should be resting," Damien said, his voice a low rasp that scratched pleasantly against her nerves. He didn't pull his hand away. "The ritual took more than you're admitting."

Isabella allowed herself a small, weary smile, her eyes tracking the way his thumb brushed the edge of her bandage. "A touch inconvenient, perhaps. But necessary. We have successfully muddied the waters, Damien. Your father sees a submissive bride, and the High Priest sees a vessel under control."

"Malakor sees nothing but a prize he hasn't been allowed to touch yet," Damien countered, his eyes darkening. He looked toward the heavy oak door as if he could see through the wood to the vipers circling in the hall. "He’s not a man who handles denial well."

Isabella shifted, her fingers instinctively finding the hidden scars beneath her sleeve. She traced the ridges of the old tissue, the marks left by her mother’s lessons. "He thinks he understands the nature of our magic. He thinks the Peace Vow is an absolute barrier." She lowered her voice, her gaze meeting Damien’s with a sudden, sharp intensity. "But blood shared by choice... it creates a channel the Vow cannot perceive. It is the shadow under the door, Damien. Only we know the way in."

Damien’s jaw tightened. The revelation—that their private blood-sharing bypasses the ancestral constraints of the Peace Vow—hung between them like a forbidden weapon. He was complicit now, deeply so. 

"Is that why your mother died?" he asked, the question blunt and devoid of his usual cynicism. "For finding the shadow?"

Isabella’s breath caught. The memory of the execution block, the scent of rain-dampened straw, and her mother’s silent, regal acceptance flooded back. "She died because she was discovered," Isabella corrected softly. "I do not intend to share her fate. Pray, do focus on the present, Damien. Sentiment is a luxury we haven't earned."

Before he could respond, the heavy latch on the solar door clicked. It didn't rattle with a servant’s hesitation; it snapped with the authority of a master.

High Priest Malakor swept into the room, his crimson robes trailing behind him like a wake of spilled wine. His face was a mask of controlled fury, the pale skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. Behind him, the shadows of the hallway seemed to lean inward, drawn by the sheer mass of his resentment.

"Lord Damien," Malakor said, his voice like grinding stones. He didn't look at the son of the house; his golden, predatory eyes were fixed entirely on Isabella. "Lady Isabella. I trust the... celebrations... have concluded."

Damien stood slowly, placing himself between Isabella and the priest. The sympathetic pulse in Isabella’s wrist spiked, a jagged rhythm of defiance radiating from him. "The solar is private, Malakor. Or have the laws of hospitality changed while I was away?"

"Hospitality does not supercede the Tithe, boy," Malakor snapped, his gaze flickering briefly to Damien before returning to Isabella. He stepped closer, ignoring the breach of personal space. "The Blackthorn Coven requires its due. The Nightbloom assets are being integrated, but the essence—the raw, ancestral power stored within the Voss bloodline—is late. I am here to collect the first installment."

Isabella felt a cold shiver of dread, but she forced her features into the practiced mold of the dutiful, conquered heir. She sat up straight, pulling the high collar of her gown tighter to ensure the scars on her neck remained hidden. 

"The Blood Tithe is a formal process, High Priest," she said, her voice melodic and performatively thin. "My body is still recovering from the union. Surely the Coven can wait until the moon wanes?"

"The Coven waits for no one," Malakor hissed. He reached into the folds of his robe and produced a ceremonial vial of obsidian glass. "I require a measure of essence now. To... stabilize the transition."

Isabella saw the way his fingers twitched around the vial. She saw the hunger in his eyes—not just for the magic, but for the thrill of extraction. In that moment, a fragment of information from the Nightbloom archives surfaced in her mind: rumors of Malakor skimming essence from the communal rituals to bolster his own waning longevity.

She reached out, not with her hand, but with the ethereal intent of a Crimson Oath Lash. It was a subtle movement, a mere thinning of the air, but she felt the lash brush against Malakor’s aura. She didn't strike; she probed. She felt the rot in his magic, the jagged, stolen energy he kept hidden under his prestigious rank.

"Pray, High Priest," she said, her voice dripping with a sarcasm so subtle it sounded like devotion. "Is the Tithe for the Coven, or is it for the... maintenance of your own significant responsibilities?"

Malakor stiffened, his eyes narrowing to slits. "Careful, Voss. Your status here is secondary to your utility. Lord Malphas is already demanding the blood-keys to your family’s vaults. Do not make me report that you are being... difficult."

Damien let out a short, harsh laugh. "Difficulty is her birthright, Malakor. And mine is the protection of my wife. You’ll get your essence when I deem her strong enough to bleed, and not a moment before. Now, leave. My father is expecting a report on the Tithe's progress, not a bedside collection."

The air in the room turned frigid. Malakor looked from Damien to Isabella, his lip curling in a sneer that promised retribution. "The Blackthorn Coven does not take kindly to those who hoard what belongs to the gods. You are playing a dangerous game, little bird."

"Is it not a game we all play?" Isabella asked quietly. 

Malakor turned on his heel and marched out, the door slamming behind him with a sound like a gavel.

The silence that followed was suffocating. Isabella slumped back, the mask fracturing. Her hands began to shake, and she quickly began tracing the bandages on her wrists, her fingernails digging into the fabric.

"He knows," she whispered. 

"He knows nothing," Damien said, though the tension in his shoulders suggested otherwise. He sat on the edge of the chaise, his hand hovering near hers but not quite touching. "He’s a scavenger. He smells blood in the water, that’s all."

"He smells the truth," she replied, her words coming in short, sharp fragments. "The Tithe. The keys. My father waiting like a vulture in the distance. It’s all... it's all closing in. Blood. Blood everywhere. I can feel it calling."

"Isabella." Damien took her hands, forcing her to stop the frantic tracing. His touch was warm, a grounding force against the rising tide of her panic. "Look at me."

She looked up, seeing the fierce, cynical blue of his eyes. The blood-link between them hummed, a strange, intimate warmth that blurred the lines of the ruse. For a moment, she wasn't the Voss heir and he wasn't the Blackthorn prince. They were merely two creatures caught in the same snare, pulling toward one another for heat.

"We are the ones who hold the knife," he told her. "Malakor, my father—they are the past. They think they own the vows, but we chose this one. We chose each other."

Isabella felt the weight of his words. It was a terrifying thought—that this alliance, born of necessity and blood-ink, was becoming something more substantial than the ancient duties she had spent her life honoring. The feeling of his protection was a drug, one she hadn't realized she was addicted to until the moment she felt it might be taken away.

A soft chiming sound echoed through the room. It came from the silver locket Isabella wore at her throat—a vow-sealed relic of the Nightbloom Coven. The metal was burning hot against her skin.

She pulled it out, her fingers trembling as she felt the frantic, rhythmic vibration of the locket. It was a distress signal.

"The Nightbloom," she breathed, her eyes widening. "The coven is fracturing. Without a head, the internal rivalries are tearing them apart. My people... they are being hunted, Damien. Digested by your father's House."

Reginald Thorne Voss, her distant and calculating father, would let them burn if it meant he could rise from the ashes with a more favorable deal. He was waiting, she knew, for her to either succeed or fail so spectacularly that he could claim the spoils of her ruin.

She gripped the locket, the metal biting into her palm. The conflict within her was a physical pain—the duty to her broken, leaderless family clashing with the desperate need to stay within the circle of Damien’s protection.

"Pray tell," she whispered, her voice cracking as she leaned her forehead against Damien’s shoulder, "how does one bind a heart with vows of crimson, only to watch it bleed defiance?"

Damien wrapped his arms around her, his chin resting atop her head. He didn't offer empty platitudes. He simply held her as the storm outside finally broke, rain lashing against the stone glass with the fury of a thousand ghosts.

As the echoes of Malakor’s threats lingered in the shadows of the solar, Isabella felt the blood-ink pact on her wrist sear with a sudden, agonizing heat. It was a warning. A reminder. Damien’s safety was now her self-chosen chain, a vow she had written in her own essence. Yet the Tithe’s demand, the weight of her ancestors, and the screams of her failing coven echoed her mother’s fatal end.

She looked at the obsidian vial Malakor had left on the table—a silent, waiting mouth.

"Blood calls to blood," she whispered into the dark, her voice a ghost of its former poise. "Is it not?"

**SCENE A: INTERIORITY BEAT**

The heat of the locket lingered against Isabella’s palm long after the chiming ceased, a physical echo of the panic currently devouring her coven. She stared at the obsidian vial Malakor had left behind, its dark surface reflecting the flickering candlelight like a predatory eye. Every nerve in her body felt frayed, the ends sparking with the residual energy of the Crimson Oath Lash she had nearly deployed against the High Priest. To use such magic in her state was reckless—a touch inconvenient was an understatement; it was a slow suicide.

She realized then that her mask was not just fracturing; it was dissolving. The performative submission she had cultivated for Lord Malphas and the acidic wit she used to keep Malakor at bay were becoming harder to sustain. Beneath the silk and the high collars, she was nothing but a collection of scars and unfulfilled promises. The blood-ink pact with Damien felt heavy on her arm, a weight she had chosen, but a weight nonetheless. It thrummed with his proximity, a sympathetic pulse that grounded her even as it terrified her. He was the anchor, but she was the one drifting in a sea of hemomantic debt.

The thought of her mother’s execution returned, unbidden and vivid. The way the sky had looked that day—not bruised like today’s storm, but a mocking, brilliant blue. Her mother had not fought. She had stood with a terrifying grace, her own vow-scars glowing one last time before the iron fell. Isabella wondered if she was simply following the same path, meticulously tracing the steps toward her own destruction. The "shadow under the door" she had mentioned to Damien felt less like a secret passage and more like a trap. If they were caught using blood-sharing to bypass the Peace Vow, there would be no trial. There would only be the silence of the Blackthorn dungeons.

**SCENE B: DIALOGUE EXCHANGE**

Damien moved across the solar, his boots echoing on the stone floor with a deliberate, heavy rhythm. He picked up the obsidian vial, turning it over in his hands. "He didn't just want a Tithe, Isabella. He wanted to see you break. He wanted to see if I would let him break you."

Isabella straightened her shoulders, reclaiming a sliver of her regal composure. "Then we gave him a fine show of defiance, did we not? Pray, do not tell me you are regretting the performance now."

"It wasn't a performance for me," Damien said, his voice dropping an octave as he turned back to her. He set the vial down on the edge of the table with a sharp *clack*. "My father already suspects I’ve grown too fond of my charge. Malakor will tell him I’m now actively shielding you from the Coven's needs. You’re becoming a liability to my inheritance, Isabella. And I find that I don't particularly care."

Isabella let out a sharp, brittle laugh. "A liability? How charmingly cynical. Most men would call it devotion. But then, you were never most men, Damien. You’re a Blackthorn. You only protect what you intend to own."

Damien stepped into her space, his shadow stretching over the chaise. "I don't want to own you. I want us to survive. There’s a difference, even if your Voss upbringing didn't include a definition for it." He reached out, his fingers hovering near the high lace of her collar, where the locket remained hidden. "That signal... what does it mean? Truly?"

"It means the end of the Nightbloom if I do not act," she whispered, her sarcasm finally failing her. "It means my father has finally decided that the coven is worth more to him as a sacrifice than a constituency. He is letting Malphas take the keys, Damien. The vaults, the legacies... everything my mother died to protect is being dissolved into your house's coffers."

"Then we take them back," Damien said, his eyes reflecting the storm outside. "Not for your father. For you."

**SCENE C: GROUNDED TRANSITION**

The following twenty-four hours were a blur of hushed tension and oppressive gray light. The storm didn't break so much as settle into a persistent, freezing drizzle that turned the ramparts of Blackthorn Keep into slick, treacherous paths. Isabella remained confined to the solar under the guise of "recovery," though the room felt more like a cage with every passing hour. Servants brought trays of red wine and rare meat—a mockery of the hemomantic nourishment she truly needed—and left without meetng her gaze. The rumors were indeed spreading; she could see it in the way the kitchen maid trembled when she set down the tray.

Damien was absent for much of the day, summoned to the Great Hall to answer his father’s inquiries regarding the Tithe's delay. Isabella spent those hours pacing the length of the rug, her fingers constantly tracing the scars on her wrists until the skin was raw. She watched the obsidian vial Malakor had left. It sat on the table like a challenge. Occasionally, the blood-link would flare—a sudden surge of adrenaline or anger from Damien’s side of the keep—letting her know he was still fighting his own battles in the court below.

As night fell again, the Keep grew silent, save for the wind whistling through the arrow slits. Isabella sat by the dying fire, the vow-locket cool against her chest once more. The crisis had not passed; it had merely gone quiet, waiting for the next move. She knew Malakor would return. She knew her father would send word. And she knew that the sympathetic pulse in her wrist was the only thing keeping her from shattering entirely. The "Blood Tithe" was no longer a negotiation; it was a countdown. 

She looked at the obsidian vial Malakor had left on the table—a silent, waiting mouth.

"Blood calls to blood," she whispered into the dark, her voice a ghost of its former poise. "Is it not?"