# Chapter 6: Blood and Silver

The copper tang of Lord Vane’s magic was still coating the back of my throat when the ballroom doors groaned open, cutting the music into a jagged silence. 

I didn’t lower my hands. I couldn’t. My palms were vibrating with a frequency that wasn’t mine—a frantic, high-pitched hum that belonged to the man now convulsing on the marble floor. I looked down at him, watching the silver embroidery on his tunic twitch in time with his spasms. He looked smaller than he had ten seconds ago. Greyer.

“Elara?” 

Reid’s voice hit me like a splash of ice water. He was standing three paces back, his fingers white-knuckled around the hilt of a sword he hadn't drawn yet. He wasn’t looking at the fallen High Lord. He was looking at my eyes.

“I didn't mean to,” I whispered, though the lie felt heavy and oily in my mouth. 

The vibration in my skin began to settle, sinking beneath my pores, claiming the space where my own heartbeat used to be. It didn't feel like a mistake. It felt like a homecoming. 

“Guards!” The cry went up from the gallery, a shrill, panicked note that shattered the stillness. 

“Move, Elara.” Reid was at my side in a heartbeat, his hand dead-bolting around my wrist. His skin was unnervingly warm, a stark contrast to the cold, stolen power surging through my veins. He yanked me toward the service alcove just as the first line of the Silver Guard peaked the grand staircase, their breastplates gleaming like predatory teeth.

We lunged through the velvet curtains, the scent of expensive perfume replaced instantly by the smell of scorched wick and damp stone. Reid didn’t slow down. He dragged me through the narrow veins of the palace, through corridors meant for invisible people—servants, spies, and ghosts.

“You took it all,” Reid hissed over his shoulder. He didn't stop running, his boots rhythmic against the flagstones. “You didn't just dampen his spark, Elara. You gutted him.”

“He was going to expose me!” I stumbled over a loose stone, my knees buckling. The power inside me—Vane’s power—rebelled at the sudden movement. It felt like a swarm of silver bees trying to sting their way out of my chest. I slammed my free hand against the wall to steady myself, and the stone beneath my palm groaned. A spiderweb of cracks radiated from my touch, dust blooming in the air.

Reid stopped. He stared at the ruined masonry, then at me. The fear in his expression was a physical blow. “Control it. If you leak like that, they’ll track the resonance right to us.”

“I don’t know how!” I shoved my hands into the folds of my silk skirts, trying to hide the way they glowed with a faint, ghostly luminescence. “It’s too much. It’s like trying to hold a gale in a glass jar.”

“Flicker’s breathe,” Reid muttered, a common gutter-prayer that sounded strange coming from a Noble of the Third Circle. He stepped closer, his shadow swallowing mine. “Listen to me. Vane’s magic is Silver-Tier. It’s structured. It’s precise. It isn’t raw like yours. You have to give it a shape, or it’ll burn you out from the inside.”

“What shape?” 

“Anything,” he snapped, his head whipping around as boots thudded in the hallway above us. “A cage. A knot. A crown. Just hold it.”

I closed my eyes and reached inward. Usually, my inner self was a quiet, dark attic. Now, it was a forge. Vane’s magic was a molten ribbon of mercury, thrashing against my ribs. I pictured a heavy iron chest with three locks. I forced the mercury inside, imagining the lids slamming shut, the bolts sliding home.

The pressure in my skull receded. The glow behind my eyelids faded to a dull, throbbing ache. 

“Better?” Reid asked.

“I feel like I swallowed a sword,” I said, opening my eyes. “But I’m not glowing anymore.”

“Good. Because we’re not going to the stables.” Reid turned toward a heavy oak door reinforced with iron bands. It led deeper into the foundations, toward the Blood Archives.

“We have to leave the city, Reid. If the Queen finds out—”

“The Queen already knows,” Reid interrupted, his voice dropping to a jagged whisper. “The moment Vane hit the floor, the resonance bells in the Inner Sanctum would have rung. They know a thief is in the palace. If we go to the gates now, we’re walking into a slaughterhouse.”

He pushed the door open. It didn't creak; the hinges were oiled by people who valued silence. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of parchment and old blood. This was where the lineages were kept—the ledger of every drop of magic inherited since the Founding. 

The room was a cathedral of glass cylinders. Hundreds of them, each filled with a swirling, iridescent vapor. The Essence of the Great Houses.

“Why are we here?” I asked, my voice echoing off the high, curved ceiling. 

Reid paced down the center aisle, his eyes scanning the labels on the pedestals. “Because Vane wasn't just a High Lord. He was the Keeper of the Seals. If you took his magic, you didn't just take his strength. You took his access.”

I looked at my hands. They were steady now, but I could feel the ‘chest’ in my mind vibrating. Vane’s magic wasn't just energy; it was a key. 

“There,” Reid pointed to a vault at the far end of the hall, sealed with a door of solid, unblemished silver. There was no keyhole, only a circular indentation in the center, the size of a human palm. “The Covenant Scroll. It’s the original contract between the Houses. It’s the only thing that proves the Bloodlines aren’t divine—that they were stolen from the First Ones.”

“You want me to commit treason?” I let out a dry, jagged laugh. “I just murdered a man in a ballroom. I think I’ve reached my quota for the night.”

“Vane isn’t dead,” Reid said, turning to face me. His eyes were dark, intense. “But he’s hollow. And unless we get that scroll, you’ll be next. The Queen doesn't execute people like you, Elara. She harvests them. She’ll put you in a glass jar and spend the next fifty years peeling layers of your soul away to see how the theft works.”

The image sent a shudder through me that had nothing to do with the stolen magic. I walked toward the silver door. The closer I got, the more the mercury in my chest began to churn. It recognized the door. It wanted to merge with it.

“Do it,” Reid urged. “Before the Guard clears the lower levels.”

I hesitated, my hand hovering inches from the silver surface. “If I take this… if I use his power to open this… does it make me him?”

“It makes you a survivor,” Reid said. 

I pressed my palm into the indentation. 

The reaction was instantaneous. A surge of white-hot lightning bolted up my arm, tearing through the mental chest I’d built. The mercury flooded out, screaming. The silver door didn't just unlock; it dissolved, the metal flowing away like liquid moonlight. 

But as the door vanished, the power didn't stop. It began to pull. 

It wasn't just using Vane’s magic to open the vault; it was using *me* as a conduit. I felt my own memories flickering—the smell of the rain on my father’s cloak, the taste of a stolen apple, the sound of my mother’s voice—all of them being sucked into the silver vortex. 

“Reid!” I gasped, my knees hitting the floor. “It’s taking… everything…”

I saw him move in my peripheral vision—not toward me, but toward the scroll sitting on a velvet cushion inside the vault. He grabbed it, his face set in a grim mask of determination. 

“Hold on, Elara!” 

He didn't pull me away. He waited until the silver glow began to dim, until the door had completely reformed behind us, trapping us inside the small, dark stone chamber. 

The light died. Silence rushed back in, heavy and suffocating. 

I slumped against the wall, my lungs burning. My mind felt… thin. Like a piece of paper that had been erased too many times. I tried to remember the color of my mother’s eyes. 

Blue? Brown?

I couldn't find the memory. It was just a smudge of grey.

“I have it,” Reid whispered in the darkness. I heard the rustle of the scroll being tucked into his tunic. 

“I lost something,” I said, my voice sounding like it belonged to a stranger. “Reid, I can’t remember her face.”

He didn't answer. He struck a small glow-stone, and the dim blue light revealed his face. He looked older. Tired. He reached out and touched my cheek, but his hand was trembling. 

“The price of the crown is always blood, Elara,” he said softy. “Tonight, we just happened to use yours.”

He stood up, offering me a hand. I stared at it, wondering if I should take it. I wondered if, by the time we got out of this palace, there would be enough of Elara left to even know the difference. 

The theft wasn't just a power. It was a hunger. And it had finally started eating me.

A muffled explosion rocked the room, dust raining down from the ceiling. The Guard had reached the door. 

“How do we get out?” I asked, standing up on shaky legs.

Reid looked at the solid silver wall behind us, then at me. His eyes weren't filled with pity anymore. They were filled with expectation.

“Vane’s power is gone,” he said. “You used it all on the door.”

I felt the emptiness inside me—a yawning, jagged hole where the silver mercury had been. I felt smaller than I ever had. Weak. Unprotected.

“But,” Reid continued, stepping back to give me space, “I can still feel your own spark. It’s angry, Elara. It’s starving.”

He gestured to the wall. “Take the stone. Take the foundations. Take the very earth from under this palace if you have to. But get us out of here.”

I pressed my hands against the raw stone of the back wall. I didn't look for a key this time. I didn't look for a shape. I just opened the door in my soul and let the hunger out. 

The stone didn't crack. It screamed. 

The vibration traveled up my arms, through my teeth, and into my marrow. I wasn't just breaking the wall; I was consuming the structural integrity of the rock itself. It tasted of salt and ancient pressure. 

As the wall crumbled into fine grey sand, a cool breeze hit my face. We were beneath the city walls, overlooking the Blackwash River. 

I stepped out into the night, my skin grey with stone-dust, my heart beating with the slow, heavy rhythm of a mountain. 

“Where to now?” I asked.

Reid looked toward the dark silhouette of the Whispering Woods across the water. “To the people who know how to fill that hole in your chest, Elara. To the Resistance.”

As we plunged down the embankment toward the water, I looked back at the palace. For the first time, I didn't feel like a thief sneaking away. 

I felt like an invading army.

The first arrow hissed through the air, burying itself in the mud inches from Reid’s heel. 

“Jump!” he yelled.

I didn't jump. I turned toward the archers on the battlements, my fingers curling into claws. The hunger wasn't satisfied by the stone. It wanted the heat of the life above us. 

Reid grabbed the back of my tunic, yanking me toward the ledge. “Not yet, Elara! If you stay, they’ll kill you before you learn how to win!”

I let him pull me into the icy embrace of the river. 

The water swallowed us whole, but as the current dragged me down, I didn't feel the cold. I felt the heat of the scroll against Reid’s chest, the magic radiating off the palace walls, even the faint pulses of the fish in the reeds. 

I was Elara. And I was everyone I had ever touched. 

I just wondered how many more people I’d have to devour before I felt whole again.