Page 144 of Bite Marks & Broken Hearts
From within the twisting water, a figure began to rise. Not swimming, not walking, but ascending. Dark hair plastered to pale skin, white dress billowing in ways that defied physics. Beautiful and wrong, like a painting left to rot underwater.
Vale dropped to one knee. Around us, every vampire followed suit, heads bowed in perfect synchronisation. Even the wolves fell silent, though whether from fear or some compulsion, I couldn’t tell.
As her feet touched the causeway, the water sloughed away, leaving her perfectly dry. She moved with the fluid grace of nobility—a memory stirred, something about… dancing lessons, about proper posture.
The woman lifted her chin, and I found myself staring into eyes I knew intimately—the same eyes that had greeted me in mirrors, year after year after year. The recognition triggered an avalanche of buried images, each one tearing through my mind, bombarding me all at once: those dark eyes spying on Father’s dinner parties from behind banisters, sparkling with mischief over forbidden books in the library—
I gasped as the fragments hit me, each one burning like holy water in my veins, each one impossible but undeniably real—
“Hermano mío,” she said.
The world stopped.
30
Sebastián
“Magdalena.”
Her name tore free from my throat like broken glass, centuries of carefully buried grief and guilt rushing up to choke me.
My sister. My little sister.
The heretic I had condemned to burn, my own hand signing the death warrant.
The air grew thick and still, as if nature itself held its breath. Even Vale’s smug expression had frozen, his gaze darting between us with newfound uncertainty.
My legs threatened to give way beneath me. “You’re… alive.” The words scraped past my lips, barely more than a whisper. Every prayer I’d whispered in the dark, every confession I’d made to empty churches, every moment I’d spent trying to atone for her death—all of it crumbled to ash in my mouth.
She stood before me in the same dress she’d worn that final day—plain white wool. Her dark curls tumbled past her shoulders, so like my own. But her eyes… Her eyes now burned with an unholy light I had never seen in life.
Kit and Rory flanked me, hackles raised, but utterly still. Even Flynn’s laboured breathing had gone quiet. The night air hung heavy with the scent of grave dirt and stagnant water.
Magdalena took a step forward, her bare feet leaving no impression in the damp grass. The movement was wrong—too fluid, too smooth. Like a puppet being pulled by invisible strings.
A memory flashed—the hyena. That impossible creature that had appeared again and again. Outside the hospital, across from Rising Dough, during the van chase. At the time, I’d questioned my sanity, seeing such a beast in London. But now… those unnatural yellow eyes. My mind reeled as understanding dawned: Magdalena had been there all along, watching me.
You’re alive,I’d just said. But… was she truly?
“Brother,” she said, English now, her voice carrying the hollow echo of a tomb. “Did you truly think death would keep me from you?”
The endearment twisted like a knife in my chest. I had rehearsed this moment countless times in my darkest hours—what I would say if I could see her one last time. But now, faced with this mockery of my sister, words failed me entirely.
“Brother,” she said again, that tomb-echo in her voice growing stronger. “Such guilt you’ve carried. Suchprayers.” Her lips twisted. “I heard every one.”
The water behind her rose higher, defying nature. I fought to keep my voice steady. “How did—”
“How did I survive the flames?” A manic, screeching sound—her laugh. “Your precious mentor saw to that. Rodrigo made sure I burned while clutching your crucifix. A final act ofmercy, he called it.” She spat the word. “But he didn’t know what that cross had become. What power it held after my lover’s ritual.”
My mind reeled. The crucifix?Lover’sritual?
The diary pages I’d read days ago suddenly blazed with new meaning—how I’d caught her in the woods, my crucifix found in her possession, sitting on her unholy altar. All this time I believed she’d stolen it out of spite, an act of defiance against the brother who opposed her. But no. She’d needed it for something far darker.
“Oh yes, brother. While you were hunting heretics, I found real power. Foundfreedom.” Her gaze drifted to Flynn. “But freedom always has a price.”
The water twisted into impossible shapes behind her. “Lilith saved me from the flames. But her help came with conditions. Blood magic, at first. Then darker things. Always more, always stronger.”
“Lilith?” Horror clawed up my throat. The Mother of Demons. The First Witch. Even humans knew to fear that name, but to creatures like me, she was far more than just a cautionary tale.The hyena.Lilith’s favoured beasts, her night-stalking hunters.
