The stench is too strong. Rot and blood and something else—something ancient and cloying, sticking to the back of your throat so you can taste it every time you swallow. It's the scent of decay, but not just physical decomposition. It's magic rotting from the inside out.
Fucking sanguimancers.
"What is this place?" Jack-Eye is the one to break the silence, his voice tight with disgust as we move forward once again.
"Just as I told you. A sanguimancer's playground." I step over a dark stain on the floor. "Isabeau liked to collect living batteries. The longer they suffered, the more power she could extract."
"And the cages? What are they? How much farther?" Andrew asks, still keeping his distance from the walls.
"They're feeding pens. They aren't far."
No one asks me to elaborate. The description is enough.
It's only then that I notice the silence.
Complete, absolute silence.
No breathing from the trapped shifters. No whispers of movement. No signs of life at all.
Just... stillness.
My heartbeat quickens against my will. A cold, creeping dread crawls up my spine—a sensation I haven't felt in centuries. I've lived too long to fear most things, but this silence speaks a language I understand all too well.
This isn't peace. This is aftermath.
"Wait here."
"But—" Andrew starts.
"Here." I pin him with a flat stare, and he shuts his mouth instantly.
Owen doesn't listen; he keeps moving forward. Jack-Eye hesitates only for a step, before following behind.
Andrew and the wizard stay where I tell them to.
It doesn't take us long to make it through the tunnels into a more widened space, lined with cages.
Cages once full of bodies, of people who acted more dead than alive.
Now they're just dead.
Bodies are everywhere—sprawled across the ground, slumped against open cage doors, limbs twisted at impossible angles. The scene reveals a massacre, not an escape. Some poor souls diedwhere they'd been imprisoned, others made it only steps toward freedom before being cut down.
My eyes catch on a tiny form crumpled near the wall—the toddler who had reached for me with innocent desperation. Now those little hands are still, face frozen in terror, eyes empty. Something ancient and terrible stirs inside me.
The rage builds with each heartbeat, pulsing through my veins like lava. I can feel it vibrating through my body, making the very ground beneath us tremble. The arcana in the air responds, humming with discordant energy as my control slips.
My teeth clench so hard my jaw aches, fangs growing and pressing against my lips as I struggle to contain what's building inside me—a fury older than the last breath of the Aztecs. Older than the bones of Constantinople, rotting beneath new kings.
The weight of my choice is like a terrible, self-loathing boulder rolled onto my chest. I could have stayed. Should have stayed. Instead, I'd shrugged off the responsibility of these lives, decided to hand them off to Caine's care—and forgotten them.
If I'd remembered in time…
If I'd only taken the effort…
But now I'm staring at the consequence of that decision.
Chapter thirty-eight
