By the time they reached the safehouse, Seina had stopped crying.
That did not mean she was better.
It only meant her body had gotten bored of proving a point.
The car rolled to a stop beside the curb of a narrow, sleeping street where old townhouses sat shoulder to shoulder in the dark, all brick fronts, black railings, and curtained windows. It was not the grand estate they had left behind. No pale stone. No red carpet. No ballroom full of beautiful monsters pretending not to stare. Just an old townhouse with ivy crawling up one side and a porch lamp left off on purpose.
It looked painfully normal.
That annoyed her.
After the night she’d had, the house should have been leaning sideways or bleeding from the windows or doing something dramatic enough to match the mess inside her chest. Instead, it sat there looking like any other dark little building on any other quiet street, which felt rude. Deeply rude.
Rowan killed the engine.
The sudden silence pressed around them.
Seina kept her hands in her lap. The black gloves she had worn to the ball were crumpled between her fingers now, twisted so tightly the seams had started to give. She did not remember taking them off in the car. She remembered the ballroom. The old vampire bowing. Valen’s voice sliding too close. Faylan’s face in the hallway.
Faylan’s hands.
Warm.
Still warm.
Seina swallowed hard and looked away from the house.
Rowan did not immediately get out.
She felt him looking at her, but not like everyone else looked at her now. Not like she was one wrong blink away from becoming a medical incident with fangs. Not like she might open her mouth and prove every terrible rumor true. Rowan looked at her the way he watched storms through glass: carefully, quietly, with enough respect not to blame the weather for being dangerous.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said.
Seina let out a small, ugly laugh.
“Great. Love that. Very helpful. I’ll just sit here and emotionally rot in silence.”
His mouth shifted faintly. “That was also an option.”
“You’re bad at comfort.”
“I’ve been told.”
“By who?”
“A fair number of people.”
“Were they all correct?”
“Mostly.”
The tiny thread of humor appeared between them, weak and frayed but alive. Seina held onto it for half a second, then lost it when her mind dragged her back to Faylan again.
Faylan standing in that hallway.
Faylan saying safe like it answered anything.
Faylan touching her face with warm hands and saying she was still her sister, as if that fixed the fact that Seina had woken up without a heartbeat and Faylan had not been there.
Her throat tightened.
Stupid, because she did not even need to breathe.
Apparently dying had not freed her from choking on feelings. Huge design flaw. Someone should file a complaint.
Rowan opened his door first. Cold night air slipped into the car, carrying wet pavement, old leaves, and the faint smoke of someone’s fireplace from farther down the street. Seina’s senses caught too much at once. A dog asleep behind a fence two houses over. A person turning in bed behind a second-floor window. Water ticking in a gutter. A faint copper trace from a scraped knee or split cuticle nearby.
Blood.
Always blood.
She closed her eyes for one second.
When she opened them, Rowan was already at her side of the car.
He opened her door.
Seina looked up at him.
“You do know I’m capable of opening doors.”
“Yes.”
“And getting out of cars.”
“Usually.”
She glared.
He glanced down at her shoes.
Seina followed his gaze.
The heels were beautiful. Black, thin-strapped, deadly little torture devices that had looked amazing with the dress and had clearly been invented by someone who hated feet. She could not technically feel pain the way she had when she was human, not exactly, not with the same soft helplessness, but discomfort still existed. Pressure. Irritation. The memory of nerves. Her body had changed, not upgraded into convenience.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re holding the seat like it insulted you.”
“The seat knows what it did.”
Rowan’s expression stayed almost blank, but she saw the amusement in his eyes.
He held out a hand.
Seina looked at it for half a breath longer than she needed to.
Then she took it.
His hand closed around hers, cool and steady. The bond between them stirred softly, not like Faylan and Cassius’s blood-channel, not like anything formal or House-made. This was different. Maker and newborn. Death and return. Rowan’s blood had dragged her back when her body gave up, and now some part of her recognized him before thought did.
She hated that sometimes.
Other times, like now, when the night felt too large and her chest felt too hollow, she hated how much she needed it.
She stepped out of the car. Her heel hit the pavement wrong, and Rowan caught her by the elbow before she could stumble.
“I swear,” she said, straightening fast, “if you say anything—”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking something.”
“I think many things.”
“Gross. Stop.”
His thumb shifted once against her elbow before he let go, not lingering, not making it weird. Just there long enough to make sure she was steady.
They crossed the narrow walk to the townhouse. Rowan moved first, his gaze touching the upstairs windows, the alley, the sleeping street behind them. He did not look like he was checking for danger. That was the irritating part. He made paranoia look casual.
Seina heard more now than she would have two months ago.
The street was quiet.
Too quiet in some places.
Alive in others.
Heartbeats tucked behind walls. Pipes ticking. A car passing three blocks away. Rainwater dripping from a gutter with a tiny metallic rhythm that scraped at her ears until she focused on Rowan instead.
“You’re doing it again,” he said.
Seina blinked. “Doing what?”
“Listening to everything.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose.”
“I know.”
He unlocked the door and pushed it open.
The safehouse was dark except for one lamp left burning in the front room. Its low yellow light spilled over old wooden floors, heavy curtains, a half-empty bookshelf, and a sofa that looked like it had survived several decades through spite alone. The place smelled like dust, cold tea, worn wood, and Rowan. Not in a weird way. In a constant way. Like dark wool, rain, and the faint animal warmth that clung to him even when he looked perfectly human.
Seina stepped inside and immediately kicked off both heels.
They hit the floor with two sharp little thuds.
Rowan closed the door behind them.
“Better?”
“I have never known peace until this moment.”
“That bad?”
“These shoes were designed by Vespera.”
“They’re Sanguis.”
“Same energy.”
He locked the door. Then the second lock. Then slid the bolt into place. After that, he touched two fingers to the frame near the hinges, where Seina knew a small ward had been carved beneath the paint.
The line gave a faint shimmer.
She folded her arms. “Watching you lock three different locks is not calming.”
“It’s not meant to be calming. It’s meant to keep people out.”
“I can be annoyed and understand the function.”
“That does seem to be your specialty.”
She made a face at him and turned away before he could see too much of it soften.
The safehouse was warmer than outside, but not warm enough to make the chill leave her. Not a physical chill. The other kind. The kind that had started in the hallway when Faylan looked at her like she loved her and still could not come home.
Seina walked into the front room, tugging one pin after another from her hair. The style had half-fallen apart during the ride back anyway. Silver-blond strands slipped down around her face, brushing her cheeks and neck. She tossed the pins onto the small table by the sofa, missing the little dish Rowan kept there. They scattered across the wood.
He glanced at them.
Did not comment.
Smart.
Rowan crossed to the cabinet near the back wall and opened it. Inside were glass bottles stored in neat rows, each one sealed with dark wax. Blood, prepared for her. Not fresh from a person. Not alley-warm. Not dangerous. Safe, controlled, arranged.
She hated that too.
He took one bottle and poured some into a glass before setting it on the table.
“You need to drink.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m emotionally unavailable to my appetite.”
“That doesn’t make it stop.”
“It should learn to read a room.”
The scent hit her anyway.
Seina’s throat tightened.
Her fangs ached, quick and humiliating.
She turned away from the glass, hating how good it smelled and hating more that Rowan did not push it toward her. He only left it there and stepped back.
That made her angrier than if he had forced it.
Because it gave her space.
And she did not know what to do with space when the person giving it to her was right.
“You handled tonight better than I expected,” he said.
Seina’s head snapped toward him.
“That is possibly the worst compliment I’ve ever gotten.”
“It wasn’t meant badly.”
“It sounded like, ‘Good job not eating anyone in public.’”
“That was included.”
She grabbed one of the loose hair pins from the table and threw it at him.
He caught it.
Barely looking surprised.
Seina glared. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I could start.”
“You could try.”
The anger rose fast, then faded faster, leaving the hollow thing underneath.
She sank onto the sofa before she could decide not to.
The old cushions gave a tired little sigh beneath her.
Rowan was kind enough not to mention that she had finally sat down. He moved to the chair across from her instead of sitting beside her, giving her room she had not asked for but needed anyway.
Seina stared at the glass of blood on the table.
Dark red.
Still.
Practical.
Her stomach twisted with want and disgust in equal measure.
“I saw her,” she said.
Rowan went still.
Not stiff.
Just listening.
Seina rubbed her thumb over the edge of one crumpled glove. “I actually saw her. I touched her. She touched me.”
Her voice cracked on the last part, so she cleared her throat hard, as if that could shove the feeling back where it belonged.
“It didn’t feel real.”
Rowan was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “But it was.”
Seina nodded.
Her eyes burned, which felt stupid because she had already cried enough for one night. Vampire tears seemed unnecessary. Truly excessive. She would be writing a strongly worded letter to whoever designed the undead.
“She was warm,” Seina said.
The words came out smaller than she wanted.
Rowan’s gaze lowered briefly.
Seina looked at her own hands. Pale. Cool. Changed.
“She touched my face and she was warm. And I know that’s not her fault. I know she didn’t do anything wrong by having a heartbeat. But it just…”
She pressed her lips together, angry at herself now.
“It made me feel so dead.”
Rowan’s face tightened.
For once, he did not rush to fix the wound with some careful sentence. Maybe because there was no clean way to fix it. Maybe because he knew better than to tell her she was alive when her body kept disagreeing in quiet, awful ways.
Seina reached for the glass before she could overthink it. If she had to sit here feeling things, she might as well not do it hungry.
The glass was cool in her hand. She stared into the dark surface for a moment, then took a drink.
The blood was not fresh, but it helped.
Warmth moved through her throat and down into her body, quieting the sharpest edge of hunger. Her senses eased back by a fraction. The house sounds dulled from unbearable to irritating. The sleeping heartbeats on the street grew softer.
Rowan watched without making a big deal of it.
Good.
If he praised her for drinking like she was a toddler with a juice box, she would have thrown the glass too.
She took another sip.
When she lowered it, her hand had stopped shaking.
Mostly.
“I thought seeing her would fix something,” Seina admitted.
Rowan did not answer too quickly.
That was one thing about him she appreciated and hated at the same time. He did not rush to fill silence just because it hurt.
“What did you think it would fix?” he asked.
Seina’s fingers tightened around the glass.
“I don’t know.”
That was a lie.
She did know.
She had known from the second Caspian said Faylan would be there. Maybe before that. Maybe from the first night she woke up dead and reached for a sister who wasn’t beside her.
She had thought seeing Faylan would make death feel temporary.
Like a terrible misunderstanding.
Like the universe had misplaced them both and would put them back once they found each other again.
But Faylan had stood across from her in Sanguis colors, steadied by Cassius’s hand, with survival built around her like a wall.
And Seina had looked at her and realized they had both kept going.
Just not together.
Her throat tightened so hard she had to swallow around it.
“I thought seeing her would make me feel less dead,” she said.
Rowan’s expression changed.
“And?” he asked quietly.
Seina looked at the blood in her glass.
Then at her hands.
Then at the dark window, where the curtain hid any reflection she might have had.
“No.”
The word was barely there.
She forced herself to say the rest before she lost nerve.
“It made me feel like she learned how to live without me.”
The room went very still.
Rowan did not argue.
Somehow, that hurt less than comfort would have.
Seina blinked fast and leaned back against the sofa, staring at the ceiling like she could bully the tears into retreat by sheer spite.
“I know that’s unfair,” she said, voice rough. “I know she was surviving. I know she didn’t skip off into vampire royalty for fun. I know she probably had horrible choices and made the ones that kept her breathing. I know all of that.”
Rowan stayed quiet.
“And I’m still angry,” Seina whispered.
“That doesn’t make you cruel.”
“It feels cruel.”
“It makes you hurt.”
She let out a small, broken laugh. “That’s annoyingly mature.”
“I apologize.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No.”
She wiped beneath one eye with the side of her finger, furious when it came away damp.
Rowan looked away, giving her the dignity of pretending he had not seen it.
That almost made her cry harder.
Rude, again.
Everything was rude tonight.
“She looked like she belonged there,” Seina said after a while.
“With Sanguis?”
“With him.”
Rowan did not pretend not to know who she meant.
“Cassius.”
Seina nodded once.
Her voice came out smaller. “She leaned toward him before she leaned toward me.”
Rowan’s expression softened in a way that made her chest ache.
“Seina.”
“I know.” She put the glass down, not hard enough to spill, but close. “I know. I know he’s probably been keeping her alive, or whatever complicated blood nonsense she has going on. I know I should be grateful someone was there when I wasn’t.”
“You can be grateful and hurt.”
“I am very tired of having multiple emotions at once.”
“That does sound inconvenient.”
“It is. I miss being sixteen and only angry.”
“You’re still angry.”
“Yes, but now it has layers. Terrible development.”
Rowan’s mouth twitched.
The room softened around the edges for half a breath.
Then Seina’s gaze drifted toward the drawn curtains. Behind them, the glass reflected nothing visible from where she sat. Still, she felt herself looking for it. For her face. For proof. For the girl Faylan had touched in the hallway and insisted was still there.
“Do you think she meant it?” Seina asked.
Rowan’s voice was quiet. “When she said you were still her sister?”
Seina nodded.
“Yes.”
The answer came fast.
Too certain.
She looked at him.
“How do you know?”
“Because she sounded like someone trying not to break while saying the truest thing she had left.”
That pierced through the anger cleanly enough that Seina had no defense for it.
She looked down at her hands again.
The gloves lay limp in her lap.
Her fingers were pale against the black fabric.
“I wanted to hug her,” she whispered.
Rowan did not move.
“I wanted to grab her and not let go. Like if I held on long enough, maybe she would remember how to come home.”
Her mouth trembled, and she hated that too.
“But she has a room somewhere else now. And people who know what her blood does. And Cassius looking at her like anyone who touches her wrong should start praying to gods who don’t listen.”
Rowan’s brows lifted slightly. “That is a detailed description.”
“I was emotionally devastated, not blind.”
This time, he did smile.
Small.
Brief.
Gone before it could become too much.
Seina picked up the glass again, but did not drink.
“I don’t know where I fit with her anymore.”
“That may take time.”
“Again with the terrible words.”
“I could lie.”
“Don’t.”
“I won’t.”
She nodded, though it was not exactly comfort.
Outside, the street remained quiet. The safehouse held them in its dim little circle of lamplight, sealed behind locks and curtains and Rowan’s careful wards. For the first time since leaving the ball, Seina felt the night slow down enough for her to understand how tired she was.
Not sleepy.
Vampire tired was strange.
Less like needing rest and more like her body had become a room where every candle had burned too long.
She leaned back into the sofa, glass loose in her hand.
Rowan stayed across from her, quiet and watchful, not leaving but not crowding her either.
That helped.
She hated that it helped.
“Do you think she’ll come back?” Seina asked.
Rowan’s face went still in that careful way again.
Not because he had no answer.
Because he had too many, and none of them were safe.
“To you?” he asked.
Seina looked down.
“To herself.”
The question sat between them longer than either of them wanted.
Finally, Rowan leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees.
“I think your sister is still alive,” he said.
Seina swallowed.
“And as long as she is, she can find pieces of herself again.”
Her eyes burned.
Again.
“I hate that that actually helped.”
“I’ll try not to make a habit of it.”
“Please don’t. It would ruin your whole tragic cat-man thing.”
His mouth twitched.
Then his attention shifted.
So quickly Seina almost missed it.
His gaze moved past her toward the hallway.
His shoulders did not tense, but the room changed around him. The air sharpened. The safehouse suddenly felt less like a shelter and more like a held breath.
Seina sat up.
“What?”
Rowan lifted one hand slightly.
A silent request.
Listen.
She did.
At first, there was nothing.
Then the world widened.
The dripping gutter outside. A distant car turning. Someone coughing two houses down. The soft scratch of a mouse inside the wall. Rowan’s stillness. The strange almost-pulse inside her own body, wrong and quiet, more like the memory of a heartbeat than the real thing.
Then—
A heartbeat.
Not inside the house.
Not close enough to be normal.
Slow.
Steady.
Waiting across the street.
Seina’s fingers tightened around the edge of the sofa.
Rowan’s eyes remained on the hall, but she knew he had heard it too.
She whispered, “Someone’s outside.”
He stood.
This time, he did not tell her to stay sitting.
That scared her more than if he had.
The ward near the door gave one faint shimmer under the paint.
Then a shadow passed across the crack beneath the front door.
Seina rose slowly, the glass forgotten on the table, Faylan’s warmth and the ballroom and every unfinished ache in her chest suddenly pushed aside by something colder.
Rowan stepped in front of her.
Not fully blocking.
Just enough.
The knock came once.
Soft.
Patient.
Like whoever stood outside already knew they had nowhere else to be.
Seina stared at the door.
No second knock followed. No voice. No scraping threat against the frame. Whoever waited beyond the porch simply stood there, quiet and certain, and somehow that was worse than if they had kicked the door in.
Rowan moved first.
Not toward the door.
Toward her.
Only half a step, just enough that his body shifted between Seina and the front hall. His expression did not change much, but the room changed around him. The safehouse no longer felt like a tired little townhouse with old floors and ugly curtains. It felt like a held breath.
Seina’s fingers curled around the back of the sofa.
“Is this where you tell me to hide?” she whispered.
“No.”
“Good. Because I was going to make it annoying.”
“I assumed.”
His voice was calm, but not easy. That was how she knew he was worried. Rowan never made fear loud. He turned it into stillness, which was deeply unfair because stillness looked good on him and gave her nothing useful to yell at.
The ward near the door shimmered beneath the paint.
A thin dark line traveled from hinge to lock, then faded back into the wood like ink sinking under skin. Seina felt it more than saw it, a small tightening in the air that made the hairs at the back of her neck rise.
Then she heard the heartbeat.
Not on the porch.
Across the street.
Slow.
Steady.
Waiting.
Seina’s gaze snapped to Rowan. “They’re not standing where their shadow is.”
Rowan went very still.
“Oh, fantastic,” she muttered. “Normal visitor behavior. Love that.”
He crossed the hall without making a sound and stopped a few feet from the door. Seina followed because absolutely not, she was not standing in the living room like decorative trauma.
Rowan glanced back once.
She lifted her hands. “I’m behind-ish.”
“That is not a word.”
“It is now.”
His expression suggested he had many arguments and no time for any of them.
He faced the door.
“Name yourself.”
The answer came from the other side, smooth and cool, not muffled by the wood at all.
“Courier to the Sovereign Court.”
The words changed the hallway.
Rowan’s jaw tightened.
The ward flickered again, unable to decide whether the title was permission or threat.
Seina looked between him and the door. “I don’t like how serious your face just got.”
“The Court does not send couriers to safehouses,” Rowan said.
“The Court sends couriers wherever the Court has business.”
Seina leaned slightly around him. “I hate her.”
“You haven’t met her.”
“She has terrible energy.”
The voice outside replied, “I can hear you, Miss Hart.”
Seina froze.
Then her face tightened. “Oh, I really hate her.”
Rowan’s hand curled once at his side.
“Do not address her through my door.”
“I address what the summons names.”
Summons.
The word landed cold and heavy.
Seina stopped thinking of Faylan, of the ballroom, of warm hands and Sanguis colors. For one awful second, all she could think about was how many people seemed to know her name now, and how few of them said it like she was a person.
Rowan did not open the door.
“What business?”
“Formal delivery,” the courier said. “By order of the Sovereign Court, Lord Rowan Vale of Umbra is required to receive notice on behalf of the transformed party under his protection.”
Seina stared at the door.
“Transformed party?”
Rowan glanced at her.
She pointed at the wood. “No, sorry, are we just skipping over that? Because yes, I died tragically, very rude, but I did not become paperwork.”
The courier continued as if she had not spoken.
Which made Seina want to bite something out of spite.
Rowan slid back the bolt.
Seina’s eyes widened. “You’re opening it?”
“I want to see her hands.”
“That is both ominous and weirdly practical.”
“She cannot cross the threshold unless I allow it.”
“Do I feel better? No. But good information.”
He opened the door only as far as the chain allowed.
Cold air slipped in, carrying rain, stone, old ink, and something faintly metallic.
The woman on the porch wore black from throat to boot, with a narrow silver chain crossing once over her chest. No House colors. No Sanguis red. No Umbra wolf. No Nocturne crescent. No Vespera crown. A dark veil shaded her eyes without hiding them.
Her hands were gloved.
One held a narrow envelope sealed with black wax and tied with silver thread.
The other remained open at her side, empty and visible.
Seina looked down.
The courier’s shadow stretched beneath the door from the wrong direction.
“Creepy,” Seina said.
The courier’s pale eyes moved to her. “Observant.”
“Unfortunately.”
Rowan’s voice cut in, cold and controlled. “Who authorized the summons?”
“The Sovereign Court does not require authorization beneath itself.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the answer recognized by law.”
Seina hated the way that sounded. Law. Like if a terrible thing wore enough official language, everyone was supposed to pretend it had manners.
The courier lifted the envelope.
“This summons is issued under the old mark and sealed by the attending hand of Matron Severelle.”
Rowan went still.
Not the protective stillness from before.
Something older.
Seina noticed immediately. “Who is Matron Severelle?”
Rowan did not look away from the envelope. “Old Court.”
“Like old old, or vampire old where everyone is dramatic because they remember plumbing being invented?”
“Old enough that people stop joking when they hear her name.”
Seina looked at him.
He was not smiling.
Her stomach sank.
The courier held the envelope higher. “Receive.”
Rowan hesitated for one second.
Then he reached through the gap and took it.
The moment his fingers closed around the envelope, the black wax warmed.
Seina felt it from where she stood.
Her blood gem pulsed against her chest.
Hard.
Her hand flew to it.
The courier’s gaze dropped to the gem, then lifted back to Seina’s face with quiet, awful satisfaction.
“Interesting,” she said.
Rowan’s voice sharpened. “Leave.”
“The summons has been delivered.”
“Then leave.”
The courier inclined her head, not quite a bow and somehow more insulting for it.
“To delay is to answer,” she said. “To hide is to confirm concern. To appear is to be heard.”
Seina snorted. “Wow. Do they put that on pillows at Court?”
The courier looked at her.
“No,” she said. “On warnings.”
Then she stepped back.
Or at least, her body did.
The heartbeat across the street stopped first.
The shadow beneath the door folded inward like smoke and vanished before matching her movement.
Seina stared after it.
“Again,” she said slowly, “hate her.”
Rowan closed the door and locked it with more force than before.
The safehouse did not feel safe now.
It felt noticed.
Like someone far away had dragged a finger across a map and stopped directly over this little townhouse, over its dark windows and tired sofa and the glass of blood cooling on the table.
Rowan stood in the hallway with the envelope in his hand.
He did not open it right away.
That alone made Seina’s nerves sharpen.
“Is this bad?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Fun. Great. Love a simple answer.”
She tried to sound normal.
Failed.
Rowan looked at the seal.
Black wax.
Silver thread.
A symbol pressed deep into the center.
A drop of blood inside an open eye.
Not a House mark.
Something beneath them.
Older and uglier and far too aware.
“What is the Sovereign Court?” Seina asked.
“The oldest authority vampires still pretend not to fear.”
Her mouth went dry.
“That sounds like something that eats people with paperwork.”
This time, Rowan did not smile.
He broke the silver thread.
The wax cracked down the center of the open eye.
A strange pressure moved through the hall, and for one terrible second, Seina thought she heard something under her own skin answer.
Not words.
Just recognition.
Rowan unfolded the letter.
His eyes moved over the page once.
Then again.
Seina watched his face and hated that reading him was worse than reading the letter.
“What?” she asked.
He held it out.
She took it because she refused not to.
The page was thick and pale, the ink so dark it looked wet.
By order of the Sovereign Court, Rowan Vale of Umbra is required to present Seina Hart, newly transformed and blood-unnamed, before attending Court for witness, classification, and determination of standing.
Seina stopped at one word.
Present.
She read it again.
Present.
Like she was an object carried into a room.
Like Rowan owned the right to bring her.
Like her name had been tied to his because his blood had kept her from staying dead.
Her fingers tightened around the paper.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice too calm. “Present?”
Rowan reached toward her, not to take the letter, only to steady her hand before she ripped it in half.
“Seina.”
“No, that’s cute. Very charming. Love being summoned like a fruit basket.”
His eyes stayed on hers.
“I know.”
“Do they?”
“No.”
The answer cut through her anger in a way she hated.
Because it was quiet.
Because it was honest.
Because Rowan looked like he already knew what rooms like that did to people who walked in with the wrong kind of blood.
Seina forced herself to keep reading.
Failure to comply shall be recognized as obstruction by House Umbra and concealment of an unclassified bloodline subject.
Bloodline subject.
The ink seemed to darken on the page.
For a second, the letters stopped looking like letters and became little hooks. Little teeth. A language designed to make cruelty sound official.
Her blood gem pulsed again.
Rowan’s hand closed around her wrist.
Grounding her.
“What did you feel?” he asked.
She looked at him.
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t nothing.”
“I said I don’t know, not that it was nothing.”
His grip loosened, but he did not let go.
Seina looked back at the seal cracked in black wax.
“They don’t even know me,” she said.
Rowan’s face changed.
A shadow crossed it, old and cold.
“No,” he said.
His hand tightened very slightly around hers.
“That’s why they want you.”
The letter trembled once between them.
Not from her hand.
From the blood gem at her throat answering the seal.
Outside, the street had gone silent again.
No heartbeat.
No courier.
No shadow under the door.
Only the summons in her hand and the terrible sense that somewhere far beneath the city, people who had never touched her blood had already started calling it theirs.