Chapter 7: The First Escape
The Keep still smoldered. Smoke curled through the broken battlements, drifting into a blood-stained dawn. Aria stood atop the ruined gate, the flames in her veins still cooling, her breath catching with each pulse of magic ebbing from her core.
They had survived the revenant attack but only just. Too many dead. Too much blood. And beneath it all, a truth neither she nor Lucian could ignore.
She was a weapon reborn.
And someone wanted her awakened. Controlled. Used.
Lucian's warriors gathered the fallen. The courtyard became a burial ground, and still Aria remained in silence.
Lucian approached her with slow, measured steps. He didn't reach for her this time.
"You're pulling away," he said softly.
"I have to." Her eyes didn't leave the horizon. "If I stay, more will die."
Lucian's jaw clenched. "And if you go, you might die."
Aria finally looked at him. "Then I'd rather it be me alone."
She kissed him slow, desperate, final and turned from the only safety she'd ever known.
Aria's Escape Begins
She left before sunrise, using secret tunnels beneath the Keep, once carved out by traitors, now reclaimed by necessity.
Cassian found her in the eastern corridor.
"I should stop you," he said.
"Then stop me."
He didn't move.
Instead, he pressed a dagger into her palm.
"Light-forged steel. Cuts through enchantments. If you run into a blood priest"
"I know what to do."
Cassian pulled her into a hug. "You break him, Aria. And then you come home."
The Forest of Thorns
Her first challenge came swiftly.
A barrier of blood thorns guarded the old borders enchanted to keep power from crossing without permission.
Aria's fire faltered as she touched them.
They responded with whispered screams and memory echoes her mother's voice, her own cries as a child, the scent of burning flesh.
She gritted her teeth, pressed the dagger forward and slashed the wall open.
Magic bled out.
She stumbled through.
And the forest welcomed her.
The Crimson Riders
A day into her journey, the riders found her.
Draped in blood-colored armor. Eyes glowing red beneath their helms. Vampires loyal to the Crimson Council.
"Aria Virelle," the lead rider said. "You're summoned by order of the High Blood."
Aria summoned her flame.
The rider drew a sword carved from bone.
"I'm not going with you," she growled.
"You don't have a choice."
But she did.
Fire raged.
She turned the forest into an inferno, scorching trees and melting steel. Two riders burned before the rest fell back.
The leader snarled, face revealed beneath a cracked helm.
He was beautiful. Inhuman. Fangs gleaming. Skin as pale as moonlight.
He vanished into smoke before she could strike again.
Captured
Days later, weakened and bloodied, Aria stumbled into a trap set by a rogue vampire faction those who believed the Crimson Council too soft.
She woke in chains, her fire dampened by moonstone cuffs.
Their leader approached her slowly a tall, graceful woman with blood-red eyes and hair like flowing night.
"Reborn Flame," she purred. "You were supposed to die centuries ago. You've been... inconvenient."
Aria spat blood. "You don't know what I am."
The woman smiled. "But I know what you'll become. Ours."
Lucian's Rage
Back at the Keep, Lucian paced like a beast in a cage.
"Track her," he ordered.
"She doesn't want to be found," Cassian warned.
"I don't care. Find her."
He stared at the firepit where they'd last kissed. His wolf snarled inside him, restless, rabid.
The mate bond pulsed weakly distant, but alive.
"She's hurt."
The rage built.
"Then we bring hell to whoever took her."
Escape from the Crimson Hold
Aria's cell wasn't made for gods.
The cuffs were strong, but her will was stronger. Her fire simmered beneath the skin, waiting.
When a careless guard stepped too close, she struck.
Burned the cuffs off her wrists.
Tore through the iron door.
Set the compound ablaze.
The vampire leader cornered her near the roof.
"You think you've won?" she sneered.
Aria grabbed her face, let the flame speak.
The vampire screamed as fire ate through her skull.
Aria fled into the storm.
Reunion
Three nights later, she collapsed in a cave. Fevered. Bleeding. The fire too wild to contain.
Lucian found her.
He didn't ask how.
He just dropped to his knees and held her.
"Don't leave me again," he whispered.
"I'm poison," she gasped.
"You're mine."
He kissed her fevered skin, whispering her name until the fire calmed.
That night, they didn't make love. They clung to each other. Skin to skin. Soul to soul.
And in the quiet after, Aria whispered, "I remember everything."
Lucian tensed.
She looked into his eyes.
"Who I was. What I burned. And why they all fear me."
She touched his chest.
"And I remember you."