Chapter 69
Detention, Midnight Edition
They locked us in the old crypt beneath the east wing.
No windows.
One iron door sealed with seven different wards.
A single witchlight floating above a stone table that still had dried blood in the runes.
Romantic.
Thorne leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, shadows pooling at his feet like bored cats. I paced the eight steps from one sarcophagus to the other, scales flickering every time I got too close to him.
The bond was loud tonight.
Like a second heartbeat neither of us had asked for.
"So," I said, kicking a loose stone. "Worst detention ever, or best date ever?"
He snorted. "Date requires consent."
"Pretty sure I consented when I let you put your icy hands all over me in the infirmary."
His eyes flashed. "That was medical."
"Medical doesn't usually end with both of us breathing like we ran a marathon."
Silence. Thick, electric silence.
I stopped pacing.
"Thorne."
He looked up.
"Tell me what just happened in the arena."
He pushed off the wall, closing the distance in two slow strides. Stopped just outside touching range.
"We synced," he said quietly. "Vampire shadow and dragon fire. It's not supposed to be possible. The Veil was built to keep them apart."
"And yet here we are, breaking physics."
He reached out, slow enough that I could move away.
I didn't.
His fingers brushed the new scales along my collarbone (gentle, reverent).
"Every time we touch," he said, "it gets stronger. I can taste your fire in my veins. You can feel my hunger in yours. If we keep going…"
He didn't finish.
He didn't have to.
I swallowed. "If we keep going, we become something the Council can't control."
"Something they'll kill to stop," he corrected.
The witchlight flickered.
Somewhere above us, a bell tolled thirteen times (impossible, wrong).
Thorne's head snapped toward the door.
"Wards just dropped," he whispered.
The temperature plummeted.
Frost crawled across the stone floor in perfect circles. My breath came out white.
From the shadows beneath the largest sarcophagus, something giggled.
High, childlike, and very, very hungry.
Thorne stepped in front of me, shadows rising like wings.
"Riley," he said, voice calm. "Whatever comes out, do not let it taste your blood."
The lid of the sarcophagus slid open with a scream of stone on stone.
A little girl climbed out.
Barefoot, white dress, black veins crawling up her throat like roots. Eyes solid void.
She smiled with too many teeth.
"Found you," she sang. "The dragon and the prince. The key and the lock."
Thorne's shadows lashed out, wrapping her tiny body like chains.
She dissolved into smoke, reappeared behind me, ice-cold fingers brushing my neck.
I spun, fire exploding from my palms.
She danced away, laughing.
"Too slow, princess."
Thorne was already moving, faster than I'd ever seen, fangs bared.
The girl opened her mouth (impossibly wide) and inhaled.
The witchlight snuffed out.
Darkness swallowed everything.
I felt her teeth graze my throat.
Then Thorne's body slammed into mine, knocking me sideways. We hit the ground hard, his weight pinning me, shadows cocooning us both.
Something wet hit the floor (blood, not mine).
The witchlight flared back to life.
The girl was pinned to the wall by Thorne's shadow spears, writhing and hissing. Black blood dripped from a wound in her chest.
But she was still smiling.
"Too late," she whispered. "The Veil remembers. The dragon wakes. The prince bleeds."
She looked straight at Thorne's left hand (pressed against my waist to keep me down).
A single drop of his blood had fallen onto my skin where my shirt had ridden up.
The drop sank in like it belonged there.
My scales ignited (white-hot, blinding).
The girl laughed one last time and dissolved into smoke that slithered up through the cracks in the ceiling.
The wards slammed back into place.
Silence.
Thorne rolled off me, breathing hard, staring at his hand like it had betrayed him.
I sat up slowly.
The place where his blood had touched me now bore a new mark: a tiny black crescent moon cradling a flame.
He saw it and went very, very still.
"Riley," he said, voice raw. "That wasn't an escapee from the Veil."
I met his eyes.
"What was it?"
His answer was barely a whisper.
"It was a messenger."
The bond between us flared (hotter, deeper, permanent).
Somewhere far above, every ward in the academy began to scream.
The Mark That Wasn't Supposed to Happen
The lockdown sirens were still howling when they dragged us (still half-dressed in combat gear, still smelling like smoke and each other) into the Headmistress's office.
Elowen Drakari stood behind her desk like a general before battle.
The walls, usually lined with ancient grimoires, had been cleared.
In their place: one massive mirror made of black glass.
Inside it, the little girl from the crypt waved at us with fingers that ended in claws.
No one else seemed to see her.
Thorne's hand found the small of my back the second we crossed the threshold.
I didn't shrug it off.
Elowen didn't waste time.
"Show me," she ordered.
I lifted my shirt just enough to reveal the new mark on my hip:
a black crescent moon cradling a single flame, edges glowing like living ember.
Elowen's face went the color of old ash.
Thorne spoke first, voice low and lethal.
"Explain."
Elowen exhaled through her teeth.
"That mark is called the Sanguis Draconis. Blood of the Dragon. It appears only when vampire royal blood and dragon royal blood mix willingly.
It hasn't appeared in three hundred and seventeen years.
Not since the night my sister (your mother, Riley) fed her blood to a vampire prince to save his life.
That prince was Thorne's great-grandsire.
The Council executed them both at sunrise for it."
The room tilted.
I felt Thorne's fingers tighten against my spine, the only thing keeping me upright.
Elowen kept going, relentless.
"The Sanguis Draconis is the original key to the Veil.
Not a metaphor.
An actual, physical key.
When the mark completes (when the moon consumes the flame or the flame consumes the moon), the bearer can tear the Veil wide open… or seal it forever.
The last time it appeared, the Veil cracked for forty days.
Half of Europe burned.
That's why they wiped the dragons out.
That's why they cursed the Blackwood line to crave dragon blood above all else.
Insurance."
Thorne's voice was barely audible.
"So every time I want her…"
"You want to finish what your ancestor started," Elowen finished. "And every time she burns for you, she wants to finish what her mother started.
You two are the reincarnation of the same disaster."
The black mirror rippled.
The girl inside pressed her palm to the glass from the other side.
"Tick-tock," she sang. "The moon is hungry."
Elowen slammed a ward over the color of dragonfire across the mirror. The girl vanished.
Silence stretched like a blade.
Then Thorne laughed (short, bitter, broken).
"So the Council's plan was to pair us together, hoping I'd lose control and kill her before the mark could finish?"
"Correct," Elowen said. "They thought a dead dragon was safer than a bonded one.
They didn't count on you both being too stubborn to die."
I found my voice.
"And now?"
Elowen looked between us (really looked).
"Now you have two choices.
One: we cut the mark out of you tonight. It'll hurt less than what's coming, but you'll live.
Two: you let it complete.
You become the key.
And when the Veil tears (because it will, very soon), you decide whether the worlds stay separate… or merge forever."
Thorne's hand slid from my back to lace through my fingers.
His voice was steady, ancient, certain.
"Option three," he said.
Elowen raised an eyebrow.
"We finish the mark on our terms," he continued. "Not the Council's. Not the Veil's. Ours.
And when the worlds try to tear apart, we'll be the ones holding the pieces together."
Elowen stared at us for a long moment.
Then, slowly, she smiled (small, fierce, proud).
"I was hoping you'd say that."
She reached into her desk and pulled out an ancient iron key.
"Your mother left this for you, Riley.
Said to give it to you when you were stupid enough to fall in love with a vampire."
I took the key. It was warm. It hummed.
Elowen's gaze flicked to the black mirror.
"The girl in the glass is coming.
She's older than the Veil.
She feeds on unfinished bonds.
You have until the next full moon to decide whose blood finishes the mark first."
Thorne lifted our joined hands and pressed his lips to my knuckles (soft, deliberate, a vow).
"Let her come," he said against my skin.
My scales flared gold.
The bond flared brighter.
And in the black mirror, the little girl smiled with too many teeth and whispered:
"See you soon, Mommy and Daddy."