THE BURDEN OF BLOOD

Chapter Four: The Iron Door

The corridor narrowed until the torchlight barely licked the walls. Heath carried Savannah down the last flight of stairs as if she weighed less than the rage burning in his chest. Her breath came in shallow rasps against his throat, warm and alive, and every rasp felt like a debt Beau would pay in blood.

Behind them, Beau’s voice cracked with real panic now. “Stop him! Shoot if you have to!”

Arrows hissed past Heath’s ear, splintering on stone. One grazed his shoulder, silver tip slicing deep. The burn made him snarl, but he didn’t slow.

At the bottom, a final door waited, thick oak banded with iron, the metal veined with silver that glowed faint and poisonous. A heavy bar lay across it, chained with a padlock big enough to anchor a ship.

Heath set Savannah gently on the floor. She swayed, knees buckling, but caught herself against the wall. Her eyes, still that impossible frost, never left his face.

“Door’s warded,” she whispered, voice raw. “He’ll know the second you touch it.”

Heath rolled his shoulder, feeling the silver burn sink deeper. “Let him know.”

He gripped the bar with both hands. Muscles corded, veins stood out like ropes. The silver seared his palms, skin blistering, but he pulled.

Metal groaned. The padlock held for three heartbeats, then exploded in a shower of molten links.

The door didn’t open. It simply ceased to exist.

The iron bands peeled back like flower petals, curling away from the wood as if terrified. The oak itself splintered down the middle, revealing a narrow cellar lit by a single sickly lantern.

Heath stepped through.

The smell hit first, old blood, waste, despair baked into stone. Chains hung from the ceiling like vines. And in the center, bolted to the far wall, was the source.

She was barely recognizable as human.

Bones showed through translucent skin, wrists and ankles eaten raw by silver-laced ropes that pulsed with green runes. Her hair, once white-gold, now matted and dull, hung over a face so thin the cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut. Rags clung to a body that had forgotten how to be a woman.

But her eyes.

They opened when Heath crossed the threshold, and the air itself seemed to shudder.

Crimson. Not his shade, purer, wilder, the color of fresh arterial blood under moonlight. They locked on him and widened, just a fraction.

Savannah, the real Savannah, stood in the doorway behind him, clinging to the frame, staring at her own broken reflection.

The chained woman’s lips moved. No sound came out at first, just a dry click of tongue on teeth.

Then: “...brother?”

The word cracked something inside Heath’s chest.

Beau’s voice thundered from the stairs, closer now. “Don’t touch her! She’s mine!”

Heath crossed the room in four strides. The silver ropes burned even through his sleeves, but he ignored it. Up close, the damage was worse, scars layered on scars, runes carved directly into her flesh, still weeping slow black blood.

He cupped her face with hands that trembled only once.

“Hey,” he said, soft, like speaking to a spooked mare. “I’m getting you out.”

Her head lolled. Those crimson eyes searched his face, confused, ancient, lost.

“You’re... not him,” she rasped. “You smell like... home.”

Heath’s throat closed. He swallowed hard and reached for the first rope around her left wrist.

The silver flared, trying to bite. He forced his fingers under it anyway, skin sizzling.

“Hold still,” he muttered.

She laughed, wet, broken, the sound of something dying.

“You can’t break blood-bond silver. Only the caster can.”

Heath met her gaze. “Watch me try.”

He wrapped both hands around the rope and pulled.

The runes screamed, high, inhuman. Green fire licked up his arms, eating cloth, eating flesh. Pain exploded white-hot behind his eyes, but he didn’t let go.

Savannah, the one he carried, stumbled forward, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her cheeks.

“Don’t,” she begged. “It’ll kill you.”

Heath bared his teeth in something that wasn’t a smile.

“Not today.”

He pulled harder.

The rope snapped.

The backlash hit like a thunderclap. Heath flew back, slammed into the opposite wall hard enough to crack stone. Blood poured from his nose, his ears. The cellar spun.

But the rope was broken.

The woman in chains sagged forward, one arm suddenly free. Her eyes rolled back, body convulsing as power, raw, terrifying, flooded back into veins that had forgotten how to hold it.

Beau burst through the ruined doorway, face twisted beyond recognition, flanked by six enforcers with silver-tipped spears.

“Kill him!” he shrieked. “Kill them both!”

Spears flew.

Heath rolled, catching one in the shoulder, using it to haul himself upright. Pain was distant now, drowned in adrenaline and fury.

Savannah, the standing one, threw herself between him and the next spear, taking it high in the shoulder. She didn’t even scream, just turned and looked at Beau with pure hate.

Beau froze.

The chained woman lifted her head.

Power poured off her in waves now, visible, crackling, the air turning electric. The remaining ropes began to smoke.

“Beau,” she said, and her voice was everywhere at once, cellar, hall, sky. “You kept me too long.”

Beau took one step back. Then another.

The silver ropes exploded into ash.

She dropped to the floor in a heap of bones and fury, crimson eyes blazing like twin suns.

Heath staggered to her side, hauling her up. She weighed even less than the other Savannah, impossible, but true. Her free arm came around his neck with desperate strength.

“Get me out,” she whispered against his ear, breath hot and tasting of lightning. “Before I kill them all.”

Heath looked at Beau, at the terror finally cracking that perfect face, and smiled through blood.

“Too late for that.”

He scooped her up, turned, and walked straight at the enforcers.

They parted like grass before fire.

Beau lunged, hands twisted into claws, stolen power flaring green and sick.

Heath didn’t slow.

The woman in his arms lifted one trembling hand.

Beau flew backward, slammed into the ceiling, and stuck there, pinned by invisible force.

“Run,” she breathed.

Heath ran.

Up the stairs, past collapsing wards, past guards who dropped their weapons and fled. Savannah, the first one, limped behind him, spear still in her shoulder, face pale but fierce.

They burst into the main corridor as the entire hall shook, timbers groaning, chandeliers crashing.

Beau’s scream followed them, high and animal.

Heath didn’t look back.

He had what he came for.

Two Savannahs, one broken but free, one barely alive but burning, and a war that had just become personal.

At the great doors, Scarlett waited with the horses, eyes wide.

“What the hell did you do?” she shouted over the chaos.

Heath swung into the saddle, the half-dead woman clutched against his chest.

“I made a promise,” he said.

Behind them, the hall began to collapse, stone by stone, as something ancient and furious woke beneath it.

Scarlett took one look at the woman in his arms, at the crimson eyes glowing through tangled hair, and swore.

“Ride!” she yelled.

They rode.

And deep in the ruins, Beau crawled from the rubble, bleeding, broken, and for the first time in six years, afraid.