Voidbound

Blood debt

Caelan got her to the west stairwell before the first students spilled out of the dormitories.

"Go up. Third landing. Thorn's office door will open for you." He was already backing away. "I have to be seen. If anyone asks, I was in my quarters."

"Caelan—"

"Go."

She went.

Thorn's door opened before she touched it. He took one look at her—the blood, the shaking hands, the black veins spidering faintly under the skin of her forearms—and pulled her inside.

"Sit. Don't speak."

He worked for an hour. Runes drawn on her wrists in chalk and salt. A bitter tea that made her tongue go numb. A ward laid over her chest that felt like a hand pressing down, holding something in.

When he was finished, the black veins were gone. The blood was cleaned. Her hands had stopped shaking.

"You pulled a manifestation apart with your bare hands," Thorn said. "Do you understand what that means?"

"It means I'm stronger than I thought."

"It means Malakar can feel you now." Thorn sat down heavily. "He's been whispering at you through the rift for weeks. But tonight you reached back. You touched the Void directly, and it touched you. That's not a door you can close."

Elara looked at her hands. "It said Kaelen's name."

"Yes."

"It used his voice."

"Yes."

"Is he alive?"

Thorn was quiet for a long time.

"Something is alive in there," he said finally. "Whether it's still your brother is a different question."

---

The Headmistress announced an investigation the next morning.

"An unlicensed magical discharge was detected in the east courtyard at approximately two in the morning," Vaeloria said from the dais, her voice carrying across the assembled school without effort. "Whoever was responsible will come forward by week's end. If they do not, the entire third-year class will be placed under restriction until they do."

Two hundred heads turned and whispered.

Elara kept her face still.

Sera's hand found hers under the table and squeezed.

---

Dorian found her at lunch.

He didn't sit. He stood at the end of the table with his arms crossed and his dark eyes fixed on her, and the students around them went quiet the way water goes quiet before it freezes.

"Veyra."

"Dorian."

"Walk with me."

It wasn't a question. Elara set down her bread and stood.

Sera started to rise. Elara shook her head.

They walked out through the east doors, past the gardens, all the way to the dead oak. The grass had grown back overnight. There was no trace of what had happened.

Dorian stopped under the branches and turned.

"You were here last night."

"I was in my dormitory."

"Don't." His voice was flat. "I was in the east tower. I saw the light. I felt the discharge. And I saw you leave with Draven ten minutes before it happened."

Elara said nothing.

"I've been watching you since the day you arrived," Dorian continued. "I've been watching you because your brother murdered my sister, and I wanted to know if you were the same kind of monster he was." He stepped closer. "And last night I watched you do something that no mage in this academy can do. So I'm going to ask you one question, and if you lie to me, I'll challenge you in front of the whole school and I'll kill you in the ring."

"Ask."

"What happened to Liora?"

Elara looked at him.

She thought about lying. She thought about the ledger, the neat academy script, Blackwood was discharged as planned. She thought about Kaelen's handwriting in the margin—I couldn't save her—and about the way Dorian's hands were trembling even though his face was stone.

She thought about what Thorn would say. Say nothing. Trust no one.

And she thought about a nine-year-old girl named Cordelia who had been born without a spark.

"There's a rift beneath the academy," Elara said.

Dorian's expression didn't change. "I know."

"Your sister didn't die in the west tower. She was taken there. The Headmistress drains students to feed the rift—scholarship kids, orphans, people nobody will ask about. Liora was on the list." She made herself keep going. "My brother found out. He tried to stop it. He failed. Then he went into the rift to seal the breach and he never came out."

Silence.

The dead oak creaked above them.

"You're lying," Dorian said.

"I'm not."

"You're lying because you're his sister and you want me to stop hunting you—"

"There's a ledger in the archive." Elara met his eyes. "Year by year. Two names a year for forty years. All of them marked discharged. Liora's entry is in the same year as Kaelen's. It says disbursement completed as planned."

Dorian's face cracked.

Not all at once. Just a small fracture, a hairline break under the eyes, the way ice breaks before it shatters.

"She wrote to me," he said. His voice had gone thin. "Two days before. She said she'd found something in the west tower and she'd tell me when she got back." He swallowed. "She never got back. And the Headmistress told me it was your brother. She told me he was jealous of her rank, that he'd cornered her in the tower and—" He stopped.

"She lied."

"Yes." Dorian's hands had curled into fists. "She lied."

Elara took a breath. "Dorian—"

"Don't." He held up a hand. The fracture had closed. His face was stone again, but there was something burning behind it now, something that hadn't been there a minute ago. "You've given me a truth. I don't know if it's real and I don't know if I believe you, and I don't care. Because it doesn't change anything."

"What?"

"Your brother still went into that tower. He still failed. My sister is still dead." He looked at her with the flat, patient hatred of a man who had spent five years sharpening himself on a single wound. "And you are still the only person in this academy who can get me into that rift."

Elara's blood went cold.

"Dorian—"

"Tomorrow. The dueling grounds. Noon." He turned and walked away. "Bring your Void magic, Veyra. Or don't. Either way, one of us is going into that rift. And it isn't going to be me."

He stopped at the edge of the courtyard and looked back.

"Oh," he said. "And if you're wondering—yes. The Headmistress approved the challenge. She's very interested to see what you can do."