The Daughter's Blood
The assassin never screamed.
He couldn't.
Not with Lyra's shadows wrapping tight around his throat, silencing his breath, pinning him against the cold marble wall.
She stepped forward, calm and lethal, the scent of old magic swirling around her like mist.
"You smell like Council poison," she murmured.
The man thrashed—veins bulging, panic in his eyes—but the binding spell held. His blade clattered to the floor. Silver-tipped. Laced with grave root.
Designed to kill a hybrid.
A cursed one.
She whispered the incantation to pierce his thoughts, fingers pressed to his forehead—and in a flash of fire, his memories bloomed behind her eyes:
A bag of gold handed off beneath torchlight.
Varick's voice: "Make it clean. If she screams, slit the tongue too."
A map marked with a red circle—her chamber. Her exact bed.
The Council had sent him.
No more hiding. No more whispers.
They wanted her dead—and they were done pretending.
By sunrise, the assassin's body was dropped at the throne room doors.
A message.
A warning.
A war cry.
"This is treason."
Kade's voice thundered through the great hall. His eyes blazed gold as he stood at the center of the court, the assassin's dagger laid across his palm.
Cassian watched from the side, silent, calculating.
Elder Varick stood tall, unbothered. "It is justice. You've been compromised, my king."
"Compromised?" Kade echoed, laughing bitterly. "Because I didn't let you murder a woman in her sleep?"
"A cursed woman. With a bloodline tied to the Hollow Ones," Varick snapped.
"She hasn't harmed anyone."
"She will. That's what the prophecy says."
Cassian stirred. "You speak of prophecy, but ignore the part where the child brings balance. Not destruction."
The hall went still.
Varick turned sharply. "You believe the child exists?"
Cassian didn't answer.
But his silence was louder than any confirmation.
Kade stepped forward, voice low and dangerous. "Touch her again, and I will burn this Council to the ground."
"Then you're unfit to rule," Varick hissed. "Both of you are."
Mora rose at that, her voice cool steel. "You forget yourself, Elder. Threatening a king is punishable by exile—or death."
Varick's lip curled. "So is harboring a traitor."
That night, Lyra sat in the royal war chamber with Kade.
A map lay before them. Pins. Symbols. Borders.
But all she could see was the way he looked at her now—with knowing. With choice.
He poured wine into two cups but didn't hand her one. Not yet.
"I need the truth," he said.
She nodded slowly.
"My name is Lyra Ashbane," she said. "Born of a cursed hybrid bloodline. Once betrothed to no one, but fated to one soul in two bodies."
Kade didn't speak.
She went on.
"I was sold. Branded. Used to birth a child the Council feared. A child they called a curse—because they knew what she was."
"What is she?" he asked.
Lyra looked up, fire and frost in her eyes.
"She's hope. Or ruin. Depending on who claims her."
A long silence followed.
Then Kade stepped forward—and pressed the wine into her hands.
"Then let's make sure it's not them."
Across the palace, Cassian stood before an old portrait—half-burned, half-forgotten. A woman with silver hair. Eyes like dusk. A crescent mark barely visible above her heart.
He reached out and touched the painting.
And this time, he didn't look away.
Far beyond the walls of the palace, a child with twilight eyes sat beside an old witch.
"She's moving too fast," the witch muttered. "She'll draw them all to you."
The little girl didn't answer.
She was staring at the stars.
And softly—barely above a whisper—she said:
"They're already coming."
The fire crackled low in the war chamber, casting shadows that danced along the iron-banded walls of Blackthorn Hold.
Lyra stood at the tall window, staring out across the mist-choked forest below. The cursed trees twisted in silence, their branches like clawed fingers scratching at the horizon. Somewhere beyond that darkness, her daughter waited. Hidden. Protected—for now.
But the Council's strike had changed everything.
They were no longer waiting.
They were hunting.
"You don't have to face them alone."
Kade's voice broke through her thoughts, quieter now, stripped of the usual edge.
She turned to face him. "I've never had a choice."
"You do now." He stepped closer. "I'm standing between you and their blade."
Lyra tilted her head, studying him. "You may be king, Kade. But you're still one man."
"And yet the only one who hasn't betrayed you."
That landed hard.
Truth had a way of cutting deeper than lies.
She looked away first. "Cassian is starting to remember."
"He's still fighting it."
"Yes," she said softly. "Because remembering means admitting what he did. And worse… what he lost."
Kade crossed the space between them.
Close now. Too close.
"I don't care what he remembers. I care what you want."
She searched his face, every angle of it: the sharp jaw, the scar near his left brow, the fire in his eyes when he looked at her like she was more than war.
"I want my daughter safe," she said. "I want the Council broken. I want the curse lifted from her blood so she can live without being hunted."
Kade didn't hesitate. "Then I'll do it. We do it. Together."
Lyra felt it then—the bond. Not Cassian's. Not the broken, burned tether they'd shared before.
This one was different.
Deeper.
As if her soul had been waiting for the other half to finally choose her.
Across the fortress, Cassian stalked the private halls of the old archives, the flicker of torchlight chasing him.
He had torn apart half the bloodline records already.
And then he found it.
A ledger buried beneath false entries. Erased once. Rewritten twice.
And on the final page—
"Ashbane Line: Marked as extinct. Bloodline sealed by decree of the Thorne Council. One offspring born under fire. Presumed dead."
Except it was signed in ink not yet faded.
A recent addition.
A cover-up.
Cassian's grip tightened until the page tore in his hands.
They had lied to him.
All of them.
His father. The Council. The House of Thorne.
They had buried the truth to protect a throne.
And in doing so, they had turned him into the weapon that almost killed her.
He dropped the page.
Then turned and walked out of the chamber—
toward the storm brewing in the Court of Judgment.
That night, thunder rolled over Blackthorn Hold, shaking its stone bones.
In the heart of the darkwood, a child with silver lashes stirred in her sleep.
The wards around her cracked.
And in the trees beyond the wardline, shadows with no faces gathered.
Watching.
Waiting.
The Hollow Ones had found her.