Crimson Prințesă's Arc

Chapter 2 of 10

The ten beasts circled Maria. Their glowing eyes fixed on her throat. Blood ran from her nose and dripped onto the stone floor of the Hall of Monsters. She had pulled the flood from all ten corpses at once. Her body could not hold that much blood in motion. Each heartbeat felt like a rope pulling loose inside her chest. If she raised even one more beast, the flow would tear her open. "I can lift them," she said. "But my body is the cup, and the cup is cracking." The Mother stood above the wolves, unmoved. Her three-mile veil pooled across the floor. "Then you need a larger cup," she said. "Not your own veins." A door groaned open behind them. Dawit entered, arms heavy with sealed clay vessels. He was Maria's lover and the keeper of Walachia's blood storage. His people, the Crown of the South, had enchanted this blood until it ran richer than any taken from the living. He saw the pack circling her and stopped. He did not flinch. He set the vessels down and broke one open. "Drink," he said. "You are pouring your own life into these animals. Pour theirs instead." Maria took the vessel. The blood was warm and thick and it moved on its own, eager. She drank. Strength flooded back through her arms. Her heartbeat steadied and slowed. The rope inside her chest went slack. For the first time since the beasts rose, she stood without swaying. "This is not just food," she said. She felt the enchanted blood spread through her like a second river. "I can hold it outside my body. I can push my bending through it, not through me." The Mother watched. "Say what you mean." Maria set the empty vessel down. She reached for the remaining blood in the storage, all of it, and did not drink. She lifted it. The enchanted blood rose from every vessel and hung in the air, a red channel between her and the beasts. She poured her bending into that channel instead of her veins. The pack froze. Ten sets of glowing eyes turned calm. They knelt. Her nose stopped bleeding. Her chest held. The channel of stored blood carried the flow her body could not. "The cup is the blood itself," she said. "Not me." But there was more blood than the beasts needed. It hung waiting. Maria turned to her mother. The Mother's shield over Walachia had thinned; Maria had spent it herself weeks ago. Now she bent the leftover flood toward the Mother and let it pour in. The Mother straightened. Color returned to her aged face. Her shield steadied over the whole kingdom, thick again, hiding Walachia from human eyes. "You have found your cup," the Mother said. "Now the question is how many vessels you can carry into a war." Maria looked at the empty storage. Ten beasts knelt at her feet. To raise a legion, she would need far more blood than this.