Crimson Prințesă's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

The rival soldiers charged before Maria's feet touched the ground. She dropped Hanako at the gate and threw her hands wide. She reached for their blood and felt nothing. Her ruby headdress was empty. Her own reserves were spent on the Mother's shield. For the first time in weeks, she was powerless. A blade slashed her arm. Red ran down her sleeve, and she stared at it, helpless to move it. Hanako's ice caught two attackers and froze them mid-step. But there were too many. They poured up the stone stairs toward Castle Dracul, banners of a clan Maria did not know. She grabbed a fallen sword and swung. Steel met steel. Jiro had trained her arms, and her arms still worked. She cut down one soldier, then another. But she could not hold a legion with a blade alone. Then the air changed. A woman walked out of the castle gate, calm as if crossing a garden. Gold feathers crowned her dark curls. White lace trailed behind her. Maria knew her at once. Sofía Tepes. Her father's youngest wife. Her stepmother. The one who raised Miguel. "You are bleeding," Sofía said. She did not sound afraid. "Your gift is empty. So use another." "I have no other," Maria snapped, blocking a strike. "You do." Sofía caught a soldier's wrist and snapped it without effort. "You have seen every art in this kingdom. My blood. Hanako's ice. Miguel's white shards. The blue magic of the Strigoi Vii. The shaman craft of the Crown of the South. You watched them all. You are a shifter, Maria. You wore fur last night. Wear their arts tonight." Maria understood. She had copied Hanako's ice in a glass. She had bound shaman blood with Strigoi moonlight. She had shaped her body into a bat. She was not one power. She was many, borrowed and remembered. Her body could become what she had seen. She let go of the sword. She closed her eyes and reached inside herself, not for blood, but for shape. Her skin cooled. Frost spread down her arms the way Hanako's had. She threw her hands forward. Ice raced across the stairs and locked a dozen soldiers in place. Then she called the white shards she had watched Miguel throw, and light burst from her palms, sharp and blinding. The attackers broke and fled down the mountain. Maria stood in the sudden quiet, breathing hard. Sofía studied her with steady red eyes. "You are not only a blood bender," Sofía said. "You are a shifter of gifts. This is your mother's oldest secret, and now it is yours." Maria looked at her frost-covered hands. Her legion could rot, her blood could run dry, but she could still wear a hundred arts. The war ahead had just changed. She was no longer one weapon. She was every weapon she had ever seen.