Crimson Prințesă's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

The night after the attack, Maria's mother summoned her to the arena. The great stone hall glowed through its tall windows. Maria's father waited at the center of the dragon-marked floor. Guards in dark armor lined the walls, spears at rest. The whole court had come to see. Maria still felt Hanako's ice in her hands. She still felt Miguel's white shards under her skin. Both were borrowed. Both were fading. "You wore two gifts at once," the Mother said. She stood beneath her long white veil. "Show them. Show us what a shifter can hold." Maria raised her hands. Frost spread down one arm. White light burned in the other palm. The crowd murmured. But holding both split her. Her heart pounded wrong. The ice cracked and slid off her skin. The light guttered like a wet candle. "You are overreaching," the Mother said. One position, stated once. "Two arts fight for one body. Choose one, or lose both mid-battle." Maria's father watched without a word. His gold dragon medallion hung dark on his chest. He had shaped her role in this war. If she broke here, before him, she broke everywhere. "I will not choose," Maria said. She let the ice go. She let the shards go. She reached for the one thing that was hers alone. Not borrowed. Blood. Her own heartbeat pulled at every heart in the hall. She felt the guards along the wall. She felt the crowd in the tiers. She felt her mother, her father, all of it, a hundred rivers waiting for her throat. She pulled. Blood tore from every vampire at once. Red rose from their skin in thin ropes. A guard staggered. His spear rang on the floor. Even her father bent, jaw tight, as his blood lifted from him. Maria dragged it all to the center of the arena. The strands wove and thickened. She crushed them into a single sphere, dense and dark, spinning above the dragon floor. A wrecking ball of everyone's blood. Then she opened her hands. The sphere burst. Blood flew back to every body it came from. Each drop found its owner. The guards straightened. The crowd gasped and touched their own chests, whole again. She had taken from all and returned to all, and not one had died. The hall went silent. Maria stood alone in the center, steady, no borrowed frost, no fading light. Her father rose to his full height. He did not smile. "You do not need their gifts," he said. "You have always had enough." The Mother stepped forward. Her veil hissed across the stone. "Now they have seen it," she said. "So have the clans' eyes in this room." Maria understood. She had proven herself the strongest weapon in Walachia. And every spy present would carry that news home tonight. She had ended the fear of collapse. She had bought herself a hunt.