Iliana Van Helsing's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

The red rune burned in the air. Iliana stared at its lines. One word sworn wrong, and it could bind her family to more than a truce. She lowered her crossbow. "I will not swear blind," she said. "Tell me the terms of the debt first. All of them." The Mother's veil shifted. "That is not how oaths are given." "Then you get no oath," Iliana said. "I pay what we owe. Not more." Footsteps came from the castle door. A woman in white lace stepped out, crowned in gold feathers. Iliana had seen her at Dracula's court. His youngest wife, the one who fed on animals, not men. Sofía Tepes. Behind her walked a pale man in white and a woman in ice-colored silk. The blood princess in red still stood near the stakes. Four of Dracula's blood came down the steps, drawn by the burning sigil. "She is right to ask," Sofía said. Her voice was flat and sure. "An open oath is a leash. My mother knows this." The pale man in white nodded. "Bind her to the crimes named. Nothing else." The woman in ice looked at Iliana without warmth. "A witch oath holds forever. Word it clean, or it is a trap." The Mother turned on them. "You take the hunter's side?" "We take the truce's side," the blood princess said. She raised one hand. Thin red threads lifted from the old stakes again, curling around the rune. "I can read the debt in their bones. Show her the count. Let her swear to that alone." The threads spelled numbers in the air. A village of witches. The dead the Van Helsings had burned. A price, plain and finished. Iliana read the count. Her stomach turned, but she made herself steady. "That," she said. "My family will pay that. No blood taken. No hunts. A truce that holds while we live." She looked at the Mother. "I swear to those crimes. To the count your daughter drew. Not one drop more." The Mother was quiet a long moment. Then she cut the rune with a slash of her hand. The lines shrank until they matched the numbers in the threads. "Bound to the count," she said. "Swear." Iliana pressed her palm to the sigil. It bit into her skin, hot and cold at once. Words rose in her throat she had never learned, and she said them. The rune flared, then sank into her hand and vanished. The debt was sealed. Her family was bound. The wives watched her in silence. Somewhere above, a great winged shadow crossed the towers, red eyes gleaming. Iliana held her aching hand. She had paid the witch debt herself. But she had sworn her father's name into vampire magic, and he still knew nothing of it. When he learned what she had done, the truce would face a harder test than any oath.