Chapter 44 A Breaking Point
Eleanora knew the secret paths by heart. She led Daisy through a maze of servants’ stairs, up and down and back again, moving with the practiced panic of someone who had planned an escape for years but never believed she’d use it. They passed storage vaults, rooms stacked floor-to-ceiling with crystal decanters and dustless candelabras, and then descended into the castle’s gut.
The walls closed in. Here, the light was bad, candles guttered behind glass, casting more shadow than glow, and the air tasted of cold iron and old blood.
“Left,” Eleanora hissed, hand tight on Daisy’s wrist. “Down the old servant’s hall.”
Daisy followed, flexing her fingers, feeling the scales on her hands catch the light. The glamour was long gone. There was no one left to fool.
At the end of the hall, a steel door stood open a crack. Inside, a man in a drab uniform bent over a table of crystals and gears, fingers moving fast, mouth tight with focus.
Samuel.
He didn’t look up until Daisy was right behind him. Then he whirled, brandishing a heavy book like it was a brick.
“It’s just us,” Eleanora said, breathless.
Samuel dropped the book, shoulders sagging. “You made it. I thought they’d caught you.”
He shot Eleanora a glare, but his eyes landed on Daisy. She saw the pride, the worry, the thousand unsaid things in the way his lips twitched.
“There’s no time,” he said. “It’s worse than we thought. The machine doesn’t just strip magic. It rips out the soul. Permanent.”
He slid a sheet of glass toward them. It shimmered, showing a roster of names. Daisy’s mother was there, along with a dozen more, old names from the slums, street kids she recognized, even a couple of the city’s own enforcers. Scheduled for “dawn extraction.”
Daisy scanned the list. “Is there a way to break it?”
Samuel hesitated, then pointed to a panel studded with obsidian runes. “That’s the relay. It can be overloaded, but you’d need to short every bloodline ward at once. And you’d have to be inside it.”
Eleanora’s face went white. “If she does that, she’ll die.”
Samuel shook his head. “She’ll die if we don’t stop them. We all will.”
Daisy stepped to the control, staring at the runes. They looked familiar, not just from her training, but from somewhere deeper, older. Xeris stirred in her mind, his voice a low growl: “This is what they fear. Use it.”
She drew the bone knife from her sleeve and cut a deep spiral into her palm. The blood welled up, thick and blue-black. She pressed it to the first rune and watched as the symbol flared, then flickered, then dulled.
Eleanora gasped, but didn’t look away.
Daisy moved to the next, the next, leaving bloody prints on the glass and stone. Each time, the machine seemed to hesitate, as if it were choking on her. She reached the last rune, and the whole panel glowed, bright enough to blind.
She felt the pain first. Her hand, her chest, her skull splitting open with light.
Then she heard the machine scream.
It was worse than anything she’d ever felt. The blood-magic in her veins tried to rip away, to join the core of the machine, to become part of its hellish hunger. She fought it, bit her own arm, clawed at the steel to anchor herself.
“Now!” Samuel shouted. “Finish the spiral!”
Daisy slammed her bleeding fist onto the heart of the panel and twisted, the motion burning her skin off in a single move. The machine howled, the crystals exploded outward, and a wave of red energy rolled over the room, shattering every window and torch in the wing.
Eleanora pulled her up before she could fall. “We have to go,” she said, voice a thread.
Alarms blared overhead, the old castle’s defense wards screeching to life.
Daisy couldn’t feel her left hand, but she could see the spiral still glowing in her palm: black and blue, like ink from another world.
Xeris flooded her mind, the bond stronger than it had ever been. 'You have done it, little spiral. Now let me in.'
Samuel limped ahead, guiding them through the smoke-choked corridors. Daisy caught sight of her reflection in a cracked mirror: half her face was scales, her eyes gold and wild. She almost laughed. She liked it.
They burst into the ballroom just as the guards closed in. The nobles were gone, but the machine still pulsed, weak and sick, like a wounded animal. Eleanora sprinted to the dais, grabbed the first guard, and broke his nose with the heel of her palm.
Daisy felt the hunger rise, the spiral on her wrist pulsing with each heartbeat. She raised her ruined hand and pointed it at the machine.
“Break,” she said.
It did.
The core shattered, spilling red light across the room. The glass chains shriveled and turned to dust. The wards melted, their runes pooling like blood on the marble.
The guards backed away, eyes wide. Even Cornelius, who had appeared at the far end, looked impressed.
Samuel stumbled to Daisy, caught her before she fell. “You did it,” he whispered, awed. “You really did.”
Daisy smiled, her teeth sharper than ever. “It’s not over.”
Above them, the castle trembled. A sound like thunder rolled through the halls, and Daisy felt Xeris’s mind pressing against hers, hungry, triumphant.
“Now,” she whispered.
The roof exploded inward, a rain of stone and fire. Xeris descended, wings blocking the moon, his body haloed in raw flame. The dragon opened his mouth and roared, a sound so huge it bent the air, shattering every light in the city.
Daisy stood, blood dripping down her arm, and raised her hand to the monster she’d freed. Xeris bowed his head, just once.
Cornelius watched from the balcony, arms folded, face unreadable.
Samuel and Eleanora pressed close, flanking Daisy as the dragon circled above.
She looked at the ruined machine, at her family huddled in the corner, alive, whole.
And she knew, finally, what she was meant for.
The city would never be the same. And neither would she.
“Let’s finish it,” she said.
And with Xeris at her back, she stepped out into the fire.