Chapter 61 Blood Always Tells
Daisy slipped away from the council chamber the first chance she got. Delia shadowed her, both moving fast through the fractured bones of the castle, picking their way past knots of wounded or shouting couriers. The air in the lower levels tasted like old smoke and new fear. Daisy could feel Xeris above, circling in anticipation, but her own heart hammered in her throat, too loud, too human for the monster she was becoming.
The infirmary used to be a wine cellar. Now it was a field hospital, thick with the stink of rot and the metallic undercurrent of triage. Low cots lined the walls, and everywhere Daisy looked, she saw faces: some fever-bright, some slack with morphia, most just blank with exhaustion. Delia melted into the room, already talking to a woman bandaging a head wound, but Daisy zeroed in on the furthest cot, tucked in the darkest corner.
Maribel Smithson looked worse than Daisy had ever seen her. She lay on her side, wrapped tight in old coats, one arm bent under her head, the other clutching her patchwork journal to her chest. The skin at her neck was laced with bruises, ugly blue-black, and her eyes, when she opened them, were the color of old milk.
“Don’t,” Maribel croaked, before Daisy could say anything. “I know that look. You’re not here to say goodbye.”
Daisy crouched, scales on her thighs scraping the floor. “I’m here for answers.”
Maribel laughed, then coughed until her ribs made a sound like snapping twigs. “Sit, then. Before I turn to dust.”
Daisy sat, careful to keep her scales from snagging the blanket. Delia hovered nearby, pretending to check on the next patient, but her attention was razor-focused.
Maribel stared at her daughter, then at the journal. “He’s going to finish it. The thing he started. I can feel it, like a toothache that never goes away.” She held out the book, her knuckles white. “You should read the end.”
Daisy took it. The last pages were stiff, the edges stuck together with what looked like blood, but she pried them open. The writing was worse, cramped and shaking, but the lines were clear: maps of the kingdom, veins marked in red, circles around mountain ranges and ancient ruins. At the top of each map was a single word, scrawled over and over in Maribel’s hand: ENGINE.
“What is it?” Daisy asked, feeling the scales along her neck tense.
Maribel’s eyes rolled back for a second, as if she were reading from memory. “They built them under the old cities. Not machines, ritual sites. Designed to draw magic from everything nearby. People, animals, the stone itself. At full power, they can erase a town in a night. Leave nothing but bone and the memory of hunger.”
Daisy’s skin crawled, the pattern of scales along her jaw twitching in sync with her pulse. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Maribel looked away. “Because you’d try to stop him. You’d run toward the fire, like always.”
Delia couldn’t keep quiet. “How do we find the engines? The maps are just guesses; half the tunnels were destroyed centuries ago.”
Maribel smiled, a wolf’s smile. “You’re looking in the wrong place. It’s not about the tunnels. It’s about the bloodline.”
Daisy frowned, “Meaning?”
Maribel hesitated, then, in a move that made her look old and frail and desperate, she grabbed Daisy’s hand in both of hers. Her nails dug into Daisy’s palm, hard enough to leave marks.
“I wasn’t always a Smithson,” Maribel whispered. “Before that, I was a Ravensworth.”
Daisy felt like someone had punched her in the chest. The room spun. “That’s not…”
Maribel cut her off. “My brother is the Lord. Edgar. He’s your uncle.”
Delia gasped, but Daisy barely heard her. Her mind reeled, tripping over memory: a childhood of hunger, a mother who never explained anything, a city that hated her before she knew what a bloodline even was.
The scales on her arm flared, turning almost white-hot, and Daisy had to clench her fist to keep from lashing out.
Maribel pressed on. “I ran away, years before you were born. Stole what I could, knowledge, mostly. Enough to hide. They sent people after me. Still do.” She wiped her mouth, then looked at Daisy with eyes that burned. “You’re not a mistake, Daisy. You’re a weapon. He made you that way. The spiral on your wrist? It’s a birthright and a curse.”
Daisy stared at her hand, the spiral there pulsing like a live wire.
Delia’s voice was soft, almost reverent. “And the engines, can she stop them?”
Maribel nodded, slow and sure. “She’s the only one who can. They’re locked to the Ravensworth line, but they never expected someone with the old blood. With both lines.” She looked at Daisy, and for the first time, there was pride instead of fear. “Your father was a blood mage. Real one, not some alley rat with a bad tattoo. He died for you. Now you get to decide what his life was worth.”
Daisy’s hands shook. The blood-magic in her veins rose to the surface, forming tiny sigils that hovered in the air between them, each one a little red star, burning bright and then fading.
“I don’t know how,” Daisy said, her voice a weapon’s edge. “I don’t know if I want to.”
Maribel squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to want it. You have to do it.”
They sat in silence, the only sound the ragged breathing of the other patients in the room. Daisy tried to process the world’s worst inheritance. She could feel the dragon inside her, pacing, frustrated by the talk, but even he recoiled from the depth of this particular betrayal.
Delia broke the silence. “What do we do?”
Maribel fixed her with a look. “You follow her. And you protect her. Whatever it costs.”
Daisy stood, legs almost giving out. She gripped the journal in one hand, the spiral on her wrist burning, the new scales bristling with every beat of her heart. She wanted to punch a hole through the wall, to scream, to erase the city and everything in it.
Instead, she kissed her mother’s cheek, feeling how cold the skin was.
“Rest,” Daisy said. “We’re going to need you.”
She left the cellar, Delia trailing close behind. The castle above was a warzone, but in the dark corridors, Daisy felt nothing but cold, hard clarity. She was a monster, a liar, a child of the bloodline she’d spent her life trying to outrun.
Fine. She’d use it.
She flexed her claws, the sigils in the air rearranging into a map only she could read.
Daisy didn’t know how the story would end. But she’d be damned if it ended without her writing the last line.