Before We Wake ebook

Before We Wake

Aylin Red

2026

Before We Wake

Before We Wake

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Title Page

Cover

Table of Contents

Before We Wake

Before We Wake

The Night Beings Series

Book 2

Przed Przebudzeniem

Aylin Red

The sky was pink.

Hard to believe betrayal

could look so beautiful.

Chapter 1

After the coup, the Bellerose estate fell silent. Even the insects went quiet, and across the marble terraces that had once carried laughter, arguments, and the soft clink of glasses, only one sound remained: the slow, deliberate snip of pruning shears through stems.

Augustin Bellerose stood alone among his roses.

The night air cooled the backs of his hands and the skin exposed at his collar. He heard no voices or footsteps. There was only the heavy, cool scent of flowers and the soft resistance of the stem between his fingers.

He worked without gloves that evening. Every so often, the thorns caught his skin, small and precise, and he let them.

The rose in his hand was black.

It wasn’t the deep red that photographs turn black, or burgundy pretending at darkness. It was truly, completely black, its petals absorbing moonlight instead of reflecting it. He had cultivated it himself in a corner of the garden his father had never bothered to visit.

Gabriel preferred ostentatious red, the color of things that had to announce their existence to the world.

Behind him, the night bent.

Shadows gathered at the edge of the path and rose, taking the shape of a woman. She wore darkness like fabric. Wisps clung to her pale legs, then vanished, while her eyes held the amusement of someone who found most things funny and was surprised by almost nothing.

Augustin recognized the silence before he turned. That kind of silence announced itself. The muscles at the back of his jaw tightened.

He didn’t look back.

“Well, well.” Senka’s voice carried through the garden, light and quiet. “Should I call you ‘King’ now?”

“I’m more interested in how a witch crossed the threshold of the Great Hall.” He turned the stem slowly between his fingers. “Only purebloods and blood mages are permitted inside. You’re neither.”

“Such a terrible lapse in security.”

Suddenly she was beside him, though he hadn’t seen her take a single step. She stood close enough for him to smell old magic, damp earth, and the metallic tang of power she had wielded with unsettling ease for years.

“Someone should file a complaint.”

Only then did he turn and meet Senka’s blue eyes, lit by an alien glow. She smiled broadly, but beneath her amusement, something older and far less carefree watched him.

“A black rose,” she murmured, tilting her head toward the flower. “How mysterious.”

Her gaze moved over the garden, over white, blue, and yellow flowers, until it came to rest on the black. Every color but one. The corners of her mouth lifted.

“You should love red. Beautiful color. Just like blood.”

“Red is for those who believe in romanticism.”

He turned and walked away.

A brief, genuine silence fell. Then Senka brightened and followed him, shadows sliding beneath her feet. She didn’t so much walk as appear exactly where she wanted to be.

“How rude,” she observed pleasantly. “A man kills his father, takes the throne, and suddenly has no time for conversation.”

“You’re not my type.”

“Ah.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I wonder...”

She vanished.

She reappeared in front of him, leaning against nothing and blocking the path with careless grace.

“...whether anyone is.”

Augustin stopped.

Moonlight picked out white, black, and pale pink in the garden. Augustin looked at Senka as if she were a problem to be solved, not argued with.

“Tell me why you’re here. Or leave.”

Senka’s smile dimmed. It didn’t disappear completely, but for the first time it no longer looked like part of a performance.

“You killed the man who tried to take your body,” she said. “You held the throne.” She paused. “Congratulations. In return, I have a gift for you.”

“I need nothing from you.”

“Lior disagrees.” Senka’s voice changed when she said the name.

Augustin didn’t move, but his attention sharpened at once. Only Senka could have noticed that he had recalculated everything in an instant.

Senka watched him closely, as though she knew exactly where she had struck.

“She believes,” she continued in a lighter tone, “that even kings can fall in love. That someone, whether mortal, a Night Being, or chosen by the universe on a whim, could walk into your life and rearrange everything you’ve built.”

The corners of her mouth twitched.

“I told her it was idiotic. So we made a wager.”

“I am not a wager.”

“You have no say in the matter.” She stepped closer, and shadows curled around her ankles like something tame, though they never were.

“You live your life. You rule. You drink your wine. You commit your small cruelties. If you never fall in love, I win.”

Her eyes suddenly flared. She looked past the garden and the night, toward a place Augustin couldn’t locate.

“If you fall in love, she wins.”

A heavy silence followed.

Augustin looked past her at the roses stretching into the dark. There was no red anywhere. He had seen to that himself.

“My heart,” he said, “is not a prize for witches.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Her tone became almost gentle, which was worse than mockery. “Your heart stopped being yours the moment you were born a Bellerose. Everyone wants a piece of it.” She lifted one shoulder slightly. “I’m simply honest about it.”

He took a step forward.

The cold coming off her differed from the chill of the garden. It was older and drier, belonging to something that had stopped being warm a very long time ago. Their bodies nearly touched.

Senka dissolved, leaving cool darkness where her skin had been, then reformed behind him.

Her voice brushed his ear.

“One piece of advice. Free of charge.”

He said nothing.

“Don’t give anyone a red rose.” Senka lowered her voice and, for one brief, unguarded moment, abandoned all theatrics. She sounded almost serious. She always spoke lightly about the things that truly mattered to her, as if they meant nothing. That was how he knew the opposite was true.

“The day you do, you’ve already lost.”

His fingers tightened around the stem. A thorn pierced his skin. Blood welled slowly and pooled where his fingers curled.

“No one deserves red,” he said.

Senka stepped back.

She watched him with quiet satisfaction, calmer and older than triumph. She looked like someone who had already seen the ending and found it genuinely interesting. She almost looked warm. That was the worst of it.

Shadows rose around her. Blue butterflies lifted from her silhouette and scattered through the garden, resting briefly on petals and stone before they vanished entirely.

Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

“Sleep well, Augustin. Try not to fall for anyone inconvenient.”

He stood alone.

The protective wards hummed as the night pressed in from all sides. Blood traced a slow line across his hand, black in the moonlight, but Augustin made no move to wipe it away.

He looked at the rose.

Then he dropped it.

The flower fell without a sound, its black petals swallowing the light. Nothing moved in the garden. There was no red.

Not here.

Not yet.

Blood ran onto the marble and spread in a smooth, slow streak.

Three purebloods. Two blood mages. The Pianist surveyed the cathedral with the mild interest of a man checking work he was already convinced was sound.

He flexed his fingers.

The last shadows dissolved above his hand, their smoke drifting toward the vaulted ceilings that had seen worse things. The shadow piano vanished. The Pianist straightened his jacket, wiped a drop of blood from his sleeve, and turned toward the door.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

The claps echoed off the stone walls, even and unhurried.

“Bravo.” The voice came from the shadows beneath the largest window, honeyed and calm. “True artistry.”

She stepped into a beam of fading light. She wore a black kimono, and blue butterflies emerged around her pale shoulders before she had fully entered. Blue eyes swept over the bodies with the mild appreciation of someone visiting a gallery.

“Senka.” The first syllable was flat. Disgust slipped into the second. He shifted his weight, shadows already gathering at his fingertips. “What a surprise.”

“Really?” She tilted her head. One of the butterflies landed on her outstretched finger, opening and closing its wings once.

“You’ve been making quite the mess lately, Arthur. Hard not to notice.”

He clenched his jaw at the sound of his own name in her mouth. Senka collected names the way others collected debts. She kept them until they could strike hardest, then spoke them.

“I doubt you came to compliment my work.”

“No.” She smiled. Black lips revealed white teeth, but no warmth touched her amusement.

“I came to watch. And to tell you something extremely interesting.”

She was behind him.

She hadn’t taken a single step. Yet in the next moment, she stood behind him, her cold breath brushing his ear. He smelled jasmine and old blood.

“Would you like a melody, Arthur?”

Senka’s Slavari accent thickened around his name, the consonants hardening.

“Do you still fear ghosts?”

Shadows exploded from the floor before he had consciously decided to summon them. Dozens of dark, writhing shapes encircled her in a ring that should have given any reasonable person pause.

Senka stood at their center and examined her nails.

“Pathetic,” she said pleasantly.

One slight gesture was enough to break the connection.

His own shadows turned toward him, their faces watching him with the hungry attention of things that had just changed their minds about whom they served.

The air tightened around him. Pressure closed over his chest and temples, the familiar weight of magic turned against its owner.

The shapes waited until Arthur lowered his hand. Then the shadows dissolved.

“What do you want.” It wasn’t a question, but a surrender he refused to call by its name.

Senka vanished and immediately reappeared beside him. When she lowered her voice, the theatrics disappeared, but the cruelty remained.

“The Titan is alive.”

He spun around.

“Wait—”

But Senka was already breaking apart. Her figure shattered into a cloud of blue butterflies that spilled through the cathedral and filled the vaulted space. Her voice came from everywhere at once.

“Nicholas Steele is alive, Arthur.”

The butterflies reached the windows.

“And he’s coming.”

She vanished.

The cathedral remained silent. Motes of dust drifted through the colored light falling across the bodies on the floor.

Arthur stood alone at its center. His iridescent eyes tracked the empty space where Senka had stood moments before. He kept his hands still at his sides.

Nicholas Steele.

He repeated the name in his mind and watched his body’s response. Fear had returned after years of absence, though he had built his entire career to ensure he would never feel it again. He examined it without sentiment, looking for the place where he could begin to dismantle it.

Senka lied. It was her nature. She moved information the way she moved through rooms: never in a straight line, always toward something he hadn’t yet seen.

But she never wasted time.

Arthur straightened his jacket once more and headed for the door. His shoes moved quietly over the blood-wet marble.

Nicholas Steele.

The name followed him into the evening air.

And it didn’t stop following him.

Chapter 2

The village was burning. Clare pressed her cheek to stone rough enough to scrape her skin raw. She clamped her hands over her mouth until her fingers ached, trying to force back the sharp, unstoppable sound that kept fighting its way out.

Bitter, greasy smoke forced its way into Clare’s lungs and left the taste of ash on her tongue. She blinked hard, but her eyes still stung. She wouldn’t close them. She was afraid that when she opened them again, she would see even less.

Her mother stood at the center of the square, surrounded by golden light that crackled around her wrists and trailed every movement through the smoke. Five Wardens circled her. Their cloaks were dark against the blaze, their boots trampling bodies and broken wreaths as if they were ordinary rubble.

Mum didn’t give ground.

She turned with fluid precision, and her magic struck like a blade. One Warden fell, but the sound he made vanished beneath the roar of burning rooftops. A second lunged. Her mother’s hand twitched, and for a fraction of a second the air itself hardened, dense, compressed, wrong, before it burst with a crack that rattled Clare down to her teeth.

Clare saw what the Wardens didn’t.

Her mother’s arm trembled as she raised it. Her breathing came in broken bursts that she quickly suppressed. A streak of blood ran down the front of her dress, too dark to be a shadow, spreading as the fabric absorbed it.

Then the air behind her tore.

Darkness split the burning square from top to bottom, opening a vertical rift. Its dark edges shuddered once, as if the night had been forced apart for a moment. Smoke bent toward it. Sparks changed course in mid-air. Even the fire seemed to lean toward it. One of the Wardens staggered.

Clare’s heart struck so hard it hurt. Her mother turned her head, not fully, barely at all. Golden light flickered across her cheekbone. For one impossible second, she didn’t look surprised.

The Warden moved forward. Steel caught the light. Someone screamed.

Clare never knew afterwards whether the scream belonged to the soldier, the village, or had torn itself from her own chest.

Her mother stepped into the darkness.

The portal took her in one violent pull. Her skirt snapped around her ankles, gold still burning around her hands. Through the heat and smoke, past the bodies and the men standing between them, her mother found Clare’s eyes. That gaze held her and would not let go, hot and final.

“I’m sorry,” her mother said in Slavari.

Then the darkness closed. It made a thin, crystalline sound, like ice fracturing under too much weight.

“Mum—”

Clare didn’t remember moving. She remembered only the scrape of her knees on cobblestone and the heat striking her face as she broke into the open. Her palms hit stone still warm from the fire and slick with blood. She stared at the place where the rift had been.

No body.

No ash.

Only a few golden butterflies emerged from empty air. Their wings caught the firelight in brief, impossible flashes. They rose through the smoke in a trembling spiral, too bright and delicate for a square full of corpses, until the night took them one by one.

Clare reached for them anyway.

Nothing touched her hand but heat.

Bodies lay scattered across the square. The villagers had faces she knew. The Wardens had faces she didn’t. A woman’s plait floated in a puddle, and someone’s hand reached toward nothing.

The air smelled of burned herbs and iron. The smell caught in Clare’s throat until her stomach clenched painfully and she swallowed bile that tasted of smoke.

The world had ended, and the Wardens were still standing in it.

Sebastian saw the tear in the air before the others understood what they were looking at. Most people saw a threat and moved toward it. His mind went elsewhere first: angle, timing, distance.

The portal opened too cleanly behind her.

Lior turned her head, barely. Firelight drew gold across her face and glinted in the blood at her throat. For one sharp second, she looked as though the square had not surprised her at all.

Like someone recognizing a door.

Sebastian tightened his grip on his weapon.

She moved at the last possible moment. The darkness took her. The portal closed with a crack as thin as glass, and the square snapped back into itself: fire, screams, boots, blood.

Then gold rose through the smoke.

Golden butterflies.

They rose from the space where her body should have been, their wings catching the firelight before the night swallowed them whole.

Sebastian stared at the empty air until he noticed movement at the edge of the square. A small, dark-haired girl with soot smeared across her face.

A child.

“Clear the area.”

The remaining Wardens moved methodically, stepping over the dead as if they were obstacles along their route. One of them, tall and broad-shouldered, the captain’s insignia reflecting the fire, stood still for a moment and surveyed the destruction like an accountant.

He had short-cropped dark hair, a beard trimmed with brutal precision, and an immaculate cloak. His eyes remained hard and still even when someone begged.

Panic closed around Clare’s lungs. She threw herself backward, her soles sliding on wet stone. She turned and ran toward the narrow alley between the houses, where the shadows still held.

“What have we got here?”

The voice came from in front of her. Clare stopped so sharply her teeth clicked.

He blocked almost the entire alley. Clare could not see the road behind him, so she tried to slip past his side. His hand closed around her arm with inhuman speed.

Iron grip.

Clare wrenched herself back, fury and grief turning her small fist into a weapon. She swung at his face with everything she had. He caught her fist before it reached him.

He barely moved.

A sound tore out of her that wasn’t a word. She swung again. This time her knuckles caught his forearm. Pain shot up her arm, and the impact echoed in her bones.

The captain’s eyes widened only slightly, and sharp interest flashed in his gaze.

“That strength...” He caught her other arm before she could swing again, holding her at a distance as she thrashed like a cornered animal.

“You’re a Night Being,” he said, as though naming her made the matter simple.

“Let go of me!” Clare kicked him in the shin, uselessly, against his heavy boots. Tears streamed down her face, hot and humiliating, and she hated herself for every drop. “Let go of me!”

His gaze didn’t soften. He studied her jaw, her eyes, the shape of her face, then went still for a moment, as if he had recognized something.

“You...” he said quietly, almost as a question. Then his jaw hardened. “You’re coming with me.”

“No—!” Clare wrenched harder, her lungs burning. “Mum! Dad!”

He lifted her off the ground as though she weighed nothing. Her feet beat at empty air. She might as well have been fighting a mountain.

The other Wardens closed in. A woman with burgundy hair and red eyes approached, frowning.

“Sebastian?” she asked. “What are you doing?”

“Found a survivor,” he said in the matter-of-fact tone of someone giving a report. “Hybrid, judging by the strength.”

“Let me go!” Clare spat the words at both of them. “I’m just a kid!”

“The Order doesn’t care about your age.” Sebastian shifted her weight, ignoring her struggle. “You’re coming with us.”

Clare bit his hand.

His grip didn’t even shift.

“Feisty.”

“I hate you!” she hissed in Slavari, then forced herself into English when she saw his blank look. “I hate you!”

“I’ve heard worse, kid.” He started walking, carrying her like a sack of grain. Clare twisted her neck until it hurt, watching the flames devour the shape of her home. Rooftops caved in with a groan. Smoke swallowed the moon. Somewhere, a bell struck once.

“Be grateful I’m not leaving you here to burn,” Sebastian said, his voice rough as gravel. “In this hole.”

The village shrank behind them. Through her tears, Clare watched the only place she had ever known turn into a smear of fire and ruins.

The Order’s headquarters rose from gray stone and iron gates, sterile and cold as a tomb. The air smelled of bleach, cold stone, and metal.

Sebastian set Clare down in the intake corridor.

She ran anyway.

He caught her by the ankle without looking, the movement too practiced to be cruelty. The cruelty was that it cost him nothing.

“Running won’t help,” he said. “You’ve got nowhere to go.”

Clare stared up at him from the floor, her eyes swollen and her throat raw. The strength had drained from her limbs, and she trembled with exhaustion. Even so, she did not look away.

Fight, fight, fight.

“What’s your name, kid?”

She pressed her lips together until she felt them. Sebastian crouched to bring himself level with her face. His expression gave nothing away. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, almost matter-of-fact.

“This is your life now. You might as well cooperate.”

Clare held his gaze.

Her father’s voice rose in her memory, steady as a hand at the back of her neck: Stay true to yourself, whatever happens. Remember who you are.

“Clare,” she muttered.

Sebastian nodded once.

“Captain Sebastian Steele. Sixth Division.” He stood and gestured down the corridor. “Walk. Don’t make me carry you again.”

The corridors were bare, the lights too sharp, the walls too clean. Wardens passed her and barely glanced. Another recruit. Another orphan fed into the machine.

Sebastian delivered her to a dormitory packed with children and teenagers, gray clothes, and gray blankets. Resignation had hollowed deep lines into the recruits’ faces, while fear crowded behind eyes that did not trust sleep.

“This is your new life,” Sebastian said.

Then he left.

Clare stood in the doorway until a girl took her by the wrist and pulled her inside without a word. It seemed that was the only kindness permitted here.

Processing began immediately.

“Once a Warden, always a Warden,” people repeated like a mantra, like a curse that returned even when no one was listening.

They gathered the new recruits in a testing hall: white walls, sterile equipment, instruments humming with accumulated magic. Clare watched the other children demonstrate their abilities. A boy made fire dance between his palms. A girl shaped water into forms. Some went willingly. Others were forced forward, wrists bruised, eyes wide with terror.

Clare memorized every face. Every cruelty.

“Name?” The intelligence officer was a severe woman with graying hair.

“Clare,” she said flatly.

Another Warden approached with crystal instruments that vibrated against her skin as though her blood made them sing. He moved them along her arms, her ribs, and the back of her neck.

“Earth magic,” he announced. “Hybrid.”

The officer wrote without looking up.

“Physical?”

“Most likely.”

Clare said nothing.

Her father had taught her: reveal as little as possible. Let them think they know everything while you keep the rest behind your teeth.

That night, Clare lay on her assigned bunk, surrounded by the quiet breathing of other children. The blanket was thin and smelled of bleach and old sweat. She pulled it over her head, drawing the darkness close. Her mouth tasted of smoke that wasn’t there. She cried quietly into the fabric.

Stay true to yourself. Remember who you are.

“Mum,” she whispered in Slavari, and the word tore through her from within. “Dad.”

No one answered.

Somewhere high above the stone, distant thunder rolled, low and far away. Clare went still and listened for a moment. She didn’t know why it stopped her. She repeated the words until they stopped sounding like language and began to sound like a heartbeat.

The days blurred into routine.

She woke before the lights had fully caught, when the corridors were still half-asleep and the fluorescents had only begun to buzz, warming like insects trapped behind glass.

She trained until her hands stopped shaking and began to strike exactly where she wanted. Bruises marked every jut of bone.

She ate if they allowed it. If the tray arrived before someone decided she had not earned it.

She slept if the dark did not close around her throat the moment she shut her eyes.

Then it all began again.

The Order had its own rhythm. It did not march; it pulsed. It wanted Clare to sink into it, to let it fill her mouth and lungs until she stopped being a person and became a timetable carved into muscle.

She would not let it.

Whenever a door opened, she listened to the hinges. She learned the high, dry squeak and the oiled whisper so she would know which doors were maintained and which would betray her with noise.

When a Warden looked away, she counted heartbeats.

Not her own. Theirs.

When someone screamed, she tracked the sound. She listened to how it bounced off the walls, how long it carried, and where it began to fade. The corridors gave away a great deal if you knew what to listen for.

She took every chance to escape.

Sometimes she made it past three corners. Sometimes five. Once she got far enough to find a ventilation shaft and draw in air that did not belong to the Order: damp stone, night air, and a thread of cold metal that smelled of rain. Hope turned sharp on her tongue. So sharp it almost tasted of blood.

They always caught her.

Not always with the same hands. Not always with the same boots at her heels. Even capable Wardens struggled with her. She was small, but desperation gave her an edge, and the earth in her blood made her heavier than she should have been. Harder to fold. Harder to pin.

She slipped out of holds. She bit. She kicked. She went for the eyes, because eyes always blinked faster than pride. She quickly learned which Wardens blinked.

Sebastian never blinked.

When he found her, there was no drama in it. He moved with the quiet certainty of a man who had never needed to step aside for anyone.

One moment she was running with her lungs on fire; the next, his hand rested on her shoulder. Calm. Certain. As if Sebastian had been standing there all along and had only now decided to stop her. No wasted movement. No anger.

That was worse.

Fight, fight, fight.

She repeated the words silently until they became a reflex. At night they returned until they stopped being words and became sound, a barrier between her and the memory of the square.

Ever since that final I’m sorry.

Sometimes she fantasized, because that was the one place the Order could not reach. In the stories she spun at night, her mother’s hands were warm again, rough at the knuckles and soft across the palms. Her father came through the door smelling of rain and woodsmoke. The table was laid. Someone laughed.

Clare laughed back with her mouth full of bread until her cheeks hurt. In reality, laughter was something you heard from older recruits just before someone got hurt.

They pushed the recruits through combat drills, magic theory, and tactical assessments, preparing them for the ritual that would either mark them as Wardens or break them in half.

Clare began to notice Sebastian on the observation platforms. He did not appear every day. Not regularly enough for her to call it a pattern.

But often enough that her skin began to prickle the moment she entered a room, as though his gaze had arrived before he did.

He never approached. He never spoke.

He watched with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes hard as flint, as though Clare were a problem he had not yet decided to solve.

Whenever she spotted him, she drove her nails into her palms until the crescents they left began to burn.

She no longer allowed herself to cry.

She saved her tears for other things.

The ritual came on the seventh day.

They gathered her group, fifteen children between the ages of eight and twelve, in a hall where the air felt wrong. The stone was too smooth and too clean, as though nothing living had ever touched it. The lights shone too white.

Every sound in that silence felt like a warning.

At the center of the hall stood an enormous crystal structure.

The One.

It pulsed with sick light, veins of magic threaded through it like an infection trapped beneath glass. Its hum was not so much heard as felt: pressure behind the eyes, a vibration in the molars.

A woman in ceremonial robes explained the procedure with glacial efficiency.

“The One will examine your blood. If you are compatible, you will be marked as Wardens. If not...”

She did not finish.

She did not need to.

They called the children alphabetically, reducing their names to the next entries on a list. Clare watched them line up and hold out their wrists like offerings. The ritual Warden cut their palms with practiced calm. His blade never once paused above the skin, and no apology passed his lips.

Blood fell onto the crystal.

The One listened.

The first boy screamed when it rejected him. His body convulsed. Magic tore through it in uneven waves, like glass dragged through muscle, until the scream abruptly stopped. The boy collapsed, dead before his forehead struck the floor.

Clare’s fists clenched until her nails bit into her skin.

Fight, fight, fight.

One by one, the children in her group died.

Rejected. Incompatible blood.

Rejected. Magic too weak.

Rejected. Soul too fragile.

Whatever that meant.

Whatever the Order had decided counted as a soul worth saving that morning. The bodies were dragged to the edge of the hall and laid out like broken equipment. Their blood left dark smears on the stone that even the sterile light could not bleach away.

In the end, only Clare remained.

“Step forward.”

The Warden sounded bored. As if he were placing an order. As if he had done this a thousand times and intended to do it a thousand more.

Clare stepped onto the dais. Her legs were heavy as lead. The One loomed above her, alive like a predator and poised like a set trap.

Maybe death would be a mercy. Maybe I’d see Mum and Dad again.

Her father’s voice rose in her memory, quiet and unshakeable.

Stay true to yourself. Remember who you are.

The Warden took her hand. The blade bit deep, and pain flashed bright and clean. Hot crimson blood flowed from the wound and fell onto the surface of the One.

The crystal flashed.

The world became fire and shattered glass. Magic exploded through Clare’s veins, carrying liquid heat with ragged edges. It tore through her from within and rebuilt her without asking permission. Clare cried out and dropped to her knees. Her palms struck stone that suddenly seemed a kilometer away.

The hum became a scream inside her bones. Black lines carved themselves into her body. Wild, violent marks crawled over her arms, her back, and the base of her neck, burning with every new inch, as if someone were writing a new name into her skin with a blade dipped in lava.

She tasted iron and smoke.

Fight, fight, fight.

Two pistols materialized in her hands. They were solid, real, and cold, their weight filling her palms as though the Order had reached inside Clare and decided what shape her survival would take. Her fingers tightened around the grips until they hurt.

I will not die like this.

I’m their daughter. I’m Dad’s. I’m Mum’s.

Somewhere above her, a Warden spoke. His voice came from far away, as though he were speaking underwater.

“Looks like we’ve got a new Warden.”

Clare raised her head and looked through tears that were not weakness. They were only pain. For a moment, she saw her father’s face, smiling and impossibly gentle, as if the world had not ended. Then the darkness swallowed her whole.

Chapter 3

Olivier learned the Order’s rhythm the way he learned a lock: by listening for the clicks.

The training yard stretched before him, built from concrete, steel barriers, and angles designed to contain whatever the recruits might become. He stood among more than twenty children, none older than ten. Most were trembling. Some cried without making a sound. A few stared straight ahead with the dead calm of children who had already accepted that nothing existed beyond the Order’s walls.

The urge to run came anyway.

The gates. Stellis. Crowds. Markets loud enough for a small boy to hide in. For a moment, he let himself imagine escaping. Then he put the thought aside with all the other useless things.

They would catch him.

They always did. The Order did not lose its recruits. They had marked him.

The tattoo sat on his skin like constant pressure. It did not hurt, but it weighed on him. It was a claim. When Olivier flexed his fingers, the ink moved with him, flowers winding along his arms in delicate, intricate patterns.

Flowers.

Mom’s favorites. Once, they had meant gentle things: hands warm from cooking, petals pressed between the pages of books, and a home that smelled of wet wool and smoke.

Now they meant ownership.

He did not hate flowers.

He hated what they had been turned into.

Four years in the Order. Four years of brutal training. Four years of children disappearing between one roll call and the next. Four years of learning how to keep his face blank while his stomach stayed tight.

He had been only eight when they dragged him through those gates, kicking and screaming, after taking everything from him and calling it duty.

He did not care about their mission, their purpose, or their hierarchy.

He would use it.

He would grow stronger. He would learn everything they wanted to teach him, and everything they tried to hide between lessons.

And then maybe...

Maybe revenge.

Maybe freedom.

When he focused, lightning gathered at his fingertips. Violet-white electricity danced between his hands, brief, clean, and controlled. The instructors whispered about him when they thought he could not hear.

He always heard them.

He also saw fear, awe, and distance in the other children’s eyes. Friends were knives with prettier handles.

“Fall in!” Sebastian’s voice cut across the yard, and everyone obeyed on instinct. The Captain of the Sixth Division walked toward them, a smaller figure following behind him. “A new recruit.”

Olivier glanced over. Ordinary curiosity. Nothing more.

A girl.

About his age, perhaps younger. Dark hair tangled around her face, and a bruise darkened one cheekbone. She held her arms against her ribs as though sheer will was the only thing keeping her together.

Another one, he thought with the same indifference people spared for weather they could not change.

She looked fragile.

He soon discovered that she was not.

Clare, as Sebastian called her, hit harder than boys twice her size. She moved as if she wasted nothing: not breath, time, or mercy. There was nothing theatrical about her violence. It was direct. Defiant.

Clare was a problem, and just another resource to the Order.

Even so, Olivier kept noticing her. She always watched the exits, always measured the angles, and was far too alert for a child.

Worse, she did not look at him as if he were anyone special.

She looked at him as if he were someone occupying space she meant to claim.

One afternoon during paired drills, they were assigned to neighbouring stations. Clare could not stand still. She rocked on her heels, her eyes constantly darting toward the door. Her restlessness had a rhythm of its own, quick, ragged, and impatient.

It distracted him.

“You think too loudly,” he said calmly without looking at her.

Clare snapped her head toward him.

“Could you, like... shut up?”

Lightning snapped between his fingers. Small and involuntary.

A reflex.

He did not raise his voice.

“Make me.” “Gladly.” She lunged without warning, with no thought for technique, throwing her whole body into the attack. She head-butted him in the face, ugly and effective, until Olivier’s vision flashed white. Blood filled his nose, and metal coated his tongue.

For the first time in years, someone had landed a clean hit on him.

It did not frighten him.

If anything, it clarified the situation.

They went at each other with fists, elbows, and knees. Clare fought as though rules did not exist. Olivier answered with control, turning her momentum against her, keeping his breathing even and placing his feet exactly where they needed to be.

From the moment Clare appeared, his rhythm was no longer his alone.

Her messy, stubborn rhythm kept cutting across his.

And yet it fit.

Another day, another fight.

Matt did not release them at once. He kept one hand on Clare’s chest and the other on Olivier’s, holding them apart until they both stopped straining for another blow. The training hall stank of sweat, rubber mats, and old blood that had soaked so deep into the concrete it had become part of the building.

Clare’s nose bled slowly and stubbornly. She wiped it with the back of her hand, smearing red across her knuckles. Olivier’s lip had split where her forehead caught him. He neither wiped the blood away nor blinked. His eyes were too sharp, too focused, as if he meant to force her back with a stare alone.

“Kids,” Evelyn said flatly, without a trace of real patience. “Please.”

Clare twisted in Matt’s grip. He did not move.

“Let me go,” she growled.

“Say please,” he replied lightly.

Olivier made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had not sounded so cold.

“She doesn’t know the word ‘please’.”

She studied his face with cool precision.

“And you can’t do anything but talk.”

The air around Evelyn grew denser and warmer. The warning was subtle but clear.

“Enough.” The silence after that usually made people stop. Even Clare.

Matt let go only when he was sure neither of them would lunge again. They stood a step apart, breathing hard, their hands still half clenched although neither moved to strike.

Clare tasted blood and metal. Olivier had blood in his throat and an electric bitterness, the taste of lightning trying to get out.

“You want to fight?” Evelyn asked. “Fine by me.”

She turned to the instructor.

“Into the ring.”

The ring was a square of reinforced mat enclosed by steel posts and rune-covered barriers. The older recruits fought there when the Order wanted to see who would bleed first.

Clare stepped in without waiting. Her boots left dark prints wherever blood from her nose struck the mat.

Olivier took his place opposite her and slowly rolled his shoulders. His stance was clean, balanced, almost elegant. Clare hated it.

Evelyn stood at the edge with her arms folded. Matt leaned against a post. He no longer looked amused, only alert.

Another figure stood motionless on the observation platform.

Sebastian.

“No weapons and no spells,” Evelyn said.

Her gaze moved over Olivier’s hands and then Clare’s tattoos.

“If I see so much as one spark, it’s over.”

“Afraid he’ll fry me?” Clare called.

“Your strength doesn’t count,” Evelyn replied flatly. “You were born with it. But you can count your blows. You can choose where they land.”

Olivier looked at Clare through pale lashes.

“I’m afraid you’ll cry.”

Her eyes went empty.

“Begin.”

Clare moved first.

She always moved first.

Her fist shot toward his throat, too fast and too committed to be a feint. It was a statement. Olivier slipped half a step off the line, so close that the displaced air brushed his neck. Clare’s knuckles struck the mat exactly where his throat had been.

The crack of stone splitting beneath a hammer rang out. Fractures spread across the reinforced surface, and the shock climbed Clare’s wrist, bright and quick. She forced her fingers open.

Olivier used the pause.

He threw two short strikes, the first below her eyes, the second at her ribs. Clare drove into them like an animal. Her forearm stopped the first, and she rolled her shoulder through the second, although Olivier still felt the impact. Her elbow shot toward his jaw and caught his cheekbone.

His split lip opened again. Olivier began to circle, forcing Clare to turn and waste her strength on empty air. He gave her no leverage and no chance to get both hands on him, because both of Clare’s hands meant broken bones.

He changed direction without pause: quick pivots, sudden slips, and speed that looked almost lazy.

Clare lunged again and struck the edge where the reinforcement met concrete. The concrete cracked with the sound of a breaking jaw. Dust burst into a pale cloud.

Matt’s amusement vanished. Olivier drove a knee into Clare’s ribs, hard enough to hurt. She took the blow and kept moving. The air left her lungs once, then she regained control.

Her body rejected a single command.

Back off.

She caught Olivier by the sleeve. It was only fabric, but the pull almost tore him off his feet. He twisted free before she could put her weight into it and slipped his forearm beneath her throat in one short, precise movement. He released her before the hold turned into a contest of strength he could not win.

Clare leaned aside and bit him on the forearm.

The pain came at once, hot and sharp. Olivier swallowed it like poison, used the moment, and wrenched his arm free with a twist that cost him a layer of skin. Blood spattered the mat again.

For a moment, they only stared at each other. Both were breathing hard, and neither meant to blink first. The noise of the hall fell away until only their breaths and the faint hum of the lights remained.

“Enough.”

Clare stepped back as if someone had yanked her by a chain. Olivier wiped his mouth and regarded the blood with the expression of a man it had personally offended.

Matt gave a low whistle.

“Jesus.” “You’re both alive,” Evelyn said. “That’s all that matters.” She walked over to Clare. She did not touch her, but stopped so close that Clare had nowhere else to look. “You need to stop competing with each other.”

Then she looked at Olivier.

“No one will cry for either of you if you kill yourselves.”

He clenched his fingers hard once, then let them relax.

Sebastian had not moved on the platform. But when Clare glanced up, only once, she saw something else flicker in his eyes. Recognition. Then it was gone.

“Off the mat,” Evelyn ordered. “To the medical room.”

Olivier stepped down first. Clare followed.

“I don’t need it.”

They passed at the edge of the mat, shoulder to shoulder for half a second. Clare felt the heat coming off him, while Olivier felt the warmth of her arm through the fabric.

They neither looked at each other nor spoke.

Even so, despite themselves, their steps fell into sync.

Perfectly.

The corridor leading to the medical room was cooler than the training hall. The air smelled of antiseptic and iron, and the fluorescent lights seeped into the stone, giving everyone’s skin the wrong shade.

Olivier walked upright, shoulders level, jaw tight, his steps measured. His entire posture pretended that nothing hurt. A dark, tacky line of blood had dried at the corner of his mouth. Clare did not check her ribs.

She kept walking.

The healer was a water mage. His hands moved calmly, but his eyes held the fatigue of a man who had spent his life repairing bodies and knew how little it changed.

He looked at them over the counter. His gaze brushed the blood on Clare’s sleeve, then the unbroken skin beneath it. The healer studied her more closely.

“Sit,” he said to Olivier.

Olivier sat.

Clare remained on her feet.

The healer uncorked a vial. The water should have been clear, but it shimmered like moonlight trapped in liquid. He dipped two fingers into it. Instead of dripping away, the water climbed his skin and covered Olivier’s lip in a thin, precise layer.

Olivier’s breath caught for a moment, small and involuntary. His fingers closed around the edge of the chair until his knuckles turned white.

The healer guided the water in a narrow stream, millimeter by millimeter.

The bleeding stopped first. Then the split began to narrow, its edges knitting together with quiet inevitability, without thread or needle. The water returned to the vial faintly pink, as if it had stolen something and did not care who noticed.

Clare watched Olivier’s hands and the tension pretending to be calm. Her stomach tightened at the silence.

“Be careful with it until it heals,” the healer said in a voice as flat as stone, then nodded toward the door.

Outside, the corridor’s chill closed around them again. They walked for a while without speaking, cold air slipping beneath their collars and into the sleeves of their uniforms.

Olivier raised a hand and touched his lip. There was no blood, yet he stared at his fingers as if he still expected pain.

“You’re annoying,” he finally hissed under his breath.

Clare glanced at him.

“Likewise.”

A quick, reluctant smile flashed across his face, small and crooked, as if admitting to it hurt. He smiled because she had hit him, had not been afraid of him, and had stayed.

Clare looked away first.

They kept walking.

Their footsteps synchronized without thought, as if the Order had tried to turn them into machines and accidentally taught them the same rhythm.

Chapter 4

The days blurred into each other until time stopped being something you could count.

The Order liked it that way. Routine, repetition, bodies reduced to uniforms. Clare moved through drills and lectures with the dull obedience the corridors demanded. She followed orders without protest, but she did not give them her thoughts.

Until they told her to reach for her power.

“Summon your weapon, Clare.”

“No.”

“That’s an order.”

“No.”

A cold silence fell between them.

Then came the punishment, as predictable as the lights.

Extra drills until sweat burned at the corners of her eyes. Her hands tore on the training grips. Skin split, hardened, then split again. Twenty-four hours without food sharpened every sound: the clack of boots on stone, the insect hum of fluorescent lights that never went dark.

The isolation cell was so small Clare could not fully straighten up. Concrete pressed through the fabric to her bones, and the air tasted of old breath.

She gave them no tears.

Not where they could keep them.

When they opened the door, she returned to the corridor with her face still and her shoulders straight, as if they had not shut her in a cramped cell simply to remind her how little power she had.

There were many escape attempts.

Clare stopped counting after the first dozen failures. She slipped away during guard changes or in the one second when an instructor looked away. She hid behind storage shelves, squeezing into gaps that smelled of dust and oiled steel.

Once she reached the outer corridors. They were wider, colder, and quieter; beyond that line, even the sounds of the building seemed to fade. Then the alarms howled.

A thin, sharp alarm pierced the corridor. Red lights began to pulse, making shadows jump across the walls.

Clare ran anyway.

Footsteps thundered behind her. The net tightened as she turned left, then right, then left again. Her boots slipped on moisture beneath a vent. Her lungs burned. Her heart hammered against her ribs as if it were trying to find its own way out.

A hand reached for her.

Clare spun, heat flaring beneath her tattoos. Her body reacted faster than thought.

Two pistols snapped into her hands. The metal was cold, and her fingers found the grips as though they had always known where to rest.

She fired.

The first bullet buried itself in a Warden’s shoulder. The bang rolled through the corridor, and the man staggered, his breath cut short. Joints. Tendons. Anything that would slow him down.

Because Sebastian always found her.

Suddenly he was standing in front of her, blocking the entire corridor, as calm as ever. He did not blink.

“You’re quite the handful, kid.”

Clare answered by moving. The pistols came up, her finger tightening on the trigger.

Sebastian moved first.

His hand closed around her wrist and turned the barrel aside with brutal efficiency. The shot cracked into the wall, and stone dust burst into the air like an exhale.

Clare kicked, aiming for his knee. He caught her as if she weighed nothing.

A moment later, she was hanging over his shoulder. Her stomach dropped with every step as the world swayed upside down. The rough fabric of his coat struck her cheek. Sebastian smelled of smoke and steel. She struggled anyway.

“Shut up! I hate you!”

Her heel struck his chest, more insulting than effective. Sebastian’s stride did not falter.

“You’re getting repetitive, Clare.”

The Wardens they passed either ignored them or bared their teeth, amused by the familiar humiliation.

Matt and Evelyn were waiting by the lift.

Matt laughed, clearly knowing the scene by heart.

“Quite the expert at hide-and-seek, Sebastian. Maybe we should just put you on permanent babysitting duty?”

“Piss off, Matt,” Sebastian said without even looking at him.

The corners of Evelyn’s mouth twitched as if she wanted to smile but denied herself the pleasure. She stood with her arms crossed, burgundy hair tied tightly back, her red eyes sharp and tired.

She looked like a woman trying to keep children alive in a place that devoured them.

Olivier stood a little apart. His arms were crossed, his posture too controlled for his age. His pale hair caught the corridor light, and his blue eyes tracked Clare like a problem he would rather solve than ignore.

“She wants to die,” he muttered.

Clare twisted far enough to look at him upside down. Blood rushed to her head until the corridor tilted.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing,” Olivier replied.

His expression said enough. Sebastian did not bother with ceremony. He carried Clare into the interrogation room and threw her onto a chair, apparently unconcerned whether he hurt her.

The room had no windows. A fluorescent light buzzed overhead, steady and merciless, and the air smelled of old sweat and disinfectant.

Sebastian sat behind the desk and exhaled as though Clare had just used the last of his patience.

Clare stared at him.

Most recruits learned to keep quiet. Clare did not, and her tattoos only deepened the unsettling resemblance.

Black tribal lines crossed her arms and back. Wild, violent, and far too familiar. The same brutal language written across his own skin.

Then there were her strength and instinct. She hurled herself forward through pain, as if she did not see it as a reason to stop.

Nicholas.

Those stubborn eyes. Hatred in every word. Even the accent, the Aqualantidian edges that crept into certain words when anger sharpened her voice.

The universe was cruel.

He had lost his brother.

And now a miniature echo of his brother sat before him. Rage and too much power trapped in a ten-year-old body.

“Hate me all you want, Clare.” Sebastian’s voice was flat and exhausted. “You won’t escape the Order. Get used to it. This is your home now. If you become a Warden, you’ll be one for life.”

“No. Never.” She spoke both words with undisguised disgust.

Sebastian rubbed a hand over his face.

“Good God. You’re stubborn, aren’t you?”

A silence fell that neither of them broke.

Sebastian leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. His gaze remained steady.

“How do you know Lior?”

Clare’s fingers closed around the chair arms until her knuckles turned white.

“Were you her student?”

She did not answer.

“Who were your parents?” he asked. “Earth mages?”

“They’re dead,” she muttered, deliberately flattening her voice.

Sebastian did not soften. Comfort was not a language he spoke.

“You’re not the only one,” he said. “Every child here is an orphan.”

“I don’t care who they are.” Clare’s hands tightened further around the chair arms. Sebastian’s gaze dropped to them, then returned to her face.

“You need to understand that if you keep trying to escape, you’ll end up dead.”

Clare looked him straight in the eyes. She did not blink.

“Then kill me.”

“Not a chance.” He leaned back in his chair and stared at her like a man trying not to show something. “You think I’d waste that kind of potential?”

“I don’t care!” The scream tore out of her, hoarse and sharp.

Clare lunged forward without a plan.

A pistol materialized halfway through the leap. Black metal and rose engravings gleamed in the harsh light, too ornate for the sterile room.

She pressed the barrel to Sebastian’s temple.

Her arm shook so badly that the pistol trembled with it. Tears ran down her face, hot and humiliating.

She did not wipe them away. Her breath came in broken pulls, catching in her throat and refusing to settle into anything she could control.

Sebastian did not move.

He raised a hand and corrected her aim, moving the barrel from his temple to the center of his forehead. He closed his hand around hers, heavy and warm, making Clare feel even smaller. His thumb pressed against the back of her hand, as if he could stop the trembling through force alone.

“If you want to kill me,” he said in a low, almost bored voice, “at least aim properly, kid.”

Something twisted at the corner of his mouth, as if he had already accepted what was about to happen.

Clare’s breath caught. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Her hand kept trembling. The pistol wavered, flickered, then dissolved into nothing, unable to hold its shape any longer.

Clare sagged forward as if her legs had suddenly failed her and slid to the floor with her back against the desk. The sob that broke from her was too big for her body.

“I hate you,” she choked out, burying her face in her hands. “You... you remind me of him.”

Sebastian went still.

“Who?”

“Dad.” She whispered it. “You remind me of Dad.”

Something twisted in Sebastian’s chest and would not let go.

He stood and walked around the desk. For a moment, he only looked at her. Small, fierce, and shattered on the floor of his room. Then he did something that surprised even him.

He put his rough hand on her head. Clumsily.

“Bet he was an annoying bastard, wasn’t he?”

“The worst,” Clare sighed. A pale, broken smile crossed her tear-streaked face. “Stubborn.”

“Like you,” Sebastian said more gently than he intended.

Clare did not answer. She cried quietly while his heavy, still hand rested on her head and kept her from falling apart completely.

Nicholas, he thought, looking at the girl who carried his echo in every gesture.

Are you really gone?

Did you send me this little brat to haunt me?

He had failed. He had not seen the signs. He had not reached his brother before the Order’s teeth closed.

And now this child sat at his feet with rose engravings on her pistols, too close and too familiar for him to push away.

Coincidence?

He no longer knew what to believe.

He knew only one thing. He would watch over her. He would keep her alive, whether she wanted it or not.

Even if that meant becoming the person she hated most in this godforsaken place.

Chapter 5

Two years later, the training hall sounded like a drum that never tired. Wood struck wood. Boots scuffed against the mat.

Clare slipped under Olivier’s counter, used the opening, and swept his legs from under him. Timing mattered, not grace. He hit the mat hard, but twisted in mid-air and landed in a crouch. His palms touched the mat only once before he regained his balance.

“Better,” Matt called from the sidelines, drawing out the words lazily even though his standards were never lenient. “But your shoulder dropped before the sweep. Anyone could read it from the other side of the room.”

Clare dragged her forearm across her forehead. Sweat smeared across her skin, stung her eyes, and quickly cooled in the draft.

In. Hold. Out.

Two quick, controlled breaths, then her gaze sharpened again.

At twelve, she was thin, angular and stubborn. She had trained for so long that she reacted on instinct before she could make a conscious decision. Fresh bruises bloomed along her forearms where Olivier’s practice sword had clipped her, purple and red beneath sweat-sheened skin, already tightening as her regeneration quietly went to work.

Olivier straightened. Fourteen years old, with longer limbs and sharper features. White-silver hair fell into his eyes; he did not bother to push it back. He gave her that irritating half-smile.

“You’re slowing down, Olivier,” Clare said with feigned boredom.

“Shut up,” he snapped, but his smile widened as he returned to his stance. “Again?”

“Children.” Sebastian’s voice cut through their argument, flat as ever and requiring no extra volume. “Take a break before you kill each other.”

Clare and Olivier automatically moved to opposite sides of the mat. They did not need to look to know where the line between them lay. After two years of training together, their timing had fallen into step on its own, somewhere between banter and rivalry.

“Water.” Evelyn tossed Clare a bottle. It struck her chest; Clare caught it one-handed and drank greedily until the plastic crackled under her fingers. The water was cold and she drank too fast, but swallowed anyway.

“Your footwork is getting better,” Evelyn added matter-of-factly, as always.

“Cheers,” Clare muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist.

Across the hall, Olivier took his own bottle and drank with his head tilted back, his throat working. He caught Clare looking and stuck out his tongue.

Clare gave him the middle finger without blinking.

Matt roared with laughter.

“Like an old married couple, those two.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Sebastian muttered, but his eyes did not harden the way they once had.

Evelyn beckoned Olivier into the center of the training area.

“All right. Lightning manipulation.” She looked him over coolly, as if assessing another test result. “Your last attempt was pathetic.”

Clare edged closer without realizing and positioned herself for a better view of Olivier. She still kept track of the angles and exits, though she pretended not to care.

“Performance problems,” Matt stage-whispered theatrically to Sebastian, loud enough for anyone with ears to hear.

“Happens to the best of us,” Sebastian replied without moving a muscle. “Never to me, mind you.” His gaze flicked to Evelyn for a second.

“Gross.” Evelyn fixed him with a look that could have melted steel.

“Nah, I don’t get it.” Clare narrowed her eyes, genuinely lost.

Evelyn laughed, brief and sincere. The sound felt almost out of place in the training hall.

“Oh, sweetheart. You will. In a few years.”

Olivier’s ears turned red as he stepped into the circle marked on the mat. He set his feet, rolled his shoulders once, and closed his eyes.