Chapter 40

The first cell I opened contained a pregnant teenager who couldn't have been more than sixteen.

She didn't speak. Just stared at me with eyes that had gone somewhere else entirely, her hands cradling the swell of her belly like it was the only real thing left in the world. The copper wire around my wrist bit into my skin as my fingers tightened.

"How many?" My voice came out flat. Clinical. The only way I could ask.

Lena stood behind me in the corridor, her face the color of old paper. "The blueprints show twenty-three cells on this level. Two more levels below."

The math tried to arrange itself in my head—population statistics, breeding cycles, the timeline required to establish this kind of operation. My brain wanted to make it data. Numbers. Something I could analyze instead of feel.

"We're getting them all out." I moved to the next cell.

Asheron's hand caught my shoulder, gentle but immovable. "Mira. We came for your mother."

"I know what we came for."

"Severin will have heard the alarm by now. We have minutes, not hours."

"Then we move faster." I shook off his grip and kept walking, my boots echoing against concrete that smelled like disinfectant and something underneath it that made my stomach turn. "Yuki, how many can the van hold?"

Her voice crackled through the earpiece. "Twelve if we're lucky. Fifteen if we're suicidal."

"Make it twenty."

"Mira—"

"Make it work."

The next cell held twins, maybe nineteen, both showing. The one after that was empty except for restraints still attached to the bed frame and dark stains on the mattress that I catalogued and filed away in the part of my brain that would never sleep again.

Asheron moved ahead of me, checking corners with the fluid efficiency of someone who'd cleared buildings when they were still made of mud brick and prayer. Every few seconds his hand would drift to his side where Severin's blade had nearly killed him three days ago, a gesture so unconscious I don't think he knew he was doing it.

"Your mother is in the east wing." Lena's hands shook as she pulled up the facility map on her phone. "Third floor. But Mira, the data suggests—"

"Don't." The word came out sharper than I meant. "Don't make this academic. Not this."

She flinched. Nodded.

We found seven more carriers on the second level. Most were too drugged to walk. Asheron carried two at once, moving with a speed that should have been impossible for someone who'd been dying less than seventy-two hours ago. The bond between us hummed with his pain—the wound pulling, muscles screaming, his body burning through reserves it didn't have.

"You need to slow down."

"We need to move faster." He set the women down near the exit where Yuki had the van waiting. "You said it yourself."

"That was before I felt your ribs grinding together."

"This is truth—I have survived worse."

"That's not the reassurance you think it is."

Something that might have been a smile crossed his face, there and gone like heat lightning. "You worry for me."

"I worry about the tactical disadvantage of you collapsing mid-extraction." But my fingers found his wrist, checking his pulse even though I could feel it through the bond. Fast. Too fast. "Actually, the data suggests you're running on fumes and spite."

"The data is correct." He turned back toward the building. "Your mother is still inside."

---

The east wing smelled different. Cleaner. The cells here had windows—barred, but windows—and the doors were reinforced steel instead of the rusted iron below. This wasn't where Severin kept his breeding stock.

This was where he kept his prizes.

My mother was in the third cell, and for a moment I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything but stand there and catalogue details my brain insisted were important: the gray in her hair that hadn't been there six months ago, the bruise on her left cheekbone in the exact shape of knuckles, the way her hands were zip-tied to the chair arms with the kind of precision that suggested someone had done this many times before.

"Mom."

Her head lifted. Her eyes focused. And then she smiled, and something in my chest that had been clenched tight since Severin's phone call finally loosened.

"Mira. You shouldn't have come."

"Yeah, well." I was already working on the zip ties with the knife Asheron had given me. "I've never been great at following instructions."

"Your father used to say the same thing." Her voice was hoarse. Drugged. But steady. "Is he—"

"Safe. In Prague with Aunt Cara." The zip tie snapped. "Can you walk?"

"I can run if I have to."

Behind me, Asheron had gone still in the way that meant he was listening to something I couldn't hear. His hand drifted to the blade at his hip.

"We need to leave. Now."

"Working on it." The second zip tie was tighter, the plastic cutting into her wrist deep enough to draw blood. My hands wanted to shake. I didn't let them. "Almost—"

The lights went out.

Emergency lighting kicked in three seconds later, bathing everything in red that made the blood on my mother's wrists look black. Somewhere in the building, something metal screeched against concrete.

Asheron moved in front of us, his body a wall between us and the door. "Mira. Take your mother and go."

"Not without you."

"This is not a debate."

"You're right. It's not." I got the second zip tie off and hauled my mother to her feet. She swayed, caught herself against my shoulder. "We all leave or none of us do. Let's table the heroic sacrifice thing."

The screeching got louder. Closer. And underneath it, a sound like breathing, if breathing could be done by fifty throats at once.

"Remnants." Asheron's voice had gone flat. "Many of them."

"How many is many?"

"All of them."

The first one hit the door hard enough to buckle the steel. The second hit made it worse. By the third, I could see clawed fingers reaching through the gap, and my brain was already calculating angles and exit strategies and the statistical probability of three people outrunning fifty Remnants in a building with one exit.

The numbers weren't good.

"There's a service corridor." My mother's voice cut through the sound of tearing metal. "Behind the north wall. I watched them use it."

"Can you show us?"

"I can try."

Asheron grabbed the door frame as the Remnants tore through, his body blocking the gap while my mother and I ran for the north wall. Behind us, the sound of fighting—bone on bone, the wet crack of something breaking, a roar that didn't sound human anymore.

The service corridor was exactly where my mother said it would be, hidden behind a panel that looked like solid concrete until you knew where to push. We were halfway down the corridor when I realized Asheron wasn't behind us.

"Keep going."

"Mira—"

"I'll catch up." I was already turning back. "Get to the van. Tell Yuki to wait exactly three minutes, then leave whether I'm there or not."

"Absolutely not."

"Mom." I looked at her, really looked, and saw the woman who'd taught me that some things were worth more than safety. "I can't leave him."

She held my gaze for a long moment. Then nodded. "Three minutes. Not a second more."

I ran back the way we'd come, following the bond like a compass needle, feeling Asheron's pain spike with every step. The main hall was a war zone—bodies everywhere, some moving, some not, and in the center of it all, Asheron on his knees with blood running down his face and twelve Remnants in a circle around him.

And standing behind them, immaculate in a gray suit that probably cost more than my car, was Severin.

"Mira, darling. How lovely of you to join us."

I stopped at the edge of the circle. Every tactical instinct I had screamed at me to run, but my feet had forgotten how. "Let him go."

"Let him go?" Severin laughed, the sound like breaking glass. "Sweet thing, he's exactly where I want him. Where I've wanted him for three hundred years." He walked forward, his shoes clicking against concrete, and crouched in front of Asheron. "Tell me, old friend. Does she know?"

Asheron's teeth pressed together. Said nothing.

"Know what?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.

"About the ritual, of course." Severin stood, brushing invisible dust from his knees. "The mortality ritual. The one that requires three blood exchanges to complete. The one that would make our dear Asheron beautifully, perfectly human." He turned to me, his smile sharp enough to cut. "The one you've already started."

The words hit like a physical blow. I looked at Asheron, waiting for him to deny it, to explain, to say something that would make this make sense.

He didn't.

"You didn't tell her." Severin's voice dripped with false sympathy. "How delicious. All this time, every drop of blood she's given you, and you never mentioned that one more exchange would strip away your immortality. Would make you vulnerable. Mortal. Killable."

My hands had gone numb. The copper wire around my wrist felt like it was burning. "Is that true?"

Asheron's eyes met mine, and in them I saw confirmation and apology and something that looked like grief. "Yes."

"Why—" My voice cracked. I forced it steady. "Why wouldn't you tell me?"

"Because I knew you would refuse. Would see it as a burden rather than a choice."

"It is a burden. It's—" The words tangled in my throat. "You can't just decide to die for me."

"I am not deciding to die." His voice was quiet. Certain. "I am deciding to live. Truly live. For however long that may be."

Severin clapped, slow and mocking. "How touching. How romantic. How utterly pointless." He gestured, and the Remnants tightened their circle. "Here's what's going to happen, darling. You're going to complete the ritual. You're going to give Asheron your blood one more time, make him human, make him weak. And then I'm going to take him apart piece by piece while you watch, and there won't be a single thing you can do to stop me because he'll heal like a human now. Slowly. Painfully. Permanently."

"No."

"No?" Severin tilted his head. "Then I'll simply kill everyone in this building. Your mother. The carriers. Every single person you came to save. And I'll make sure Asheron watches before I lock him in a cell for the next thousand years." He smiled. "Your choice, sweet thing. His mortality or their lives."

The bond between us pulled tight, and through it I felt Asheron's resolve—his willingness to endure anything, suffer anything, as long as I was safe. As long as I survived.

Some things must be felt, not understood.

"There's a third option." My voice didn't shake. "I kill you."

"With what, darling? Your academic credentials?" Severin laughed. "You're a scholar playing at being a warrior. You've never killed anyone in your life."

"Actually, the data suggests I'm highly motivated to start."

I moved before he could respond, the knife Asheron had given me already in my hand, aiming for the gap between Severin's ribs where the subclavian artery would be if he still had one. The blade got within three inches before a Remnant caught my wrist, its grip like a vice, bones grinding together.

Severin tsked. "Admirable effort. Terrible execution." He nodded to the Remnant. "Break it."

The snap was audible. The pain came a second later, white-hot and all-consuming, and I heard someone screaming before I realized it was me. The knife clattered to the floor.

Asheron surged to his feet, but four Remnants slammed him back down, and through the bond I felt his ribs crack, felt the wound in his side tear open, felt his body starting to shut down from blood loss and exhaustion and the simple fact that even immortals have limits.

"Stop." The word came out broken. "Please. Stop."

Severin crouched in front of me, his hand gentle as he tilted my chin up. "Then choose, darling. His mortality or their lives. You have ten seconds."

My wrist was already swelling, the bone fragments grinding together every time I breathed. Through the bond, I felt Asheron's desperation, his fury, his absolute certainty that he would rather die than let me sacrifice myself for him.

But he didn't get to make that choice.

Neither did I.

"I'll do it." The words tasted like ash. "I'll complete the ritual."

"Mira, no—"

"Shut up." I looked at Asheron, memorizing the shape of his face, the way his eyes held mine like I was the only thing in the world worth seeing. "I'm sorry. But I can't watch you suffer for centuries because I was too afraid to make you human."

"This is not fear. This is love."

"I know." My throat closed around the words. "That's why I have to do it."

Severin smiled and said, "Ask him, darling. Ask Asheron what happens if you give him your blood one more time."