Page 147 of Bite Marks & Broken Hearts

The water barrier collapsed as my concentration wavered, revealing the battlefield Richmond Park had become. Kit had Vale pinned against an oak tree, both of them bloodied but neither yielding. Rory darted between the remaining cambions, a golden blur of fur and fangs. Near the pond’s edge, a battered Priya now wielded twin pistols, each shot finding its mark with surgical precision.

But Magdalena herself—my stomach lurched at the sight.

She stood at the heart of it all, her crucifix now blazing with purple fire. The twelve points of light had reformed around her, spinning faster than before. When she saw Seb, saw the power radiating from him, her face twisted into something inhuman.

“Brother,” she snarled, but her voice echoed with something else. Something ancient. “What have you done?”

Seb’s new power thrummed in the air between them. “I’m ending this, Magdalena. You, Lilith, all of it.”

The crucifix’s glow intensified as Magdalena lunged for me, her movements impossibly fast. My heart skipped as terror froze me in place—but before she could reach me, Seb materialised between us.

His hand shot out, catching her throat mid-leap. The violent impact created a shockwave that rippled through the air. Magdalena’s feet dangled above the ground as Seb held her effortlessly, strength evident in every line of his body, the raw power emanating from him making my skin erupt in gooseflesh.

“You dare—” she choked out, but Seb’s grip tightened.

He moved like liquid mercury, spinning her away from me and slamming her into the ground. The earth cracked beneath her, spider-web fissures spreading outward from the point of impact. The crucifix flew from her grasp, skittering across the grass. I tracked its movement, my palm throbbing at the memory of it burning my skin. Now it seemed to pulse with malevolent purpose.

Magdalena recovered instantly, launching herself at Seb with unnatural speed. But he was faster—somuch faster. In a blur, he dodged her attack, then caught her arm and used her momentum to throw her through the air. She hit the pond’s surface with such force that water exploded upward in a ten-foot geyser.

As I watched Seb and Magdalena locked in their violent dance, something twisted painfully in my chest that had nothing to do with the magic ravaging my body. The cruel symmetry of it all struck me with terribleclarity—Seb condemning his sister to death five centuries ago, and now being forced to do it again.

The anguish etched across his face told the whole story—the torment, the regret, the unbearable weight of history repeating itself. The brother who had never forgiven himself. No matter how this ended, Seb would be broken by it. He’d spend another five centuries—or however long vampires lived—haunted by this night.

The water around my feet rippled with my distress. “There has to be another way,” I whispered, even as I knew there probably wasn’t. But watching Seb prepare to kill his sister a second time… God, it was unbearable.

“Wait. Stop!” My voice was weak, but it carried across the chaos. “I understand, Magdalena.”

Magdalena picked herself up and stepped towards me, purple fire still dancing in her eyes. “You understand nothing,child.”

“You’re right. I don’t pretend to understand what you suffered—being condemned by your own brother, burned at the stake… it’s unimaginable.” I swallowed hard. “But I do know something about hiding. About fear. About being trapped by others’ expectations.”

Something flickered across her face—recognition, perhaps. Or pain.

“They taught me to hate myself too,” I said softly. “Not the same way, not with the same consequences. Nothing like what you endured. But I see how desperate you must have been for any escape, any alternative to their cruelty.”

The purple light wavered. For just a moment, I saw past the demon-touched creature to the young woman she must have been—before the Inquisition, before Lilith, before her own brother was turned against her.

“Magdalena,” Seb stepped forward, his voice breaking on her name. “It was my blindness that condemned you. My weakness. I was so desperate to belong, so caught in Rodrigo’s manipulation that I betrayed the one person I should have protected above all others.”

“You still know nothing of what they did to us!” Ignoring Seb, Magdalena spoke directly to me. “What their ‘God’ demanded. While my brother hunted innocents, I watched them burn women for daring to read. For healing. For refusing to bow.” The purple light pulsed with her words. “Lilith offered freedom.”

“Freedom?” Seb stepped closer. “Look at what that freedom cost. Look at what you’ve become. Trading one prison for another, trading their cruelty for Lilith’s.”

She finally rounded on him, water spraying up around her feet. “And what would you know of it? You, their perfect son, their perfect soldier—”

“Their perfect victim.” Seb’s face softened, leaving him looking suddenly vulnerable. “I was so blind, Magdalena. So caught in Rodrigo’s web that I couldn’t see…” His voice broke. “I couldn’t see he was manipulating me, just as Lilith manipulated you. We were both children,” he whispered. “Both so desperate to belong that we let monsters shape us.”

“Magdalena, he’s spent five centuries torturing himself over what happened to you,” I added, praying that the conviction in my voice would get through to her. “It wasn’t truly Sebastián who condemned you—it was the Church that twisted him, just as Lilith has twisted you.”

Magdalena gaze fixed on me with something like wonder. The purple fire in her eyes dimmed, replaced by an ancient, searching look that seemed to pierce straight through my skin, my bones, down to something deeper.

I couldn’t move. Not from magic this time, but from the weight of her scrutiny. Like she was reading every moment of my life—the years of suffocating silence, the crushing weight of expectations I could never meet, desires I could never voice.

“You’ve carried much pain,” she whispered, her voice soft and wondering. “And much guilt.”

Pure agony suddenly ripped through my chest, as if someone had thrust their fist between my ribs and squeezed. The darkness inside meresurged—the bitter cold that had been growing and growing, claiming me piece by piece. My vision blurred, the world tilting sideways, and more copper burst onto my tongue as my mouth filled with blood.

I stumbled, my legs turning to water beneath me, but Seb caught me before I hit the ground. His arms were steel bands around my waist, his chest solid against my back. My head fell back against his shoulder as another wave of agony tore through me, and I bit back a cry. Despite everything—the pain, the darkness, the terror—there was something comforting about being held by him. Like finding shelter in the middle of a storm.

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