Page 14 of The Blood Rites

There’s something painfully honest about the way she says it, without pride or embarrassment left to soften the words. “You’re still walking,” I tell her.

Marissa glances down at the glowing bridge beneath our feet. “Barely.”

“But you are.”

She laughs, a thin gasp of a sound. “You make it sound easy,” she says. “Every step feels like it’s going to be the last one.”

I let out a soft, hollow laugh. “After a while,” I say quietly, “you start thinking every day is borrowed anyway.”

She gives me a curious glance just as Callen snorts softly ahead of us, though he doesn’t turn around.

“Fear’s the only sane part of this,” he mutters.

His voice is rougher than I expected, worn down at the edges.

Marissa studies him carefully. “You don’t seem scared,” she says.

That finally makes him glance back at us.

“I said seem,” she says, raising her hands in surrender.

He looks forward again, jaw tightening.

“What happened to your family?” she asks, her voice cracking slightly. “Sorry,” she adds, “that’s none of my business.”

“Don’t worry," I reply. “I don’t know the answer anyway. I grew up in an orphanage in the lower rings—just appeared on the stoop one night, apparently.”

I catch myself before I say more and shift the conversation. “What did you like to do,” I ask, to distract her, “before this?”

She blinks rapidly. “What does it matter?” she murmurs, but then her mouth quirks, almost against her will. “I used to read. Not that there are many books in the lower rings. I read every one I could find, then read them all again and again.”

I nod in understanding. “I’ve never been much of a reader. I’ve been swinging a sword for the last couple of years.”

She glances at me, her eyes filled with sympathy, but she shakes it off. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to fight,” she admits. “I’m good with a dagger, but I can hardly feel my Mana, even without the bands.”

I want to tell her there’s still a chance, but I don’t have the spirit to lie to her.

We fall silent after that. The bridge stretches endlessly ahead through pale fog and shifting light, disappearing somewhere beyond the horizon. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other and try not to think about how far away the Dominion already feels.

Eventually Marissa speaks again.

“What do you think it’s really like?”

“The Rites?”

She nods.

None of us answer immediately, because the truth is painfully simple.

We don’t know. Not really.

We know stories and fragments. Rumours whispered in dorms and barracks after dark by people trying to scare each other. Fire that melts steel. Shadows opening where no shadows should exist.

The Blessed teach us the rules of the Blood Rites from childhood, but never the truth of them.

Eighteen Offerings. Three from each Dominion. One survivor. Everything beyond that feels half-mythical.

“They say the Fireborn can burn people alive from the inside out,” Marissa says quietly.