Page 19 of The Blood Rites

The room watches him carefully, but he moves through the attention like it means nothing.

His gaze lands on me, and the effect is immediate and deeply unpleasant. I feel suddenly visible in a way I haven’t felt in years, like every ugly secret inside me has been dragged into the light without my permission.

Heat crawls sharply up the back of my neck.

I want to look away. I should.

Instead, I keep staring half a second too long.

His expression barely changes, but something cold settles in his eyes. Curiosity? No—assessment. The kind someone gives a thing they’ve already decided is weak.

My stomach twists painfully, then, just as suddenly, he looks away. The pressure disappears with it, and only then do I realise I’ve stopped breathing.

Beside me, Marissa shifts closer. “We’re going to die,” she whispers.

I don’t ask what she means because I thought the same.

I raise my eyes to the crystal ceiling. The light above flickers and pulses, mirroring the wild beating of my heart.

Get it together. Breathe.

The Shadowborn move towards the far side of the chamber without speaking to anyone. The dark-haired boy folds his arms loosely across his chest as he leans back against the marble wall, posture relaxed enough to seem careless.

But his eyes never stop moving as he watches, calculating.

I understand instantly that he is the most dangerous person in the room. Every instinct in me whispers the same thing: Stay away from him.

And somehow, far more disturbing than that realisation, is the fact that part of me wants to keep looking at him anyway.

Five

Without warning, the Overseers begin to emerge through the walls of the Embrace.

One moment the chamber is still, aside from the soft spill of the fountain. The next, dark shapes drift soundlessly through marble and crystal alike, their forms phasing into existence around the edges of the room.

Conversation dies immediately.

There are more of them this time—at least a dozen. They spread outwards with unsettling precision, forming a loose circle around all eighteen of us. Organised and deliberate, like spokes in a wheel, they herd us.

Nobody needs to be told to move.

The Offerings instinctively fall back towards their own Dominions, forming uneasy little clusters around the chamber. Marissa moves closer to me immediately, and Callen positions himself slightly behind us both without saying a word.

Across the room, the Fireborn remain near the fountain, broad shoulders loose and relaxed as they watch everyone else react. They look almost entertained. The Shadowborn seem equally unconcerned, standing apart from the others with the same quiet self-possession they carried when they entered the chamber, while the rest of us look frightened enough to make up for it.

Marissa’s fingers brush mine before finally slipping into my hand completely. Her grip trembles despite the effort she’s clearly making to hide it.

I squeeze back automatically. It’s meant to reassure her, though I’m not certain I believe the gesture myself.

Without meaning to, my gaze finds him again.

The Shadowborn boy stands with his arms folded loosely across his chest, his posture relaxed enough to seem careless. The others keep glancing towards the Overseers. He watches everyone else instead, not nervously but cautiously, calculating as though he is already trying to decide which of us will survive long enough to become inconvenient.

Maybe he feels me staring, because his head turns slightly, and our eyes meet.

The contact lasts barely a second before I look away, but it still sends something sharp and unpleasant through my chest. Heat crawls beneath my skin, sudden and disorienting.

My heartbeat stutters, and I hate how aware of him I already am.