The grand obsidian hall of the Spire thrummed with residual magic, the air thick and cloying. The baptism pool at its center—once a sacred font for noble baptisms—lay empty now, its black marble lip still glistening with the viscous evidence of last night's mass breeding.
Puddles of mingled seed and female slick pooled in the low spots, catching the torchlight like obscene mirrors. Hundreds of noble eyes watched from the tiered galleries above, wives and daughters pressed shoulder to shoulder, their silken gowns torn open at the chest and crotch from the previous rituals.
The husbands—those few who still drew breath as "husbands"—knelt in a ragged circle at the pool's edge, wrists and ankles already raw from the iron manacles Aiden had left them in overnight. The widows stood among them, heads high, their leashes empty but their daughters collared and trembling at their sides.
