The penthouse felt like a tomb made of glass and moonlight.
Lyra stood in the center of the training hall, her breath misting in the artificial chill Lucian maintained. He had stripped her of her leather jacket, leaving her in a thin black tank top that did nothing to hide the frantic pulsing of the Anchor Node. The geometric brand on her chest was no longer silver; it had turned a violent, bruised purple, throbbing in time with a headache that felt like a tectonic plate shifting behind her eyes.
"Again," Lucian commanded.
He stood twenty feet away, his arms crossed over his chest. He had shed his shirt, revealing a torso of marble-white muscle scarred by centuries of battles she couldn't imagine. On his back, a tattoo of a weeping willow seemed to move in the dim light, its branches swaying as if caught in a ghost wind.
"I can't," Lyra rasped. Her vision was blurring. "It feels like I'm swallowing needles, Lucian. Every time I try to 'pull' the energy, it bites back."
"That is because you are fighting the flow," Lucian said, his voice a low, instructional growl. He moved toward her, his footsteps making no sound on the polished obsidian floor. "The Node is a river. You are trying to build a dam with your bare hands. Stop trying to contain it. Let it erode you."
"Erode me? It'll kill me!"
Lucian stopped inches from her. The coldness radiating from him was the only thing keeping her upright. "It will only kill the girl who walked through Soho. That girl is already dead, Lyra. The sooner you stop grieving for her, the sooner you survive the night."
He reached out, his hand hovering over the glowing mark. The air between his palm and her skin began to spark with static. "The High Consistory is currently tracking the thermal signature of your soul. If you don't learn to 'mask' the output by evening, they will drop a kinetic strike on this building before I can even draw my blade. Now. Reach for the Void. Pull the thread."
Lyra closed her eyes. She reached inward, past the fear, into the white-hot center of her chest. It felt like sticking her hand into a furnace. She found the "thread"—a jagged, vibrating cord of power and pulled.
The world screamed.
A wave of kinetic force erupted from her. It wasn't a blast this time; it was a distortion. The heavy obsidian training dummies at the edge of the room didn't just break; they folded into themselves, crushed by a sudden spike in gravity. The windows of the penthouse groaned, the reinforced glass spider-webbing under the pressure.
Lyra fell to her knees, a strangled cry escaping her throat. The heat was unbearable now. It felt like her blood was boiling, turning into liquid silver that wanted to burst through her veins.
"Too much," she choked out. "Lucian... help..."
She felt him behind her instantly. His chest was a wall of ice against her back. He wrapped his arms around her, his large hands covering hers.
"The heat is the price," he whispered into her ear. "The Node generates, but it cannot ground itself. You are a circuit with no earth, Lyra. You're going to melt."
"Then fix it!" she cried, turning in his arms, her eyes wide with agony.
Lucian looked down at her, his silver eyes dark with an emotion she couldn't name. It wasn't pity. It was a terrifying, hungry sort of devotion.
"There is only one way to ground the Anchor," he said. "The Blood-Tether. I take the heat into my own veins. I become your earth. But once I do... you will never be able to hide from me again. You will feel my hunger as if it were your own. You will hear my thoughts in the spaces between your heartbeats."
"Do it," Lyra gasped, clutching his forearms. "I don't care. Just make it stop."
Lucian didn't hesitate. He tilted her head back, exposing the frantic pulse in her neck. He didn't look like a savior; he looked like a predator claiming his prize.
"Forgive me, Lyra," he murmured.
Then, his fangs sank into her skin.
The pain lasted for a heartbeat, a sharp, cold sting that was immediately drowned out by a sensation that made her soul catch fire. It wasn't like a medical procedure; it was a merger.
She felt the heat pouring out of her chest, traveling through her shoulders, and rushing into him. Lucian groaned against her neck, his body shuddering as he took the burden of the Node. For Lyra, it was like the sun had finally gone down after a thousand years of noon. The agonizing pressure vanished, replaced by a cool, dark honey that flowed through her veins.
But then, the side effect hit.
She saw his memories. A blur of black-and-white centuries. She saw him standing over a battlefield in 17th-century Europe, his sword dripping with blood. She saw him sitting alone in a throne room made of bone, his eyes full of a loneliness that could swallow the moon. And she felt his hunger not just for blood, but for her.
He wanted her light. He wanted the way she tasted like summer rain and forbidden sorcery. He wanted to wrap his shadows around her until the rest of the world vanished.
Lucian pulled away, his lips stained with a drop of glowing silver blood. His eyes were no longer silver; they were a shimmering, iridescent violet.
"It's done," he rasped, his voice thick.
Lyra slumped against him, her breath coming in shallow gasps. She looked up at him, her hand tracing the faint marks on her neck. She didn't feel violated. She felt... complete.
"I can feel you," she whispered, her eyes wide. "In my head. You're... you're so cold. Why are you so cold?"
"Because I have been dead a long time, Lyra," Lucian said, his hand lingering on her waist. "But your blood... it's like drinking the stars. It's too much for a monster like me."
He stood up, pulling her to her feet with a gentleness that contradicted the violence of his nature. "The tether is set. You are masked. The Inquisitors will only see a shadow where you stand."
"But they're still coming," she said.
"Let them," Lucian said, his hand moving to the hilt of the black glass dagger at his hip. "I've spent four hundred years bored. I think it's time I reminded this city why the House of Mourning is feared."
Suddenly, a red light began to strobe in the penthouse. A low-pitched siren wailed.
"Wards breached," a mechanical voice announced. "North terrace compromised."
Lucian's expression shifted instantly. The romantic tension vanished, replaced by a cold, surgical lethalness. He pushed Lyra toward a hidden alcove behind the obsidian bar.
"Stay there. Do not come out unless the floor stops shaking."
"Lucian, wait—"
"Stay, Lyra!" he roared, his voice booming with the power of a Prince.
The glass wall of the north terrace didn't shatter it dissolved. A squad of Inquisitor Elites, wearing heavy silver-plated armor and carrying rail-rifles, breached the room. They didn't use stairs or wires; they hovered on magnetic boots, their gold masks glowing with a predatory light.
"Prince Lucian," the lead Inquisitor announced. "By order of the High Consistory, you are charged with the harboring of a Class-A Heresy. Surrender the girl, and your execution will be swift."
Lucian stood in the center of the room, his black duster coat billowing in the wind rushing through the broken terrace. He didn't draw his sword. He just smiled.
"You brought twelve men?" Lucian asked, his voice conversational. "To my home? On a Tuesday?"
"We brought the Sun-Lance," the Inquisitor replied.
From the hole in the wall, a massive mechanical device began to hum. It gathered the ambient light of the city, focusing it into a beam of concentrated solar energy—the one thing that could turn a vampire to ash in seconds.
"Lyra, cover your eyes," Lucian commanded.
The Sun-Lance fired.
A beam of blinding white light slammed into the center of the room. Lyra screamed, shielding her face, expecting to hear Lucian's death cry.
Instead, she heard the sound of glass grinding against glass.
She peeked through her fingers. Lucian hadn't dodged. He was standing in the middle of the beam, his hand raised. But he wasn't burning. The silver blood he had taken from Lyra was acting as a shield. The Anchor Node's energy was flowing through him, turning his skin into a mirror that reflected the "Sun" back at the hunters.
"My turn," Lucian hissed.
He moved.
It wasn't a fight; it was a harvest. Lucian didn't just kill the Inquisitors; he dismantled them. He moved through the Sun-Lance beam like a ghost, his black glass dagger shearing through silver armor as if it were paper. He was a blur of violet eyes and black steel.
Lyra watched, horrified and fascinated. He was a monster a beautiful, terrifying monster who was murdering men to keep her safe. She felt every kill through the bond a sharp, cold spike of adrenaline that made her own heart race.
The lead Inquisitor tried to flee, his magnetic boots sparking as he scrambled toward the terrace. Lucian appeared in front of him, grabbing the man by the throat and lifting him off the ground.
"Tell the Consistory," Lucian whispered, his fangs fully extended. "Tell them that the Anchor is no longer a prize. She is a goddess. And I am her priest."
He threw the man through the broken glass, watching him fall fifty stories into the London fog.
Lucian turned back to the room. The penthouse was a wreck. Blood red and silver stained the obsidian floors. He walked toward Lyra's hiding spot, his breathing heavy, his chest covered in the dust of his enemies.
He stopped in front of her, his hand reaching out. He was shaking.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice cracking.
Lyra looked at the destruction, then at him. She reached out and took his hand. The spark was there, stronger than ever.
"I'm okay," she said. "But Lucian... the bond. I felt what you felt. You... you enjoyed that."
Lucian looked away, his jaw tightening. "I am a vampire, Lyra. I was made for the kill. If that terrifies you, you should leave now."
"I can't leave," she said, stepping out of the shadows and pulling him toward her. "We're tethered, remember? Your cold, my heat."
She reached up and wiped a smudge of blood from his cheek. "If you're a monster, then I guess I'm a monster's heart."
Lucian closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against hers. For a moment, the Prince of Mourning looked vulnerable. "They will send more. They will never stop."
"Then let them come," Lyra said, her voice growing stronger as the Anchor Node pulsed with a new, confident silver light. "We'll show them what happens when the door finally opens."