BOUND BY BLOOD – Ivy Blackwood

It appeared in the restricted archive, once, as a marginal notation in one of the oldest Mercer catalogues — a single line in Morgana’s own hand, eight centuries old, in the precise and deliberate script of someone who wrote as though words were expensive and should not be wasted: Mirror of Truth, Silverpeak, north approach, blood of the bloodline to enter, truth of the holder to leave. Nothing else.

No coordinates. No description of what Silverpeak was or where to find it. Lucian had found it in forty minutes. Rowan watched him work the atlas collection with the particular focus he brought to research tasks — not frantic, not impatient, simply systematic, moving through the problem with the same deliberate quality he brought to everything else. He identified it as a pre-dissolution monastery in the northern hills above Hollowmere’s valley, cross-referencing three separate historical records to pin its location to a specific ridge.

Pre-dissolution meant pre-Reformation, which meant centuries-old stonework and isolation and the specific quality of places that had been built for purposes other than accommodation and had kept that purposefulness in their bones regardless of who had come and gone since. They drove north in the late morning — Rowan, Lucian, and Beckett, which had been Cassian’s deployment decision and she had not argued with it. Beckett as physical security, Lucian as the trial-taker, herself as Mercer blood access. Theo at Hollowmere coordinating the continuing archive work on the bloodline branches, Cassian managing the outer defense and the Council loyalists.

The monastery appeared through the November tree line as a dark shape against a darker hillside — stone walls still standing despite the centuries, the main building intact though the outbuildings were collapsed, the whole site carrying the particular quality of places that had been left alone long enough to become something other than simply abandoned. Not haunted. More purposeful than that. Like something waiting.

Three days after Morgana Mercer drained the magic from her bones, Rowan could almost lift a teacup without her hands shaking. She counted this as progress. The recovery wing of Hollowmere’s infirmary occupied the east end of the ground floor, far enough from the main student corridors that you couldn’t hear the life of the academy going on without you, which was either a mercy or a cruelty depending on how you chose to look at it.

Rowan had been staring at the same ceiling for seventy-two hours — stone vaulted, very old, with the faint traces of ward-work embedded in the mortar, glowing the barest ember-orange when anyone with active magic came near. The glow had been dim since they’d arrived. All five of them, dragged back across the country with their magic running at half-register, the bond between them present but muted, like a signal transmitted through interference. She could feel each of them. That much still worked. Four specific warmths in her chest, occupying their specific positions: Cassian to the upper left, steady and compressed, the way he felt when he was managing something privately and didn’t want it to travel through the bond.

Beckett lower right, less contained — she could feel the frustration radiating off him in slow waves, the particular texture of a man not built for inactivity who had been forcibly inactivated. Theo was the warmth directly in the centre, the one that felt most like him regardless of circumstance, easy and warm even when he was tired. And Lucian: her lower left, cool and precise, the bond between them carrying that specific quality of someone who had already finished thinking through everything that was going to happen and was simply waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

She loved them. Even when she was furious at the circumstances that had produced that love, even when everything felt impossible and enormous and far beyond what one woman should have to carry — she loved them. The bond had been built by her mother as an act of design, but what lived inside it now was theirs. The door to the recovery wing opened. Rowan didn’t have to look up to know who it was.

The bond didn’t register her at all — she moved through the world like someone who existed outside the circuit, unconnected, and three days of her presence in the infirmary had done nothing to make it less disorienting. The footsteps were quiet. Deliberately so. Elena Mercer set a cup of tea on the table beside Rowan’s bed with the careful precision of someone who had been practicing the gesture.

Practicing consideration, Rowan thought.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 7e1993389ac214a4
• File Extension: .pdf
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• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 184
• Language: English (en)

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• Total Words: 58,912
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