Chapter 21 · The Blood Test Bites

"Stop the test." The chief judge was already on his feet. "Stop it now."

Valen's blood hit the crystal basin and the frost came with it. Not surface cold. Bone cold. The kind that crawled up from the place where they'd burned the mark off ten years ago. Blue light climbed his forearm, tracing lines that shouldn't be there, and he thought, well, shit.

The female judge—the one who'd seen Eliza light up the archive—didn't move. She stared at his arm like she was watching a corpse sit up.

"It's incomplete," she said. Her voice carried. "The mark was severed. But the bloodline responds."

Valen tried to pull back. The basin held him. Not his hand. His blood. Magic, the old kind, the kind written into the Trials three centuries back when Frostblade kings still ran the whole North.

The crowd noise started low. A murmur. Then someone shouted and it spread.

"Royal blood."

"He's got the mark."

"That's not Carlos."

Valen looked up. Eliza was on her feet, face white, eyes locked on his. He saw the calculation there. Fast math. The kind you do when all your options are bad and you've got three seconds to pick one.