Chapter 17 · Blood Debt

The red vial jumped inside the silver box.

Not metaphorically. It actually lifted half an inch off the velvet slot, rattling hard enough to make the tiny brass label click against the glass.

ELARA VOSS. SAMPLE FOUR.

Every person in the auction hall went dead quiet.

Then somebody near the back whispered, “Holy shit.”

I stared at the vial because looking at Dorian felt like a bad idea. Looking at the crowd felt worse. Forty masked buyers. Maybe more. Rich people in tailored suits, old monsters in antique jewelry, women with knives tucked into garters. All of them watching a tube of my mother’s blood glow like it had just remembered my name.

The red light pulsed once.

My palm burned.

Dorian’s arm tightened around my waist.

“Don’t touch it,” he said.

It came out rough. Not his usual cold, polished voice. This sounded dragged over broken glass.

I looked up at him anyway. “That’s my mother’s blood.”

“And that’s exactly why you don’t touch it.”

His face had gone too pale under the auction lights. Silver burn crawled from the open tear in his shirt, dark veins branching from the wound below his ribs.