Page 29 of The Blood Rites

Even from this distance, I can feel the weight of his attention moving across the room. I look away before he catches me staring again.

The Waterborn occupy the quietest corner of the Dome. While everyone else trains, they kneel together near one of the walls with their heads bowed slightly, murmuring soft prayers beneath their breath.

At first glance, they seem strangely detached from the tension gripping the rest of us.

Then one of them looks up. She rises smoothly to her feet and begins walking towards us.

Marissa notices first. “She’s coming over here.”

The woman moves with an unsettling sort of grace, each step slow and measured as though the air itself parts willingly around her. Unlike most of us, she isn’t wearing the uniform provided by the Embrace. Flowing blue fabric drapes around her body instead, threaded with silver embroidery and tiny pearl-like shells that catch the light whenever she moves.

Up close, she looks more woman than girl, beautiful, in a distant sort of way. But there’s something unnerving about her eyes. They glisten and probe, like they’re peeling back the layers of my mind.

She stops directly in front of me.

“You are troubled,” she says softly.

Her voice barely rises above the noise of the Dome, yet I hear every word clearly.

I glance at Marissa, uncertain whether she’s speaking to all of us or only me.

The Waterborn woman studies my face carefully before her gaze drifts lower, towards my chest.

“Your Mana is restless,” she whispers, only to me. “It moves strangely.”

Cold unease curls low in my stomach. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.” The words sound uncomfortably familiar after this morning.

She lifts one pale hand slowly towards me, palm open, and instinct makes me step backwards before she can touch me.

For the first time, something shifts in her expression. She isn’t angry, but—surprised.

Gently, she reaches forward again and places her hand flat against the centre of my chest. Her skin is freezing, and I suck in a sharp breath as something beneath my ribs reacts violently to the contact.

Mana pulses through me hard enough that my vision flickers gold for half a second.

The woman recoils immediately—not dramatically, but her eyes widen slightly as she stares at me with something dangerously close to alarm.

Around us, the Dome begins to quiet. People are watching.

“What’s wrong?” Marissa asks nervously.

The Waterborn woman doesn’t answer at first. Her gaze remains fixed on me as though she’s trying to understand something impossible.

Finally, she steps back.

“There is something unusual inside you,” she says quietly. “Your Mana churns like the deep ocean. You... resist it.”

The words are too close to a truth I’d rather avoid.

“My name is Lyssandra.”

“Luceris,” I reply automatically.

Her expression softens slightly at that, though uncertainty still lingers behind it. Before either of us can say anything else, laughter cuts sharply across the Dome.

The Fireborn.