Chapter 44

Within a mist-veiled temple, Zevander overhears an old man beg a red-robed official to spare his granddaughter from burning. Learning Sacton Crain ordered the execution, Zev follows the official upstairs, finds Crain in bed with a whipped young girl, and uses the exitiusz glyph to choke and threaten Crain into releasing the condemned at dawn.

Seeking assurance the prisoner lives, Zev calls for a vision and arrives in a herb-scented bedroom with two beds and hanging sachets. A cloaked intruder—revealed by his eyes and veined mask to be an older Zev—examines a black, scaled egg glowing violet, then turns black flame on a sleeping girl. Zev shields her, confirming a feathered, metallic mark on her arm.

Realizing the attacker is his future self, Zev counters with flame and the scorpion glyph, feeling their shared pain. The older Zev wavers between fascination and lethal intent, finally drawing a blade. As Zev lunges, Alastor hurls Zev against the wall, holding him while the masked older Zev presses steel to the girl’s throat. She wakes, meets his unrecognizing gaze, and the attacker vanishes in smoke.

Demanding answers, Zev asks about the mark. Alastor says Zev changed her fate—once a mortal, now claimed by death—and warns that taking from fate exacts a price. Zev insists she is his mate and a sign of his destined freedom and restored power; Alastor derides him as unworthy and chattel, arguing she was only a divine whim.

When Zev begs for her name, Alastor instead smothers the memory. Darkness swallows the scene as Alastor methodically strips away the girl’s face, scent, and voice from Zev’s mind, leaving him to believe she died at the stake and compelling him to sleep.