We Who Will Die

During a sparring session, the Primus² strikes Arvelle,¹ and she crumples — not from the blow but from a flood of memories. His tilted head, the cadence of his movements, the familiar way he cups her face when she falls. She claws at his helmet.

He clears the room and removes it. The face beneath is older, rougher, paler — but unmistakable. Tiernon.² Her childhood companion, her first love, the man who vanished without a word the night before the worst day of her life.

He'd been here the entire time, miles from the Thorn where she spent six years starving and grieving. When she tells him Kassia⁷ died in the arena above them, genuine shock cracks his composure. He demands to know why she's here. She can't answer — the bond seals her throat. All she can offer is fury.

The second challenge pairs Arvelle¹ with Baldric¹⁵ against a chained griffon. The creature is magnificent — gray-furred, golden-eyed, wings pinned by silver chains. While Baldric¹⁵ slashes and dances for the crowd, a voice enters Arvelle's¹ mind.

The griffon, Antigrus, asks her to kill him quickly rather than let him be butchered piece by piece. His dignity is all he has left. She agrees, shoving past Baldric¹⁵ to drive her sword into Antigrus's heart. His dying words — to use his gift well — make no sense yet. Baldric¹⁵ retaliates by stomping on her bad ankle, snapping it completely.

The emperor⁸ lifts his hand to signal her death, but Rorrik³ whispers in his ear and the thumb turns upward. Tiernon² carries her to private healers, and something has shifted: her sigil, dormant her entire life, has grown for the first time.

Healer Axia rebreaks Arvelle's¹ ankle and sets it properly while Tiernon² holds her hand through the agony. He offers his blood — the only way to speed healing — and she drinks, the intimacy unlocking memories of their younger selves sharing this same act.

The pain vanishes. For the first time in six years, she walks without a limp. Afterward, with her guard down, she lets him kiss her — a kiss saturated with years of longing and bitterness. Tiernon² hatches a plan to smuggle her out of the city, bribing a wall guard.

But the moment Arvelle¹ crosses the boundary, the vampire bond ignites — white-hot agony that drops her screaming to the ground. Bran's⁴ mark tethers her to the city like a chain staked through bedrock. She cannot leave until the emperor⁸ is dead. There is no escape.

The arena floor has vanished beneath an artificial sea. Gladians crew a warship against a boat of chained prisoners while silver-bridled kelpies patrol the depths. Arvelle¹ dives for shields and is dragged under by a kelpie.

Drowning, she stabs it in the eye, then slices through another kelpie's silver bridle — freeing it. The grateful creature carries her to the surface and ferries her across the arena. When a criminal fighter named Calena takes a bolt to the chest, Arvelle¹ dives back in to save her, refusing to let the woman drown.

The crowd erupts, naming Arvelle¹ after the goddess of mercy. The emperor⁸ is furious but cannot punish her without turning the people against him. The Sundering is over. Evren⁹ will be healed. Now she only has to kill the most powerful man alive.

At the Sundering Ball, Rorrik³ pulls Arvelle¹ aside. He knows about her mission and wants his father⁸ dead so he can claim the throne. He leads her through the palace, makes a blood vow of protection, and hides her beneath the floor of what she believes is the emperor's⁸ bedroom.

She waits hours in darkness. When the occupant falls asleep, she creeps out, slits his throat, and drives silver into his heart. She escapes through the palace as bells ring. Leon⁶ rescues her on horseback. Then he delivers the truth: the emperor⁸ is alive.

She turns numb. The man she killed was Tiberius Cotta¹⁶ — the kind sigilkeeper from the Thorn who sponsored her, whose weapons saved her life. Rorrik³ used his power to make Tiberius¹⁶ appear as the emperor.⁸ She murdered a good man, and Rorrik³ orchestrated every second.

After watching Rorrik³ and Tiernon's² strange, hostile silences — and the way the emperor⁸ pits them against each other — Arvelle¹ pieces it together: they're brothers. Tiernon² is the emperor's⁸ younger son, hiding behind the Primus title.

The realization recontextualizes everything — his childhood wealth, his refusal to discuss family, his immense power. Meanwhile, Arvelle¹ needs closer access to the emperor.⁸ She engineers a seat at the imperius card game — the same game Tiernon² taught her years ago in the Thorn. She reads every player's tells, wins favor after favor, and finally beats Rorrik³ himself.

She claims her prize: a novice position on the imperius. The spot was meant for Maeva,⁵ and Tiernon² is furious at the manipulation. But Arvelle¹ now stands within striking distance of the emperor,⁸ exactly where Bran's bond demands she be.

Arvelle¹ tells Tiernon² everything — Kassia's⁷ death, the mine explosion, her uncle's theft, her mother's suicide. He listens in devastated silence. Then she demands the truth he's been withholding. He gives it. The night before the Sands, his father⁸ arrested him and threw him in a dungeon.

For weeks, the emperor⁸ tortured his own son to extract the identity of the sigilmarked girl in the Thorn. Tiernon² never broke. The screaming permanently damaged his vocal cords — explaining the rough rasp she couldn't place.

He left without warning because returning would have meant her execution. He made her hate him to keep her alive. The revelation unravels six years of bitterness. That night, they fall into each other — not out of desperation, but recognition. Two people shattered by the same man, choosing each other again.

At the chariot races, mundane spectators chant against rising taxes. The emperor⁸ nods to his warden commander, who dispatches his men. They don't arrest anyone. They burn them alive — entire sections of stands engulfed in aether-powered flames.

Arvelle¹ and Maeva⁵ scramble to save two children whose parents are immolated feet away. Leon⁶ shields them with his wind. Below, chariot horses still thunder past corpses. Rorrik³ kills one of his own imperius, Lucius, on the emperor's⁸ orders — a punishment aimed at Tiernon² for the imperius failing to catch a vampire rebel.

When that same rebel attacks with an aether bomb, Arvelle¹ instinctively raises a shield — shimmering silver-blue, unmistakably griffon in origin. It saves the imperius from the blast. The few who see it swear silence, but the danger crystallizes: maginari power in sigilmarked hands means death.

Rorrik³ confronts Arvelle¹ with a devastating truth: she absorbs the powers of those she kills. The griffon shield and mindpathing came from Antigrus. The water she accidentally summoned came from Tiberius Cotta.¹⁶ Each death feeds her sigil's growth. The realization sickens her — she profits from murder.

Separately, Leon⁶ approaches with a folded piece of parchment he should have delivered six years ago: Kassia's letter, written the night before the Sands. In it, Kassia⁷ begs Arvelle¹ to find new friends, to let herself be happy, to live rather than endure.

She asks if Arvelle¹ can smell salt air, feel the sun, taste life. The answer, standing underground in the ludus, is no. Leon⁶ admits he withheld the letter from grief and blamed Arvelle¹ to avoid his own guilt. The confession breaks something loose between them — permission, at last, to mourn together.

Bran⁴ corners Arvelle¹ and activates the bond, sending waves of agony through her body. His ultimatum: kill the emperor⁸ publicly at the Vampire Council dinner, or her brothers die. That night, in full imperius armor, she stands behind the emperor's⁸ chair.

The compulsion becomes a roar in her blood — she pulls her knife, aims for the base of his skull. Rorrik's³ telekinesis seizes her wrist and twists. She drives the blade into her own thigh. He covers the incident by claiming he was toying with his brother's² pet soldier.

Afterward, Rorrik³ explains what she's been too close to see: Bran⁴ has been amplifying her impulses through the bond for months, making the urge to kill nearly irresistible. Every reckless moment — the Sundering Ball, this dinner — was partly Bran's⁴ manipulation. Her agency has been compromised since the night she was bitten.

Leon⁶ is found in his room with his ribs cracked open and his heart nearly extracted — the same mutilation that killed seven others in the ludus. He survives only because the paralytic poison failed to fully work on him.

While Leon⁶ fights for his life, Arvelle¹ descends to the maginari cages beneath the arena for answers. A gorgon shows her memories of the killer: Albion,¹⁴ Maeva's⁵ gentle guardant, who lost his son in the arena and his wife to vampires. Tiberius Cotta¹⁶ recruited him into a cult of Mortuus, god of ruin, promising the dead would return.

Albion¹⁴ believed. Arvelle¹ tracks him to the library, where he tries to sacrifice her and Jorah¹³ on a ritual sigil. Jorah¹³ buries a knife in Albion's¹⁴ shoulder, buying Arvelle¹ the second she needs to slash his throat.

Hester drugs Maeva⁵ before an arena exhibition fight. Arvelle¹ sees her friend swaying, bleeding, defenseless — and for one terrible instant sees Kassia⁷ dying all over again. She sprints into the arena, violating the rules. While she holds off Baldric,¹⁵ Maeva⁵ recovers enough to drive a sword through his back.

Arvelle¹ takes his head. The emperor⁸ punishes her rule-breaking by sending Rorrik³ in. He throws her across the sand, pins her, and sinks his fangs into her wrist — a public display of dominance. But Arvelle¹ recovers.

She presses a silver blade to his throat, and Rorrik³ drops to his knees, healing the wound with his tongue while the crowd watches the emperor's⁸ son kneel for a novice from the Thorn. Hester is fed to the emperor's⁸ lions. The spectacle of mercy and defiance becomes legend.

Tiernon² opens the door to his quarters, and Arvelle¹ breaks. Evren⁹ and Gerith¹⁰ are standing inside — taller, older, eyes wary but whole. Tiernon² worked with Carrick, Arvelle's¹ old friend from the Thorn, to locate them. Rorrik³ killed their captor Elva, removing the last barrier.

Evren's⁹ lungs are fully healed. Gerith's¹⁰ gold sigil has awakened — he can manipulate wind. They pile onto sofas and talk for hours, the twins showing off, Arvelle¹ memorizing their faces. But the reunion carries weight: she tells her brothers what she must do.

Gerith¹⁰ turns white and calls it impossible. Evren,⁹ the scholar, worries more about Mortuus — the imprisoned god of ruin whose followers have been killing people to weaken his cage. The boys are safe. But safety, in this empire, is always borrowed.

Vampire rebels bomb the arena during novice presentations, reducing the stands to rubble. Amid the carnage, Bran⁴ corners Arvelle¹ and reveals his final secret: he is the emperor's⁸ unacknowledged bastard son.

This entire scheme — the blackmail, the bond, the rebel alliance — was designed to frame Arvelle¹ and both princes for the emperor's⁸ assassination so Bran⁴ could seize the throne. He's been stalking Tiernon² since childhood, and was the one who alerted the emperor⁸ to his son's visits to the Thorn. Everything Arvelle¹ has suffered traces back to him.

Rorrik³ arrives on his wyvern. Bran⁴ surrenders a coveted red book in exchange for his life. Rorrik³ takes the book and rips out Bran's⁴ heart anyway. The bond shatters. For the first time in months, Arvelle's¹ thoughts are entirely her own. During the chaos, she and Maeva⁵ free the imprisoned maginari.

With Bran⁴ dead and the bond broken, Arvelle's¹ compulsion to kill the emperor⁸ fades to her own genuine hatred — quieter, but undimmed. Rorrik³ reveals why the red book matters: Mortuus is breaking free of his divine prison permanently, and the ancient text — written in the language of the gods — may hold the key to stopping him.

Arvelle¹ discovers she can read this language, her eyes bleeding as the words rearrange themselves on the page. Rorrik³ proposes a deal: she translates his texts, he trains her to control her stolen powers, and together with Tiernon² they prevent Mortuus from enslaving the world.

The emperor⁸ still lives. Arvelle's¹ brothers are hidden in the ludus. The maginari have escaped into the night. And three people who should be enemies strike an uneasy alliance at the edge of ruin.