Chapter 3
The elder picked up the dagger and walked back to the altar.
The blade found the last blood vessel still connecting my Bloodcore to my body.
When that final vessel snapped, I heard a tiny cracking sound. It didn't come from my body. It came from deep inside the Bloodcore.
Everyone froze.
Golden light started seeping from the wound in my belly, first a thin thread, then a stream, and finally, it poured out like a flood.
The dagger flew out of the elder's hand, and the light burned his palm.
He screamed and stumbled back. "What is this?" he shouted.
Shawn's eyes went wide in shock.
The light kept pouring from my Bloodcore and rushed through every vessel in my body. Everywhere it touched, the severed vessels started knitting back together at an insane speed.
But that wasn't right. They weren't just healing. They were becoming something new.
A power I had never felt before was waking up inside me. It had been buried at the deepest core of my Bloodcore, held down by layers of seals for many years.
The moment the dagger cut through that last vessel, the seals lost their anchor and fell apart completely.
The pain was incredible, much worse than everything I had felt before, but it wasn't the kind of pain that would break me. It felt like being born again.
Shawn took a step back. In eight hundred years, I had never seen him back away from anything.
The elder conducting the ritual scrambled to his feet, his face a mess of shock and confusion.
"The Ancient Bloodline," he muttered. "No, that can't be right. The Nosferatu Coven is just a minor branch. There's no way they carry the Ancient Bloodline."
Lila's smile dropped off her face. She squeezed the crystal vial so hard that her knuckles went white.
Golden light surged through my body, and I could feel myself changing from the inside out.
My Bloodcore wasn't being ripped away from me. It was reforming. The old one shattered, and a new one formed in its place, a hundred times stronger than before.
But the price was my child.
The baby whose heart blood had been taken from it used its last breath of life to light the fuse of the Ancient Bloodline inside me.
My child died so I could live.
Cracks began to spread across the barrier that had sealed the altar.
Shawn finally reacted. "Stephen, the Golden Thorn Chains," he ordered.
Stephen pulled a golden chain covered in thorns from his belt. It was the royals' ultimate weapon for crushing rebellious vampires.
The thorns would dig into a vampire's veins and shut down their power from the inside.
Stephen swung the chain at me.
The golden thorns sank into my wrist.
In that moment, the Ancient Bloodline inside me fought back on its own.
The chains broke.
I didn't break them by struggling. The power inside me tore them apart from within.
Stephen's face twisted with shock.
Shawn watched the broken Golden Thorn Chains hit the floor and went silent for several seconds.
"Seal off the entire ritual hall," he ordered, his voice cold and steady again.
But I noticed that he had moved to stand in front of Lila.
The gates of the ritual hall slammed shut. Dense sealing runes flickered to life all over the sturdy black iron surfaces.
The six elders all stood up at once and formed a circle around me, pointing their staves in my direction.
But I didn't look at any of them.
I looked at Lila standing behind Shawn and at the crystal vial in her hand, the one that held my child's heart blood.
Then I smiled.
Shawn frowned. In eight hundred years, he had never seen me smile like that.
I sat up, and the wound in my belly healed itself in seconds as the golden light wove my flesh back together.
Cain was still pinned down by the seals below the altar. He jerked his head up and stared at the golden light blazing around me.
The tips of the six elders' staves began to shake.
"Shawn," I called out.
My voice wasn't loud, but every vampire in the hall heard every word clearly.
Each syllable carried the crushing weight of the Ancient Bloodline, and that pressure forced every lesser vampire in the hall to their knees.
Stephen dropped to his knees with blood and sweat running down his face, and four out of the six elders collapsed on the spot.
Shawn clenched his jaw and forced himself to stay standing, but his knees were shaking.
Lila couldn't handle it. She was mortal, and the weight of the Ancient Bloodline hit her like a death sentence. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth as her body gave out.
Shawn caught her before she fell. With everything falling apart, he was still protecting Lila.
As I watched, the very last piece of hope I had been holding onto shattered completely.
I was done holding back.
I raised my right hand and spread my fingers.
Golden power surged from my palm like a flood, wrapping around the crystal vial in Lila's hand with perfect accuracy.
The vial slipped from her weak fingers and flew straight into my grip.
My child's heart blood was back in my hands.
Shawn's expression changed in an instant. It wasn't fear or anger. It was pure madness.
"Give it back to me," he screamed. Then he drew his sword and charged straight at me.
I rose from the altar with the crystal vial clenched in my hand.
As golden light exploded around me, a crack split open across the dome of the ritual hall.
Moonlight poured through the crack and washed over me, and it wasn't the usual silver glow but a deep bloody red.
It was the Blood Moon.