A Shade of Vampire 81 A Bringer of Night - Bella Forrest Page 0,76

in your system.”

Valaine glanced up at me. “So, death magic has been around for longer than we’d thought. Right? If it’s related to the Black Fever, it means at least four or five million years.”

“That would be correct, yes,” I said. “And I wonder if it’s got something to do with the Darklings rather than with you.”

Derek raised an eyebrow at me. “You think the Darklings started this? What would be the point of them pretending to be the saviors, then? Why would they be so hell-bent on killing Valaine to supposedly stop the Black Fever?”

It was my turn to surrender to intellectual despair. No matter how we looked at it, the pieces didn’t fit. The motivations, the science, the mythology… nothing clicked together in a coherent way, and we’d speculated long enough. More Aeternae were getting sick, and sooner than expected.

We watched as Amal and Amane extracted the blood samples they needed from the glass vials, releasing tiny droplets for microscopic studies. I couldn’t say anything more as anxiety thickened my blood, but I could at least offer Valaine some comfort. I took her hand in mine and held it for a while.

She gazed up at me, and Derek and Sofia moved closer to one another. The silence was almost deafening as the fates seemed to align and prepare something else for us. It was just a feeling I got sometimes—and unfortunately it was usually accurate. Something was brewing in our near future, and I felt we’d all survive it only if we stuck together.

“Thank you for everything, Tristan,” Valaine said, her gaze refusing to leave me. “I will be forever grateful for your presence, your support, your protection…”

“It’s been my pleasure,” I replied. “But something tells me this is just the beginning. You might save some of those thanks for later. I’m confident I’ll have some thanks of my own by the time this is over.”

We both laughed, but our humor faded as Amal came back from the microscope table with a grim look on her face. “I found it.”

“You found what?” Sofia asked, her blue eyes crystallized with fear.

“Traces of the curse, if we’re still calling it that,” Amal replied. “It’s not the virus itself, rest assured. It’s not contagious in any way. It’s just… trace elements of death magic. Purer than what we found in the Black Fever patients, which we attributed to mazir. There is definitely a link here. The element in Valaine’s blood is purer, stronger, but not deadly. Not even infectious. The element in the Black Fever patients was harder to identify, but lethal.”

Amane frowned. “Their shape and general appearance remind me of the samples we lifted from Thieron that time Taeral let us examine Death’s weapon.”

Either the room got cold, or my own temperature had just dropped. Valaine was understandably confused. At least the rest of us knew what Amal and Amane were talking about—in layman’s terms, anyway.

“I don’t understand,” Valaine said. “I don’t have the Black Fever?”

“You have something that the Black Fever also has,” Amane explained. “A single particle present in your bloodstream. We’re not sure what it does or why you have it. We’d need to study it further, but we do know it’s likely death magic. It took me a while to remember where I’d seen something like this before.”

Amal nodded slowly. “On Thieron. This might mean mazir is somehow derived from death magic.”

Derek let a deep sigh leave his chest. We’d been doing a lot of that lately. “Then death magic is definitely involved in the propagation of Black Fever,” he concluded.

“And I’m somehow connected to it?” Valaine asked, looking at each of us with a mixture of anguish and hope. Maybe we’d tell her differently. But we couldn’t. We were all on the same blasted page.

“Maybe the Darklings know more about this,” I said. “About a connection between you and the Black Fever. Maybe it has to do with this element, and they don’t have all the facts, just this blind conviction that if they kill you, they stop it.”

“It’s been going on for so long. I’m not even that old…”

“Valaine, don’t despair yet,” Amal said. “Let us study your blood for a few more days. My sister and I can splice your DNA and get to the bottom of it. We just need more time.”

“We have to verify the Darklings’ assertions about you,” Amane added. “And if what they say turns out to be true, then we’ll just work together to put an end to