Blood Heir (Blood Heir Trilogy #1)(73)

Nobody moved.

Suddenly, behind the intruder, from the depths of the night, a second man stepped into view. “I’m afraid I’m going to need all of you to return to the Playpen.”

The man’s pale blond hair caught the lamplight, and his eyes shone a bleached blue. It was as though all the color and life had been drained from him, and the sight sent a surge of fury through Ana.

It was the broker. She recalled the blackstone doors of the carriage that slammed in her face, the faint trace of May’s shadow over his shoulders as he’d carried her away.

He’d stood on that stage in the Playpen, watching countless Affinites forced to perform and fight to the death.

And then he’d ordered the attack on them backstage. Kill her, Nuryasha.

Ana thought of May’s body in her arms, so light and so helpless.

I want to live.

And now May was buried in the silent earth for eternity.

Wrath wrapped its white-hot grasp around her, and suddenly she was shaking, her anger roiling and pent-up grief spilling from her.

May would never live again.

And it was all…his…fault.

Ramson’s arms locked around her waist, but she hurled him off with a snap of her Affinity. By the time he slammed against the settee, Ana had thrown back the curtains and stepped into the living room.

She lifted the first broker bodily into the air with barely half a thought. She was one with her Affinity; it moved at her slightest thought like a phantom arm, an extension of her body. The broker’s dagger thunked to the wooden floorboards; he made a gagging sound as she seized the blood in his body, interrupting the natural flow to and from his heart.



She was all too aware that she was dressed in nothing but a slim black gown, her cloak and hood left in the backroom and her velvet gloves torn and discarded at the Playpen. The man in the air struggled, twitching like a broken puppet, his face slowly draining of color, his eyes rolling back into his head.

Ana flung him aside. He crashed into the far wall with a crack and lay still. Dimly, Ana heard several screams from the Affinites, saw Yuri dive for the Affinite girl and bundle her behind the settee.

Ana stepped past them.

The pale-eyed broker stood in the doorway. He held a single dagger, but it trembled in his hands as he beheld her.

She was breathing hard, her vision bleeding red, her head buzzing as she pointed a shaking hand at him. The veins in her hands had grown dark and raised from her flesh, snaking around her palms and wrists, extending to her elbows. Grotesque and gruesome, lit by lamplight for everyone in the room to see.

Ana didn’t care. Her fury was a living thing, turning the world red and distorted.

The broker dropped to his knees. He shook visibly, a sheen of sweat coating his face. “P-please,” he whispered. “Kerlan, he’ll kill me—”

He never finished his sentence. Ana wrapped her Affinity around him and lifted him into the air. He’d killed May. She wanted, more than anything, to rip him apart, to bleed him dry drop by drop and watch him suffer—



“Ana!” She heard her name as though from a distance. Someone knocked into her from behind.

They crashed to the floor, and she found herself pinned beneath Ramson. He was panting, blood seeping from his reopened wound through the bandages on his abdomen. He slammed her hands to the floor, his full weight on her. “Control yourself,” he snarled. “Think.”

“Get off me!” she screamed.

“We need answers. Who sent him? How did he find us? Can we ally with him—”

“Get. Off. Me.” She spat the words at him.

Ramson’s eyes bore into hers; his grip tightened around her wrists. “No.”

It was the trigger she’d been waiting for. Keeping her hold on the broker, she flung her Affinity at Ramson. He went still, his eyes widening and veins straining in his neck, at his temples, as she took control of his blood.

Ana threw him across the room.

She heard the thud of his body as he slammed against the far wall and crumpled to the floor. A part of her was aware of Yuri and the Affinites watching her, frozen from their hiding places behind Shama?ra’s divans.

Ana ignored them and turned back to the broker. He’d crumpled to the ground, but she easily lifted him again. A strange sense of calm descended upon her as she approached him. “Do you recognize me?” It was as though someone else spoke through her, pulling words through her lips.

The man hung suspended in the air, his body arched, his eyes bulging from his head. He opened his mouth to speak. Instead, blood trickled down his chin.



“No?” Ana continued her advance. A delicious feeling gripped her. “Perhaps you’ll remember the young earth Affinite you took in Kyrov. The child you put on show tonight. The one you murdered.”

Recognition lit the broker’s face. He struggled against her hold, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish out of water. Ana was a mere arm’s length away now; she could see the veins of his eyes erupting, red bleeding across the white. Blood gushed from his lips.

In that moment, she recalled the Salskoff Winter Market, the screams and the terror as her Affinity ripped the life from eight innocent people. She heard Luka’s voice—the voice of reason that had guided her hand and her Affinity.

Luka would counsel forgiveness.