Chapter 27: Pride and Prejudice
The warehouse door hissed shut behind Liana, sealing her into a different world. The quiet, dusty antiquity of Elmsire’s shop was violently replaced by the cavernous, echoing din of Sera’s training facility. The air here didn’t smell of ozone and old paper; it smelled of sweat, polished concrete, and the sharp, clean scent of charged ozone from active magic. The sound was a percussion of grunts, shouted commands, and the distinct thwump of something heavy hitting a reinforced target.
She spotted Sera across the main gym floor. The Aasimar was a pillar of focused motion, drilling a sequence with a long, silver-tipped spear against a holographic combat dummy that shimmered with each strike. Even from a distance, Liana could see the renewed vigor in her movements. The pallor from her poisoning was gone, replaced by a radiant, almost intimidating vitality. Her silver hair was tied back in a severe braid, and her golden eyes tracked the dummy’s projected movements with lethal precision.
Liana waited, shifting her weight. She felt the phantom ache in her sinuses from the Enochian text, the weight of Matthias’s last text message still a warm, confusing brand in her memory. Support… and love. She shoved the thought down, locking it away with the image of the lead-lined vault. This wasn’t the place for that.
Sera finished the sequence with a brutal thrust that made the hologram pixelate and die. She turned, not even breathing heavily, and skewered Liana with that golden gaze. A flicker of something—approval?—crossed her stern features.
“Carter. You’re late.”
“Traffic on the Dan Ryan was its own special kind of abomination,” Liana said, walking over. The casual deflection felt thin.
“Hmm.” Sera leaned her spear against a rack. “While I was… recuperating, I reviewed the field reports from the incident at the pumping station. Yours included.”
Liana’s stomach tightened. Her own report had been a masterclass in omission. Experienced surge of unknown energy. Collaborated with Thorne to repel entity. Blacked out. It was all technically true.
“You acquitted yourself adequately,” Sera stated, the words sounding like high praise from her. “You didn’t freeze. You leveraged the resources at hand. The entity was repelled, and the Veil held.” She picked up a towel, wiped her neck. “Adequate for a first field engagement against a Class-Three Amalgam.”
“Adequate,” Liana repeated, a spark of defiance cutting through her anxiety. “It felt a bit more like barely surviving.”
“That’s what ‘adequate’ means in our line of work,” Sera said, a ghost of something almost like humor touching her lips. It vanished quickly. “However. The method concerns me.”
Here it comes.
Sera stepped closer, her voice dropping, though the gym’s noise provided ample cover. “The report indicates you and Thorne channeled your energies in tandem. A combined working. Is that accurate?”
Liana nodded, her throat dry. “It was the only thing that worked. My light, his… shadows. They twisted together. It pushed the thing back.”
“I’ve seen the residual spectral analysis,” Sera said, her tone turning cold and clinical. “The fusion was effective. Brutally so. It is also a profound mistake.”
“Why?” Liana asked, the question bursting out. “It saved lives. It worked.”
“Because their essence is a corruption!” Sera’s voice remained low, but the intensity in it made Liana take a half-step back. The Aasimar’s golden eyes glowed, just for a second, with an inner light. “You are a font of nascent celestial power, Liana. Unformed, unschooled, but fundamentally of the light. It is a creative, sustaining force. Their power is born of consumption, of entropy. It is a void that mimics substance. Letting that shadow intertwine with your light…” She searched for a metaphor, frustration etching her face. “It is like using sewage to water a sapling. The plant might grow, twisted and feverish, but it is poisoned at the root.”
The vehemence was startling. Liana thought of Matthias’s hands on her shoulders in the pumping station, cold and strong. The way their powers had felt—not like poison, but like a shocking, dark harmony. “It didn’t feel corrupting. It felt… necessary.”
“That is how corruption works,” Sera shot back. “It offers you strength when you are weak. It feels like a solution. It is a transaction where the cost is hidden in the fine print, written in your own soul.” She blew out a sharp breath, reining herself in. “You are new to this. You cannot be expected to understand the metaphysical antipathy. But you must trust me. That kind of synergy is forbidden for a reason. It leaves a mark on you. It attracts attention from places you do not want looking your way.”
Liana thought of the text message again. Of the possessive warmth in his gaze. That was attention, wasn’t it? “What kind of mark?”
Sera’s eyes narrowed, scanning Liana’s face as if reading a ledger. “A signature. A dissonant note in your energy signature that other things can hear. The Abomination you fought was mindless hunger. Other things are not. They are cunning. They will see a light entwined with shadow and think it is a light that can be extinguished, or worse, claimed.” She paused, a new suspicion dawning. “Has he contacted you? Since the incident?”
The directness was a trapdoor beneath Liana’s feet. She could lie. She should lie. Sera’s prejudice was clear, and her own feelings were a tangled mess she couldn’t explain. But the Aasimar’s gaze was like a physical weight.
“He… checked in,” Liana said, evading. “To see if I was alright.”
Sera’s expression hardened into something like disappointed granite. “I see. And you responded.”
“It seemed rude not to.”
“Rudeness is a luxury,” Sera said, turning away to pick up two wooden practice daggers. She tossed one to Liana, who caught it clumsily. “Survival is the necessity. Today, we work on containment. On focusing your power inward, into a shield, not outward into a weapon. Especially not a weapon fused with vampiric magic.”
The training was relentless. Sera had her meditate in the middle of the roaring gym, forcing her to block out the chaos and find the core of light within herself. It was maddeningly difficult. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Enochian script or felt the memory of cold hands on her skin.
“Focus, Carter! It is not a flickering candle. It is a sun. Find its gravity!”
After an hour of futile attempts, her frustration peaked. A weight dropped nearby with a deafening crash. Liana flinched, and a pulse of jagged, gold-tinged energy burst from her in a uneven sphere, shoving the air outward with a sound like a thunderclap.
The gym fell silent for three full seconds.
Sera, who had not moved an inch, looked at the dissipating energy, then at Liana’s heaving chest. “That was not a shield. That was a tantrum.”
“I’m trying,” Liana gritted out, sweat stinging her eyes.
“Try with discipline, not with emotion.” Sera walked a slow circle around her. “Your power is tied to your emotional state. That is a vulnerability. That thing at the pumping station? It fed on fear, on panic. What do you think a vampire’s power feeds on?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Desire. Longing. Hunger. The deeper, more complex emotions. The ones you are clearly wrestling with now.”
Liana felt exposed, raw. “So what am I supposed to do? Be a robot?”
“Be in control,” Sera said, stopping in front of her. “The first lesson is always control. Until you have it, you are a hazard to everyone, especially yourself.” She nodded toward the practice dagger Liana had dropped. “Again. From the center. Not from the heart. The center.”
The next two hours were a blur of aching muscles and psychic fatigue. Just as Liana felt a faint, steady hum of power consolidating within her—a dense, warm point behind her sternum—Sera called a halt.
“Enough. You’re about to blow a circuit.” She handed Liana a bottle of water. “You made progress. The final pulse had a defined boundary. It was a shape, not an explosion.”
Liana drank greedily, the praise, however backhanded, feeling like a lifeline. “So I’m not a complete disaster?”
“You are a controlled disaster in training,” Sera corrected, but the edge was gone from her voice. She looked at Liana, truly looked at her, seeing the dark circles under her eyes that had nothing to do with physical training. “The reports also mentioned you healed a human security guard. Fully. After Thorne had fed from him.”
Liana froze, the bottle halfway to her lips. “He was dying.”
“I know.” Sera’s gaze was inscrutable. “That is a profound ability, Liana. One that must remain absolutely secret. Do you understand? Not a word to anyone outside this facility. The Council must not know its full extent yet.”
The sudden shift to protection was confusing. “Why?”
“Because gifts like that,” Sera said softly, “are not just gifts. They are targets. They are commodities. Every faction would want to own you, to use you, or to eliminate you if they couldn’t.” She leaned in. “You think the vampires are the only ones with shadows? We all have them. Even the light casts them.”
The warning echoed Elmsire’s in a different key. Liana felt the walls of her world narrowing, the safe spaces shrinking to just this brutal gym and a dusty bookshop. “Noted.”
“Good.” Sera straightened up, her enforcer’s mask sliding back into place. “Now go home. Sleep. And Carter?” Liana turned. Sera’s expression was grim. “Rudeness is a luxury. Start indulging in it. With certain parties.”
Liana left the facility, the chill evening air a shock on her sweaty skin. Sera’s words warred with the memory of Matthias’s text, with the addictive feeling of their combined power. A poison at the root.
Her phone buzzed in her bag. She didn’t need to look to know who it was. The vibration seemed to sync with the new, steady hum of power inside her—a hum that, for a terrifying and thrilling moment, she imagined she could darken with a single, willing thought.