Prologue

— The Last Blood Map of Saint Mercy

The water tastes of copper, drowned earth, and centuries of rot.

I spit a mouthful of the brackish Gulf surge over the rusted iron railing, my boots slipping on the slime-coated grating of the Old River Ward pumping station. The air is thick enough to choke on, heavy with the humid breath of the supernatural hurricane battering the city outside. Above me, the vaulted ceiling of the station is a ribcage of corroded brass and snapping cables. Below me, the arena floor is already gone, swallowed by a churning vortex of black water.

They call this a survival round. A tax collection. For the refugees of the sunken wards, it is simply an execution with an audience.

"Keep moving!" I scream over the deafening roar of the rising flood, waving a handful of terrified humans toward a set of precarious scaffolding. "Don’t look at the water! Look at the catwalk! Climb!"

A girl, no older than twenty, loses her grip on a slick ladder. She doesn’t even have time to scream before the undertow drags her beneath the frothing surface. My chest heaves, a phantom weight pressing down on my lungs. I lunge for her, my fingers grazing the wet fabric of her sleeve, but the current is a ravenous beast. She is gone, joining the dozens we have already lost in the last ten minutes.

I slam my fist against the brass railing, the jagged metal biting into my skin. It’s a small pain, grounding me against the overwhelming tide of panic. In my heavy canvas pocket, the rusted brass compass that once belonged to my mother bangs against my thigh—a useless, broken relic that hasn’t pointed north since the day she was murdered. But its weight is an anchor. It reminds me why I am still breathing. I have to survive. Someone has to carry the memory of the people the Carnival Court erases.

I drag my thumb across the fresh cut on my knuckles, squeezing until a bead of crimson wells up. This is what I am. A hemomancer. A blood-witch of the drowned coast.

I flick the drop of blood into the rising deluge. The moment my blood touches the flood, it does not dissolve. It elongates, spinning out into luminous, thread-like veins of crimson light beneath the murky surface. The spatial memory of the water speaks to my blood. I watch the glowing red threads map the violent crosscurrents, revealing the hidden trajectories of the supernatural storm surges before they hit.

Left, the blood-map whispers in my mind. A pressure surge is coming from the left.

I throw my body to the right just as a massive, high-pressure pipe on the western wall violently bursts. A localized geyser of pulverized concrete and water violently decapitates a row of iron statues, sending shrapnel raining down into the basin.

Panting, I press my back against a vibrating support pillar. I look up, wiping a mixture of sweat and contaminated rain from my eyes.

Through the massive, shattered rose windows of the station, the floating barges of the Carnival Court are visible, tethered safely to the upper spires of the drowned city. They are gilded monstrosities, dripping with velvet and stolen crystal, hovering just above the storm’s reach. Inside those barges, the vampire aristocracy sips blood-wine and watches us drown.

But not all of them are behind glass.

My gaze snaps to the highest, most precarious catwalk inside the station. He is standing there, perfectly still amidst the catastrophic vibrating infrastructure.

Lucien Vale.

The Prince of the Carnival Court. He is the King’s favored weapon, the rogue hunter who haunts the floating markets and the submerged catacombs. He wears a long, tailored coat of midnight leather that absorbs the dim emergency lights, clinging to a physique built for predatory violence. His dark hair is plastered to his forehead by the mist, and his skin is the pale, flawless marble of an immortal who has never known the indignity of a blister or a bruise.

He is not cheering like the sycophants on the barges. He is just watching. His intense, preternaturally sharp gaze cuts through the chaos, tracking the slaughter with clinical, terrifying detachment.

Then, his eyes lock onto mine.

Even across fifty feet of churning air and screaming metal, the impact of his stare feels like a physical blow. My breath hitches. It’s a purely physiological reaction—the instinctual terror of a prey animal pinned by a wolf. But beneath the fear, there is a treacherous, unwanted spike of heat. A sudden, sharp awareness of my own pulse, hammering against my throat. He is a monster, the heir to the tyrant who engineered this genocide, yet the sheer, coiled magnetism of his presence makes the air around me feel suffocatingly thin.

I bare my teeth in a snarl, raising my chin in a defiant glare. I am not dead yet, leech.

The metal beneath my boots groans, a sound like a dying leviathan. I tear my eyes away from Lucien, snapping my attention back to the water. My glowing red blood-threads in the basin are suddenly thrashing, knotting together in a frantic, blinding tangle at the center of the room.

No. Not yet.

The storm magic outside is interfering with the station’s internal pressure. The main turbine beneath the floor is completely jammed, creating a massive, localized pocket of pressurized magic and water.

"Get off the lower grates!" I scream to the few remaining survivors clinging to the pipes below. "The floor is going to blow!"

They don’t move fast enough. They are exhausted, shivering, paralyzed by the cold and the noise.

I pull a jagged piece of glass from my utility belt and slash a deep line across my left palm. The pain is a sharp, brilliant flare. I slam my bleeding hand flat against the vibrating brass pillar beside me. I push my magic outward, forcing my blood to map the exact stress points of the metal beneath us. The spatial memory floods my mind—I see the micro-fractures in the iron, the screaming tension of the bolts, the exact trajectory of the impending explosion.

Three seconds.

I push myself off the pillar, sprinting across the slick grating toward a terrified older man paralyzed near the central vent.

Two seconds.

"Give me your hand!" I roar, reaching for him.