Chapter 4: Corporate Fae and Blood Debts

Chapter 4: Corporate Fae and Blood Debts

The silence in our apartment the next morning was worse than the screaming. It was a heavy, suffocating blanket of dread. Leo was awake, sitting on the edge of the couch, nursing a mug of tea with hands that were unnervingly steady. The wild agony was gone, but something had taken its place. An unnatural stillness.

He looked… better. Too much better. The dark circles under his eyes had vanished, and a healthy colour had returned to his cheeks. But his gaze was different. Sharper. When I shifted my weight in the kitchen, his head snapped up, his brown eyes tracking the minute sound with an unnerving precision he hadn't possessed two days ago.

“You’re anxious,” he said, his voice quiet but clear. “I can feel it. It’s like a low hum, right here.” He touched his sternum, the exact spot where the golden thread of our bond connected.

Before I could answer, he added, “The refrigerator is making a buzzing sound. 120 hertz, C-sharp. And I can hear Mrs. Henderson’s television three floors down. She’s watching a game show.” He gave a small, bewildered shake of his head. “Is this… is this the vampire blood?”

“It’s a temporary side effect,” Sera said, emerging from her room. She was already dressed in an impeccably tailored grey pantsuit, looking more like a CEO than a creature of the night. Her face was a pale, emotionless mask, but I could feel the tension radiating from her. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Your senses are heightened. You’re stronger, more resilient. It will fade.”

It better, I thought, clutching my own mug. My arm throbbed with a phantom chill from Malgorath’s mark, which I kept hidden under the long sleeve of my sweatshirt. We were juggling too many ticking bombs. One from a demon, one from my own magic, and now, one from Sera’s family.

The shoe dropped at precisely 9:07 AM.

It wasn’t a loud, threatening knock. It was three sharp, precise raps on the door, perfectly spaced, with the resonant force of a judge’s gavel. It was a knock that didn’t ask for entry; it announced its arrival.

Sera’s eyes closed for a fraction of a second. “They’re here.”

She opened the door. Two figures stood in the hallway, a man and a woman, both dressed in suits as dark and sharp as Sera’s. They were unnaturally still, their faces handsome but devoid of expression, their eyes holding the flat, predatory focus of hunting birds. They weren’t bodyguards; they were undertakers who hadn’t been told the subject wasn’t dead yet.

The man inclined his head slightly. “Seraphina. The Matriarch requests your presence.” His eyes flicked past her, settling on Leo, then on me. “You will bring your… associates.”

The word ‘associates’ was laced with a thick, syrupy contempt. In their eyes, Leo and I weren’t people. We were evidence.

There was no point in arguing. We were escorted down to a black town car idling at the curb, its tinted windows looking like voids. The ride through the city was silent and suffocating. I sat pressed between Leo and the window, acutely aware of the golden tether connecting us, and the new, darker connection Sera’s blood had forged. I had wanted to keep him out of my world, and instead, I’d managed to indebt him to its most ruthless players.

The Vaduva Clan’s headquarters wasn’t a gothic castle or a hidden underground lair. It was a skyscraper of smoked glass and gleaming steel that stabbed at the downtown sky, a monument to corporate power. The lobby was a cathedral of cold, white marble and abstract art that probably cost more than I’d make in a lifetime. The air smelled of money and something vaguely metallic, like unshed blood. The place was silent, efficient, and utterly soulless.

We were led to a private elevator that shot upwards with gut-wrenching speed, opening directly into the penthouse office. One entire wall was a floor-to-ceiling window offering a god’s-eye view of the city below. Behind a massive obsidian desk sat an old woman, her silver hair pulled back in a severe, elegant bun. She looked frail, her skin as thin and translucent as ancient parchment, but her eyes were the same cold, calculating grey as Sera’s, sharpened by centuries of absolute authority. This was Matriarch Călinescu Vaduva.

She didn't rise. She simply watched us approach, her fingers steepled under her chin. Her gaze lingered on Sera with profound disappointment before dismissing her and settling on Leo.

“Remarkable,” the Matriarch said, her voice a dry rustle of dead leaves. “I haven’t seen a human flush with the Clan’s vintage in over a century. It is an… extravagant waste of a precious resource.”

Sera stepped forward, her back ramrod straight. “Matriarch. I accept full responsibility.”

“Do you?” The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “Responsibility for breaking one of our most sacred laws? For squandering the gift of our bloodline on a mortal pet to clean up your little witch’s mess?” Her gaze slid to me, and it was like being pinned by a needle of ice. “You have always been impulsive, Seraphina. Your sentimentality for this girl has made you reckless. It is a weakness the Vaduva Clan cannot afford.”

I flinched, instinctively hiding my marked arm behind my back. My guilt was a living thing, squirming in my gut. This was my fault. All of it.

The Matriarch waved a dismissive hand. “But what is done, is done. The blood was given. A debt has been incurred. Not by you, child,” she said to me, a cruel smirk playing on her thin lips. “You have nothing of value. The debt falls to the one who carries our blood. It falls to Seraphina.”

Sera’s jaw tightened. “I will pay it.”

“Indeed.” The Matriarch’s gaze drifted to the window, to the sprawling city below. “Our rivals, the Fae of Aethelgard Industries, have grown bold. They operate with a chaotic disregard for the Accords that maintain the peace. Their magic is wild, their motives alien. They have recently acquired an artifact of some significance. It is… disruptive to the balance of power.”

She turned her cold eyes back to us. “You will repay this blood debt, Seraphina. You will lead your… team… into the Aethelgard tower.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. Infiltrate Aethelgard? The Fae corporation was legendary. Their headquarters was said to be a fortress of alien technology and reality-bending magic, a place no one who wasn't Fae had ever entered and returned from sane.

“You want us to steal something?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

“A simple retrieval,” the Matriarch corrected smoothly. “It is called the Heartstone of the Glade. Their security is formidable, of course, but a clever little witch who crafts talismans, a vampire of my own bloodline, and a human supercharged with my family’s own potency… it is an unconventional, but perhaps effective, combination.”

It was a suicide mission. A blatant, undisguised death sentence. We were a deniable asset, a multi-species disaster she could point to if things went wrong, a convenient way to start a war with the Fae without any official Vaduva involvement. We were the disposable pawns, and she was sweeping us off the board.

“You will do this,” the Matriarch stated, her voice leaving no room for negotiation. “Or I will collect the debt from your human myself. I assure you, my methods of extraction are far less pleasant than a quick death in a Fae office building. The choice is yours, Seraphina.”

She turned her attention back to a data slate on her desk, a final, absolute dismissal.

We were trapped. Caught between the slow burn of a demonic curse and the cold, corporate machinations of a vampire mob. My desperate act to save Leo hadn't just put him in danger; it had put a gun to his head and handed the trigger to one of the most powerful monsters in the city.