Chapter 1: Everyone in My Family Cheated on the Bloodline Test

　　On my eighteenth birthday, every member of the Ashbourne family tried to rig my Bloodline Inquest.

　　I was the only idiot who planned to use his actual blood.

　　There are three unwritten rules for surviving inside the Ashbourne Ducal Estate: never go into the sub-cellar without knocking, never look Mother in the eyes before she's had her morning tea, and whatever you do, make sure you rig your eighteenth-birthday Bloodline Inquest.

　　I stood in the middle of the drafty main hall with a brass wrench in my right hand, tightening the third hinge on the oak double doors while my family took turns slipping contraband into my pockets.

　　"Don't clink it against your tools, Milo," my father, Duke Auric Ashbourne, murmured.

　　It was a quarter past eleven at night, pitch-black outside with a howling autumn thunderstorm, and my father was wearing his darkest pair of smoked-glass spectacles. He claimed the household ledgers strained his eyes. Personally, I thought it was the severe chronic anemia—the man was pale as marble, freezing to the touch, and drank three decanters of thick, iron-rich "medicinal beet tonic" from the cellar every night just to stay on his feet.

　　As he leaned in to drop a lead-lined vial into my waistcoat, his fingers brushed the heavy silver candelabrum on the side table. The solid sterling silver bent like warm butter under his pinky.

　　He didn't even notice. I pulled a small rawhide mallet from my belt and tapped the silver neck straight again before he turned around. If the Court of Sacred Inquest sees bent silver, they'll think we can't afford proper metalwork, I thought. Being the only healthy person in a house full of sickly aristocrats was a full-time job.

　　"If the Inquisitor's assistant asks you to prick your thumb," Father said, adjusting his cuffs with lethal grace, "use the hollow needle taped to that vial. Press the plunger. It's third-grade Crimson Bat essence. Weak enough to avoid royal conscription, strong enough to register a passable Godmark. Nobody will look twice."

　　"Got it, Father. Rest your eyes, the lightning outside is bright," I said dutifully, patting his shoulder.

　　Behind the heavy velvet curtains, Father's breath hitched. I pretended not to hear the whisper he traded with my brother Julian ten seconds later: "Did you hear him, Julian? So fragile. Not a drop of night-sight in him. If those hounds from the Court touch a hair on his head, I'll drain every vein in the province."

　　A cold, dry hand caught my elbow before I reached the next hinge.

　　Grandma Irma stood there, draped in three layers of black lace. At seventy-three, her osteoporosis was honestly terrifying. Whenever she forgot to take a breath—which happened for twenty minutes at a time while she was "deep in thought"—her ribs made a sound like dry kindling rubbing together.

　　She took a polite sip of scalding Earl Grey from her porcelain cup. Automatically, without even looking down, I pulled a thick linen towel from my tool apron and held it just below the left side of her ribcage, behind her shawl. A second later, a warm trickle of tea leaked straight through her bodice and soaked harmlessly into my towel.

　　"Good boy," Grandma Irma rasped, her sunken eyes glinting with a faint, eerie blue light that she always blamed on phosphorus eye-drops. Her skeletal fingers shoved a wax-sealed capsule into my left trouser pocket. "Ignore Auric's bat-swill. It smells like a wet cellar. Use mine. Essence of Ashen Marrow. It'll give the crystal a nice, dull necromantic hum. The clerks hate filing paperwork for bone-affinities; they'll stamp your certificate and leave in five minutes."

　　"Thanks, Grandma. Don't drink the lemon slices, they get stuck in your collarbone," I whispered back, wringing out the towel into a decorative potted fern.

　　"Such a sweet, frail little mortal," she muttered to the fern as I walked away, her jaw clicking. "If the Inquisitor scares him, I'll turn the bastard's spine into a coat rack."

　　I hadn't taken four steps toward the staircase when a chunk of marble balustrade the size of a watermelon whistled past my ear and shattered against the floorboards.

　　"Sorry! Slip of the wrist!" my older brother Julian barked from the second-floor landing.

　　At twenty-five, Julian was built like a siege tower and suffered from what the family physician—before the man mysteriously fled the county—called hyper-combustive psoriasis. Whenever he got stressed, dark, hardened plaques that looked suspiciously like black iron scales broke out along his forearms, and his body temperature spiked high enough to singe his shirt collars. He also had a habit of swinging his lower back when he turned corners, knocking over pillars with a force that no human coccyx should possess.

　　He vaulted the broken railing, cracked three flagstones on landing, and shoved a brass ampoule down the back of my collar. "Drake-blood dilution," he said, loudly enough for the front gates. "Smear it on your palm before you touch the crystal. If anyone says the mark looks faint, tell them you sprained your core sparring with me. Stand behind me when they come in. A stiff draft in this hall could snap your neck."

　　"I'd have to get past you first," I said, kneeling to sweep the marble under the rug with my boot. "You just came through the ceiling. Put some ice on your back before you burn through another coat."

　　"Your collar's crooked," said my mother, Duchess Selena, gliding out of the parlor.

　　She wore a heavy silk veil pinned tight around her hair, indoors, and had for six years, on account of a tragic scalp condition and chronic pink-eye. Whenever she got agitated, her bun writhed and hissed like a basket of angry vipers, which she put down to static electricity and her silver hairpins.

　　She straightened my cravat and slipped a tiny glass dropper of pale green venom into my breast pocket in the same motion. Something under the silk snapped at a passing moth and swallowed it whole. Mother patted the veil flat and gave me her gentlest, most terrifying smile.

　　"Julian, sweetheart, you're smoking on the wallpaper," she said, without turning her head. "Milo, a drop of gorgon-ivy on your wrist. And if the examiners get rude, close your eyes and count to ten. Mommy will handle the cleanup."

　　By the time she was finished with me, my pockets sounded like an apothecary cart falling down a flight of stairs.

　　Four vials. Four people, each convinced they were the only one in this house with something to hide, each of them slipping me a cheat sheet I had no intention of using. In the Radiant Empire, a Godmark that degrades from illness takes the title and the rations with it—so Father's anemia, Mother's eye infection, Julian's skin fever, and Grandma's brittle bones were all things the Inquest could hang a family on.

　　"Milo?" a sweet, cherubic voice piped up near my knee.

　　I looked down. My twelve-year-old sister, Mimi, was sitting on a velvet ottoman in her frilliest pink dress, swinging her patent-leather shoes. She looked like a porcelain doll—except for the smudge of fresh soot on her cheek and the heavy iron belt buckle sticking halfway out of her mouth.

　　Earlier this afternoon, I'd seen a shadowy figure in a rival house's cloak sneaking around the garden hedge. Five minutes later, the intruder was gone, the hedge was flattened, and Mimi was sitting in the gazebo burping up a cloud of powdered bone and steel rivets. She had a severe pica eating disorder ever since she got lost in that dungeon at age seven.

　　"Mimi, spit that out. You'll ruin your enamel," I scolded softly, holding out my palm.

　　She paused, her cheeks bulging, then dutifully clinked a half-chewed silver dagger hilt into my hand, followed by a wet hiccup that echoed like a slammed bank vault.

　　"It was salty," she whispered innocently, wiping her lips with a lace sleeve. Then she reached into her pinafore, pulled out a shiny, pulsing purple core the size of a walnut, and tried to jam it into my tool belt. "Here! I saved the crunchy part of the rude man in the bushes for you. If you squeeze it, it bleeds purple! The testing man will think you're a Shadow-Walker!"

　　"Keep it in your pocket, squirt. And don't eat any more iron before dinner, you know it gives you acid reflux," I said, ruffling her curls.

　　Before Mimi could answer, a deafening BOOM shook the entire manor.

　　The solid oak double doors I had spent all afternoon aligning didn't just open—they blew inward off their hinges, splintering into a thousand smoking fragments across the polished floor.

　　Freezing rain and dead leaves swirled into the hall. Out of the storm marched a dozen armored knights bearing the golden sun-shackle crest of the Court of Sacred Inquest, their boots tracking mud over the carpets I'd just vacuumed.

　　Right behind them strode Lother Gran, the twenty-three-year-old heir to the neighboring Earldom, draped in a spotless white mink cloak. Clinging to his arm was Lady Evelina Vance—the girl who had been betrothed to me since we were ten, until the rumors started circulating last month that I hadn't manifested a single spark of a Godmark.

　　"Well, well! Look at this pathetic little gathering," Lother sneered, his voice echoing off the high rafters as he flicked a speck of rain from his lapel. Inside his chest, a bright, obnoxious flare of orange light pulsed through his breastplate—an awakened Third-Tier Flame Hound Godmark, displayed at maximum output just to show off. "Still fixing your own doors with a wrench, Milo? How quaint. Evelina, darling, aren't you glad we didn't waste your dowry on a glorified carpenter?"

　　Evelina wrinkled her nose, hiding behind a feathered fan as she looked at me like I was something scraped off a boot. "Honestly, Lother, the air in here smells like old dust and damp iron. Let's make this quick."

　　Across the hall, the temperature dropped twenty degrees in half a second.

　　Beside the fireplace, Father's hand gripped the marble mantelpiece; five deep grooves instantly appeared in the solid stone. On the stairs, a thread of black smoke curled from Julian's nostrils. Under Mother's silk veil, thirty distinct shapes stiffened and aimed themselves directly at Evelina's throat.

　　I quickly stepped forward, positioning myself right in my family's line of sight while holding up my wrench in a calming gesture. If Father faints from low blood pressure or Julian has a heat-stroke flare-up right now, Lother will seize the estate on the spot!

　　"Lord Lother. Lady Evelina," I said smoothly, kicking a splintered piece of my door aside. "A bit dramatic for a half-eleven appointment, isn't it? If you're here to return the engagement ring, the mail coach costs two copper."

　　Lother's face twisted. He reached into his cloak and whipped a parchment scroll straight at my face.

　　I didn't even blink. Years of ducking Julian's accidental elbow-swings and catching Grandma's falling teacups had given me reflexes that didn't need a Godmark. I plucked the heavy scroll out of midair two inches from my nose.

　　"That is the formal annulment of your betrothal, signed by the High Court!" Lother barked, stepping onto the ruined doors. "And it's only the appetizer! For ten years, the Ashbourne Dukedom has dodged every imperial levy, claiming illness while hoarding the northern border charters. Today, on your eighteenth birthday, the grace period ends. If the youngest heir of Ashbourne proves to be a Markless dud—or worse, a degraded bloodline—your family's ducal title defaults to House Gran before midnight!"

　　"You arrogant little whelp—" Julian growled, taking a step down the stairs. The floorboard beneath his boot blackened and charred.

　　"Silence," a soft, polite voice cut through the hall.

　　The armored knights parted like the Red Sea.

　　Stepping delicately over the wet splinters was a man who looked to be in his fifties, dressed in immaculate robes of white silk and gold filigree. His skin was unnervingly smooth, pale and glossy as glazed bone china. Every step he took was measured to perfection, and in his gloved hands, resting on a velvet cushion, sat an ancient, fist-sized sphere of dull gray crystal covered in hair-thin geometric grooves.

　　High Inquisitor Vist of the Court of Sacred Inquest.

　　The moment Vist entered, a suffocating, artificial pressure washed over the room—like the ozone smell of a high-voltage generator pretending to be a thunderstorm.

　　Grandma Irma's teacup rattled slightly against its saucer. Clink.

　　At that tiny sound of porcelain hitting porcelain, High Inquisitor Vist's polite smile froze. His left eyelid twitched with a sudden, violent revulsion, his gaze snapping toward my grandmother like a predator hearing a branch snap.

　　"Please," Vist said, his voice silky and terrible. "Do not clatter the china. I have a... delicate ear for fractures."

　　I quietly reached over and took the cup and saucer out of Grandma's hands, setting them on a soft felt coaster. Vist's gaze slid from Grandma to me, his eyes cold and glassy.

　　"Milo Ashbourne," Vist said, gesturing to two inquisitorial guards carrying heavy silver manacles lined with inward-facing needles. "Standard birthday tests allow a prick of the finger in a private chamber. However, Lord Lother has filed a formal petition accusing House Ashbourne of blood-sample tampering. Therefore, I have brought Specimen Zero-Nine from the Capital Vault."

　　He lifted the gray crystal sphere.

　　"An original testing core recovered from the ruins of the First Academy," Vist murmured, a strange, hungry gleam flickering behind his porcelain mask. "And to ensure no... parlor tricks... are hidden in your sleeves, my guards will search every member of this household from head to toe before drawing blood directly from your radial artery."

　　My blood ran cold.

　　Search the whole household?!

　　If those guards searched my family, they'd find Father's illegal blood-tonics, Mother's unexploded venom glands, Julian's fever-scales, and whatever half-digested knight armor Mimi currently had sitting in her stomach! They'd haul my sick, fragile family to the Inquest dungeons before the storm cleared!

　　Around me, I felt the air in the hall begin to boil.

　　Father slowly reached up and gripped the bridge of his dark spectacles. Julian's fingernails lengthened into black talons, tearing through his white gloves. Behind me, Mimi's tiny shadow on the wall stretched ten feet tall, sprouting rows of jagged, metallic teeth. They were about to fight the Imperial Court to the death just to stop me from being tested.

　　Not on my watch, I thought. I've kept this house glued together for eighteen years. I'm not letting them get arrested over my birthday exam.

　　"No need to search anyone, Your Grace," I said loudly, stepping right in front of the guards before Father could take off his glasses.

　　I tossed my wrench into my apron, pulled a sterile, razor-sharp runescribe's scalpel from my chest strap—ignoring all four fake blood vials weighing down my pockets—and rolled up my right sleeve to the elbow, baring my pale, completely unblemished forearm.

　　"Milo, don't—!" Mother gasped, her hand flying toward her veil.

　　"It's fine, Mother. Keep your scarf on, the wind from the door is terrible for your eyes," I said over my shoulder, giving her a reassuring wink.

　　Lother laughed so hard he nearly doubled over. "Look at him! He's actually going to do it! Go on then, carpenter! Show Lady Evelina the puddle of mud running through your veins!"

　　I walked straight up to High Inquisitor Vist without looking at Lother, looked into those dead, glossy eyes, and drew the scalpel cleanly across the palm of my hand.

　　No fake vials. No bat blood, no marrow dust, no drake essence. Just bright, hot, crimson blood—100% pure, unaltered Ashbourne blood.

　　"Careful of the velvet, Your Grace," I said politely, and slammed my bleeding palm directly onto the ancient gray crystal.