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Damian stood in his father's study at half past seven in the morning and wondered how long it would take before he committed patricide.
"The Mortaines are weak." Michael Dwayne did not look up from the territorial maps spread across his desk. "Find their breaking point and shatter them."
"Of course." Damian kept his tone perfectly neutral. "And I assume this blight, which coincidentally weakens us both, is just a happy little accident of nature? How wonderfully convenient."
Michael's hand stilled on the map. Silence followed, sharp enough to draw blood.
"You question my assessment?"
"I question the narrative." Damian moved to the window, affecting casual disinterest even as his mind worked through the angles. "The timing is suspect. The pattern of infection is too precise. Almost as if someone designed it to target specific bloodlines."
"Careful, boy." His father's tone turned cold. "Speculation without evidence is the refuge of fools."
"Then perhaps you could provide me with evidence to the contrary." He turned to face his father with a pleasant smile that did not reach his eyes. "I would hate to be a fool."
Lightning magic sparked along Michael's shoulders, a visual reminder of exactly who held the position of authority in this family.
Damian did not flinch. He had stopped flinching years ago.
"The Mortaines crossed our border three times this week." Michael's expression suggested the conversation was over. "That is all the evidence you need. Stop them. Use whatever methods you think necessary."
"Even lethal ones?"
"Especially lethal ones."
There it was. The permission Damian had been waiting for, delivered with all the subtlety of a hammer to the skull. His father wanted war, wanted blood, and was counting on his son to provide it without asking inconvenient questions.
Too bad Damian had never been good at following orders.
"I will handle it." He inclined his head in a gesture that could have been respect or mockery, depending on interpretation. "Was there anything else?"
Michael waved a dismissive hand. "Go. And do try not to embarrass the family name."
Damian left before he said something that would get him struck by lightning.
Outside, the air was crisp and sharp with the scent of ozone as he crossed the training grounds. Other members of the Dwayne coven were already awake, running through combat drills and magical exercises with the disciplined precision their family was known for.
He ignored them all.
His destination was the eastern border, where the blight had first appeared six weeks ago. If his father wanted him to find the Mortaines' breaking point, then he would start by finding the truth. The real truth, not whatever convenient fiction Michael was peddling.
It had taken him three days of careful tracking to narrow down the blight's origin point, following the signature through layers of concealment spells that would have been invisible to most practitioners. His hand still remembered the curve of Lilith's throat, the pulse hammering beneath his palm. He pushed the thought away with practiced discipline.
The path led him through an increasingly corrupted landscape. Trees that should have been green with spring growth stood skeletal and gray, their branches twisted into shapes that suggested agony. Earth beneath his boots crunched with the texture of burned ash.
Damian knelt and pressed his hand flat against the ground, sending threads of lightning magic deep into the soil. It was a technique he had developed himself, using electrical currents to map underground structures and trace the flow of other magical energies.
What he found made his blood run cold.
The blight was not spreading from the Mortaine side of the border. It was spreading from the Dwayne side, originating from a point deep within their own territory. And the magical signature was not necromantic corruption, as his father had claimed.
It was elemental. Lightning-based. Dwayne's magic, twisted and weaponized into something that ate through magical cores like acid.
Someone in his own family had created this.
Damian sat back on his heels, processing the implications with the systematic calm of a man who had suspected this outcome but still found the confirmation disturbing. Something cold and familiar settled in his chest. Disappointment would have required expectations he had stopped having years ago. This was just confirmation.
"Well," he said quietly to the empty forest, "I suppose I owe the witch an apology. This is far more interesting than I thought."
He stood and began following the trail of corrupted energy deeper into Dwayne's territory, his mind already racing through potential explanations. His father was the obvious culprit, but Michael had never been subtle enough for this level of deception. This required someone with more finesse, more patience, someone who could play a long game.
The concealment spell fought back as he dismantled it, sending a spike of corrupted energy through his defenses. His shields held, but barely. When the glamour finally fell away, it revealed a circle of standing stones that hummed with residual lightning magic.
At the center of the circle was a crude altar, and on that altar was a book.
He recognized it immediately. The Grimoire of Ancestral Bonds, one of the rarest texts in the Dwayne family library. It had been missing for months, and he had assumed it was simply misfiled.
He had assumed wrong.
Damian opened the book to the marked page and began to read. With each line, his understanding shifted and reformed into a new, terrible picture.
This was not about starting a war. This was about ancient, forbidden strength that required specific conditions to unlock. The blight killing both covens was not an accident. It was not a weapon.
It was bait.
And the ritual required two participants. Two heirs. One from each bloodline.
Damian looked down at the page, at the detailed descriptions of soul-binding magic and intimate acts required to complete the rite, and a cold laugh escaped his throat.
Someone in his family wanted him to fuck Lilith Mortaine.