Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

I whirled around.

It was her. The woman who’d haunted me as long as I could remember, lurking on the periphery of every tragedy I’d ever known. I called her the Harbinger, because she appeared only when death was near.

She wasn’t quite like any of the other spirits I sometimes saw, who were simply faded versions of their former selves. She was made of shadow and smoke, visible but intangible, bending light and color into her shape like a water droplet on a windowpane.

Other ghosts clamored to get their hands on me the instant they knew I could see them—?but not the Harbinger. She’d only ever touched me once.

I was ten years old at the time. Father was gone on a weeks-long expedition to tour our coastal lands with Toris and Camilla, while Lisette stayed with me and my mother, who was feeling poorly, at the castle. We’d spent several days holed up in my room with books of romance and adventure, though the romance was more Lisette’s fare than mine. I even let her read several of the stuffy, formal letters I received twice yearly from my betrothed, Valentin. It was my opinion that they were detestably boring and likely dictated by a tutor, if the rumors about Valentin’s lack of wits were true. But Lisette had become enraptured with them, reading one after another with eyes aglow.

“Have you replied yet?” she asked when she was done, clutching the letters to her chest.

“Not if I can help it,” I said, wrinkling my nose. I was always too busy helping Onal in her workroom and Father in the city to be bothered with such an unpleasant task.

Lisette gave me her most reproachful look. “Oh, Aurelia, you can’t just leave him hanging! You must write back at once.”

I said, “You can do it for me, if you like.” And she did so with great relish, even signing my name at the bottom and sending it off with a messenger before we went to bed that evening.

That night I had a terrible dream of my mother trapped and dying in a room full of smoke and flame. I woke to find the Harbinger hanging over my bedside, icy hands on my cheeks, sharp fingertips digging into the soft flesh beneath my eyes.

I bolted out of bed with a strangled scream. Lisette stirred. “Aurelia? What’s the matter? Aurelia!”

I was already tearing down the hall, praying that what I’d seen was nothing more than an awful, vivid dream.

It wasn’t. I arrived at Mother’s antechamber to find smoke billowing from beneath her parlor door, which was locked. I tugged furiously on the searing knob to no avail, just as Lisette tumbled into the room after me. “Aurelia?”

“The letter opener!” I cried. “By her stationery! Quickly!” I could see the flicker of flames under the door. Lisette fumbled at the desk, coughing into her nightdress sleeve while I tried to break in by throwing my body against the barrier.

“Found it!” she cried, and I yanked the opener from her blade-first, hardly noticing the way it bit into my skin or the red stain that then crept onto the lace of my nightgown sleeve. I shoved the implement into the keyhole the way all the heroes in my adventure books did it, but it was a losing battle. The blood made my hands slick—?too slick to allow me the leverage needed to make it work.

I put my palms and forehead to the impenetrable wood, sobbing. My mother was going to die, and despite the Harbinger’s warning, I was helpless to change her fate. Emotion welled up inside me—?anger, frustration, fear, guilt, sorrow—?pressing against my heart until something inside me burst and all my rage and regret rushed free, like water from a broken dam. That’s when I knew. I knew what I needed to do. I could use blood. I could use magic.

I began to mutter a haphazard sort of a spell. Most of my incantation was a mash of broken phrases and my own repeated exhortation to the fire itself. “Ignem ire, abeo, discedo, recedo . . .” Please don’t take my mother. Please don’t take my mother . . . “Ignem ire, concede, absisto, secedo . . .”

“What are you doing?” Lisette asked in horror, backing away. “Aurelia, stop! Stop,” she begged.

Something I said must have worked, because I felt the fire respond. I felt it in my hands. In my veins. In my heart. And when I knew I had it in my control, I gave it a hard push. I thought of water; I wanted the fire to drown.

That’s when the guards came and found me staring dully at my hands in a smoke-filled room. They broke down the door, and my mother was found surrounded by blackened curtains, coughing from smoke but untouched by flame.

Lisette was looking at me with wide, terrified eyes. “What did you do?” she whispered. “Where did it go?”

“I don’t know,” I told her, dazed. “Away.”

The next day we woke to the sound of a city in mourning. The king is dead! The king is dead! The story was horrific: King Regus and Lady Camilla had been standing on the dock of the port of de Lena when they were overtaken by a sudden, massive firestorm that devoured everything in its path. Ships, shops, people . . . everything. Toris was the lone survivor, and he emerged from the maelstrom with the ardent belief that the deaths of his wife and king could be attributed only to the work of witches.

I tried to speak to Lisette at her mother’s funeral, but she wouldn’t respond, wouldn’t even meet my eyes. She and I both knew I was to blame for what happened to her mother and my father, even if we didn’t understand quite how. Toris joined the Tribunal shortly thereafter. I spent every waking minute for months listening for the sound of boots outside my door, convinced that it was only a matter of time before Lisette confessed and they came for me. But they never did.

Lisette kept my secret. I resented it sometimes, knowing that with a single word she could bring the axe down on my neck. Perhaps she wanted just to forget it, or perhaps she wanted to use the knowledge of my wickedness for political gain in the future. I had no way of knowing, and the uncertainty was a torment.

There was some light in the darkness, however. My brother was born. I grew older. I met Mabel Doyle and began trading for magical texts. I began experimenting, ever so cautiously, with the power I’d glimpsed inside myself that night outside my mother’s bedroom door.

I saw the Harbinger dozens of times after my father’s death, her appearance always a portent of misfortune. Often I could sense when she was nearby before I glimpsed her. She observed me constantly, and though I always had the feeling that she wanted something more from me, she never touched me again.

Now she stood immobile in the still air of Onal’s room. A circlet of silver rested on her brow. Beneath it, her eyes, black and bottomless, fixed on some point behind me.

My fingers curled around my unlit lantern and the broken bracelet. “You were there in the square today, weren’t you? I felt you nearby.” I’d seen ghosts affect objects in the material world before, in fear or anger or desperation, but for her to bring me my bracelet was astounding.

Her eyes clapped on me, and I felt shock roll through my bones from my crown to my toes. Steeling myself, I slid a foot closer. “I’ve been looking for you.”