Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

I peered out from my hiding place, and the rigid man in the painting stared coldly back at me: cornflower eyes; square, chiseled chin; sandy hair slicked back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. There once were two brothers and a sister, the most promising mages of their orders, who gathered one day to cast a spell . . . The stories all began the same way. The middles matched up as well: everyone agreed that the sister, Aren, died during the fateful spell. The endings, however, varied wildly: Some say Aren killed herself. Some say Cael saw evil in her and knew he had to protect the world from it, performing the first witch execution on his own sister. The version written in the Founder’s Book of Commands and upheld by the Tribunal as immovable truth, however, says that she was murdered by her older brother, Achlev, and that Cael died nobly in her defense, using every last drop of his blood trying to save her. The book’s account had it that the Empyrea was so moved by his bravery and selflessness that she chose him to return to earth and become her emissary, spreading her joy and light to all. He woke from death, whole and pure and charged with a holy mandate: found an organization to purge the world of all magic.

This is because of you, I thought, accusing Cael. You and your Tribunal and your cursed Book of Commands. There was speculation that his body was too pure to decay, and that it was hidden away somewhere in the mountains, encased in a glass coffin, as fresh and youthful as the day the Empyrea first called him to do her work.

Wherever the Founder was, I hoped he was rotting.

Conrad whimpered beside me, and I awkwardly placed my arm over his shoulders, trying not to notice the way he shrank beneath my touch. “It’ll be all right,” I whispered to him.

“How do you know?” he retorted in a creaky voice.

Kellan appeared and motioned to us. We followed him down a set of service stairs, pausing as a group of people searching for me went by below, laughing and describing what they’d do to me when they found me. We scrambled backwards, Kellan standing protectively over us until they’d passed. “We have to go that way,” he said. “Hurry!”

We weren’t quite to the next set of stairs when we heard a man yell, “Halt! Wait!”

We stopped. My heart beat a thundering, out-of-rhythm pattern. I looked up to see the shape of a billowing green dress disappear around the corner of the adjoining corridor. The searchers roared past us after her.

“Emilie,” I whispered.

“She’s given us a distraction. She’s given us time.”

We took the stairs two and three at once and flew from the service entrance into the herb garden. I swept Conrad up and held him as we dashed across the open courtyard to the carriage house, where Lisette’s horses were already harnessed to the carriage and Toris was positioned in the driver’s seat.

“You’re late,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Kellan helped Conrad into the seat next to Lisette, who fussed over him. “Look at you, love. So brave! Now, there. Don’t cry. I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you.”

I slumped into the opposite corner, pulling my arms into myself.

Kellan mounted Falada and reined her next to the carriage. “We’re ready.”

The driveway to the castle gate was long, winding alongside the courtyard where a pyre had been erected. The simmering mob congregated at the foot of the stacked wood, torches waving erratically as they chanted, Burn the witch! Burn the witch!

At the gate we were stopped by men in Tribunal coats. “No one is going in or out until we locate the witch.”

I hunkered down in my seat and concentrated on the faded floral pattern of Emilie’s dress. Please don’t look in, I prayed.

Toris’s voice was clipped and commanding. “I am Lord Toris de Lena, magistrate and bearer of the blood of the Founder. My daughter is inside this carriage, and I will be escorting her away from this violence. Do not make me wait any longer, I pray.” His tone went low and flat. “You will regret it.”

There was a pause, and then the sound of the iron gate opening. I gulped and held my breath, turning from the window as we went through. Before I could release the breath in relief, the Harbinger was suddenly next to me in the carriage. She was there and then she was gone, like a puff of smoke.

As the gate began to creak closed behind us, I heard the clerics call out to one another in excitement, “Look at that! They got her!”

“Thank the Empyrea, the witch will burn tonight!”

The carriage was picking up speed, but I flung open the door sash, emitting a strangled, animal sob when I realized what it was I saw.

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They were forcing a girl up onto the pyre. A girl in an emerald gown.

“No! Stop!” I shrieked. “Stop! We have to go back!” But if Toris could hear me over the pounding hoofbeats, he wasn’t listening, and he didn’t slow down.

I climbed frantically out onto the carriage step, ready to jump and run back, when Kellan and Falada came galloping up from behind. He wrested me from the carriage step and pulled me up onto the horse with him.

“It’s too late now; you can’t go back. She made this sacrifice for you. It was a gift. A gift, Aurelia! You can’t waste her gift!”

I wept into his cloak as we turned the corner, and the only thing I could see from beyond the city rooftops was a towering orange flame reaching toward the sky.

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