Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

Even when I stepped from my hiding place and the man was definitely gone, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still being watched. That’s when I saw the little boy again.

He was standing in the upper window of the apothecary shop, cap still sitting crookedly on his dark curls. The entire right side of his face was covered in bruises, and long purple welts were ringing the gray skin of his neck. He pressed his small hands against the window, and we regarded each other for several long minutes before he turned and disappeared.

* * *

That evening I sold the mermaid charm to a woman in a market booth for a pouch of six gold coins, a mostly burnt chicken leg, and a cup of ale, only to have her laughingly steal the coin purse back an hour later while I was busy being sick into the gutter from the tainted meat. When the painful spasms of my stomach finally subsided, it was dark again. Blearily, I dragged myself to my feet and forced myself to keep going, if only to avoid the temptation to lie down somewhere and be done with it. Simon and my mother were still bound to me. While it would have been noble to say that it was their lives I was motivated to preserve, at that point I was more moved by the idea that my dying would be futile, so why bother?

I was somewhere in the tavern district, on the south side of the castle between High Gate and Forest Gate, when the prickly feeling of being observed returned. There were several times I had to stop and look around, convinced that someone was following not too far behind me.

“Who’s there?” I called, but no one answered.

A few minutes later, I heard another sound, this one unmistakable: a footstep that wasn’t mine, on the cobblestones behind me. It wasn’t the Harbinger, either—?the Harbinger never made noise.

A man streaked out from a dim alley. Before I had time to yell, he locked his arms around me.

“Come now, love,” he said, wrapping his fingers around my throat. “Don’t make this difficult.”

It was the man from the apothecary’s shop. A second man circled—?I was outnumbered. “Let . . . let me . . . g-go—?” I stammered, but the grip on my throat tightened, cutting off my air.

He leaned his cheek against my hair, his breath hot on my neck. “That’s it,” he said. “Just relax.”

“Make it fast,” the other whined.

He kept his right hand clamped on my neck but loosened the other, and I heard the sound of him undoing the buckle of his belt. In one fluid motion, I threw my head back against his nose and stomped hard on his foot—?a method I’d seen Kellan use in sparring matches at the barracks. The man released me with a yelp, giving me enough freedom to drive my knee between the legs of the second man. That one collapsed like a puppet with severed strings, moaning on the dank alley floor.

I tried to run, but I didn’t make it far. The first man grabbed my hair and used it to yank me back. He slammed his fist into my jaw, causing my head to bounce off the alley wall with a sickening crack. The world was spinning now, and the single gas lamp at the mouth of the alley became a blurry streak as he picked me up just to strike me again.

“You want to do it this way, eh?” Drawing a red-smeared knife from his belt, he said, “I was going to be gentle,” as if that was a kindness I no longer deserved.

“What’s it like to be so disgusting that you have to beat a woman half to death before she’ll notice you?” I asked.

His lip curled and he lunged with his knife, just as I hoped he would. But I was too weak and dizzy; I miscalculated his swiftness and my slowness, and instead of dodging his knife completely, I felt it glide across my ribs as I tried to dart away.

I screamed as he threw me violently down to the stones, trying even then to crawl away one-handed, my other arm wrapped around the cut in my side, which was radiating with pain. He grabbed my ankle and dragged me back. “Bitch.”

I hurt everywhere, every organ and limb singing louder and louder in an unrelenting chorus of agony. And the blood—?it was seeping between my fingers now, staining t

hem red. All I could see was the light from the lamp and the pulsing cobweb of veins in my eyes. All I could hear was the pounding of my heartbeat and the distant sound of my name.

Emilie! Emilie!

But it wasn’t my name, not really. I was not Emilie. Emilie had burned. Burned because of me. I saw her in the bobbing glow of the gas lamp, screaming as she was consumed by the Tribunal’s bonfire.

No. I wasn’t certain if I said it in my head or aloud as I reached my blood-soaked hand to the lantern light. Not her.

The man slammed me over and climbed on top of me, still fighting to get his buckle undone. His face morphed in the lantern light, rearranging his features into a more familiar configuration.

“You killed Kellan,” I told Toris. “I’ll kill you.” Rage and anger pulled tight in my core until, suddenly, it snapped. I cried out at the flooding fire inside me. I put my bloody hands on either side of his face and let go.

His skin began to blister and crackle where my fingers left bloodied prints. He scrambled back, clawing at his cheeks and eyes as the heat spread quickly into flame and the flame blazed into a conflagration.

I felt a pair of arms lift me free of the fire, and I struggled against them.

“Emilie! It’s me!” Zan said. “I won’t hurt you. Stop! It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“All right?” I echoed.

I didn’t know what that meant anymore.