Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

“They’ve been through an ordeal, to be sure. But they rely very heavily on each other. The princess is very protective of him, and he adores her. It’s almost enough to make me wish I had a sibling.”

“Be glad you don’t,” I said, feeling an ache in my stomach that had nothing to do with the wound in my side.

“Do you?”

“A brother,” I answered. “I’m afraid we didn’t part on very good terms. I’m pretty sure he hates me now.”

“Because you’re a witch?” My eyes darted to his, and he continued. “You fled Renalt not because you were afraid of being accused of being a witch, like the princess. You fled because you are one. Twice now I’ve seen you use magic. You almost killed two men with nothing but blood and your bare ha

nds.”

“Are you going to have me arrested? Send me back to Renalt? Please,” I said, my voice cracking. “Please don’t.” I can’t leave my brother here alone, even if he’s safe with Lisette. Even if he hates me.

“That’s not what I brought you here for.”

“Then what did you bring me here for?”

“Look.”

He drew my attention across the wild garden and sweeping stone terraces adorning the base of the castle to a stretch of tall grass in the northwestern quadrant of the grounds, where several horses were grazing. As I watched, a mare of brilliant white broke into a gleeful gallop across the open space, head high and mane flying.

“I can’t let you take her,” he said. “And I’m sorry for that. But I wanted you to see her. You can come visit her whenever you like. Take the passageway. The grounds are fortified to keep intruders out, but you should be able to come and go through the tunnel without trouble. I should warn you that Princess Aurelia and Prince Conrad are installed in the west wing of the castle, so you might want to avoid that area if you prefer not to run into them.” He stopped. “I’m not going to just parade Falada around, like you accused me of doing. That isn’t why I needed her.”

“Why, then? What good is she to you, if not for that?”

Taking a deep breath, he said, “That’s just it. She does no good for me at all. And if it wasn’t for you, I’d probably have already killed her.”

I recoiled, dumbstruck. “What can you possibly mean?”

“Let’s get out of this wind,” he said, “and I’ll tell you.”

15

The storm came on quickly. In the minutes it took for us to walk from the tower and across the terraces, the sky outside of Achlev had turned from gray to slate to billowing black. The clouds could not cross the barrier, but the wind did; as Zan led me up to the top of the castle wall, I lost the scarf that covered my hair and now the tendrils were whipping my face and arms like lashes.

We took shelter in an empty lookout enclosure just as a flash of lightning streaked across the sky and struck the outstretched hand of one of the marble kings at King’s Gate. In an instant the bolt shot through the statue and into the wall, splitting into a million tiny streaks of blue-white light that ricocheted across the invisible barrier above the stone, crossing and recrossing one another as they circled the city in a cylinder of light that led straight up into the sky.

“How is this possible? How was it done?” I asked breathlessly.

“Blood and sacrifice,” Zan answered. “As it is with all power.” Raggedly, he said, “This is why Falada is important.”

“You want to kill her . . . because of wind?”

“Yes. No. I mean . . . not exactly. Six weeks ago we would have been watching the storm out there with the sun beaming down on us and blue sky above.”

“What changed?”

“Simon Silvis,” he said, “my father, is the only known blood mage of real power left in Achleva. Before he left to attend the princess on her journey, he had been worried for a while that there was a plot in the works against the kingdom and wanted to go investigate some of his suspicions on his way to Renalt, taking a longer route that ran up the coast, giving him time to do some digging as he went. The king had been adamantly against such a journey before, so when Simon got the go-ahead this time, he left in hurry. He was supposed to send word when he arrived safely, but he never did. I wasn’t sure that he had even made it there in one piece until you told me so.”

“Have you heard anything else?” I asked intently. “Anything at all about him, or the queen, or the state of Renalt?”

“Not much more than what the princess herself relayed. Just that he’s being held in Syric with the queen, as political prisoners of the Tribunal. I’m relieved that he’s unharmed, out of danger . . . but because he’s not here, we are not. Several days ago we woke up to frost in Achlev. It was on our windows, encrusting the leaves and trees. Everything sparkled.”

“Frost? What’s so dangerous about—?”

“It was the first time since the wall went up that the temperature within Achlev had ever fallen below freezing. It was the most beautiful and troubling thing I had ever seen. Two days after that, we woke up to wind.” He leaned against the battlements, facing the wind. “The changes seemed to have no correlation except one: on each of the nights before these climate shifts, a horse was found slaughtered in the streets. Different ages, different owners, but Empyreans both times.”

“I don’t understand.”