Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

Then we turned and leaped over the side, she and I together.

But before I fell, two arms went around me, throwing me out of the vision and away from the ledge. I pitched backwards, screaming as I hurtled through the disintegrating door and down the stairs behind it, entangled with another body. I felt my ribs and head and arms and legs crack on the unforgiving stone until we crashed together onto a wide stair and slammed to a stop against the wall. I rolled over, dizzy with pain, and saw Zan.

His eyes were glassy, his face covered with a thin layer of sweat. He looked wild.

“Zan? What’s going on? What—?”

He was clutching his chest, each gasp a knife scraping against stone, sharp and metallic and desperate. “Don’t. Jump. Please.”

“What?” I looked from his shaking body to the square of light of the tower overlook, and knew. He’d saved me. And at great cost to himself.

“Zan? Zan!” Nathaniel was scrambling up the stairs behind Zan, frantic and stricken. “Is he all right? He saw you going up, and he ran. I tried to stop him, but he pushed me.” Zan, trying to stand, had collapsed and was lying on his side, his breathing a piercing staccato. Nathaniel said, “It’s his heart. I don’t know what possessed him to—?he knows his limits. He knew he couldn’t make it all the way up here, or he’d be in trouble. He did it anyway.”

Nathaniel put his arm under Zan’s shoulder and lifted him. I was about to grab the other dangling arm when he seized my wrist and locked his terror-filled eyes on me.

“You’re . . . bleeding,” he said, wheezing. I looked at my hand, which sure enough was covered in blood seeping from a cut in my arm. And then, unthinking, I pressed my bloody palm to his cheek and told his pain, Not there. I addressed it the way I’d addressed the fire. All the books said that blood magic didn’t lend itself to healing. But pain . . . it was universally agreed that blood magic could be fueled and funneled with pain. So even if I couldn’t fix it, I could use it, couldn’t I? I could maybe even move it.

I directed the pain inside myself. Here, I told it.

And suddenly I was seized by an agony the depths of which I could barely fathom, a weight in my chest, a vise on my ribs, fire in my brain. I was drowning. No air. No air. No way to scream my terror. No air.

I don’t know how long we sat there: Zan writhing on the tower stairs and me bent over him in my sopping chemise, gripping his arms while I breathed in time with him. I felt the misery of his every attempted lungful, the tight shooting pain in every beat of his heart, and then . . . I took it from him. I took it into myself.

When finally, exhausted, he closed his eyes and his head lolled, I was released, gasping, still clutching his limp arm. I ducked beneath it; it was heavy on my shoulders.

“I think I’ve taken off some of the edge,” I said, wheezing. “But we need to get him someplace warm and dry, give him something to help him breathe. Is there a healer in the castle?”

“We can’t take him into the castle,” Nathaniel said. “Being seen like this, in court, by the king—?he would never allow it. He’d be furious.”

“Not even to save his own stars-forsaken life?”

“Not even then.”

I swore. Even unconscious, Zan was a pain in the ass. “I can do what needs to be done, I think, if we can get him to my hut.”

We dragged his limp body between us, his feet thudding on every stair, and lurched from the door into the rain while I went back and forth between cursing his idiocy and praying for his full recovery. But then the thought of his coming out of this mess unscathed made me angry again, and the whole process would start over.

We slogged through the abandoned canals as the water rose to my waist, pushing on, paying close attention to the time between each of Zan’s agonizing breaths.

At the hut we threw open the door and dumped Zan onto the cot. He moaned, on the edge of consciousness.

Nathaniel started toward him, but I held out a hand. “It’s all right. Let him rest.”

As I began to gather the things I needed for the potion, Nathaniel settled back against the door frame. “He hired me—?at Kate’s behest—?to train him to fight. To help him get stronger, healthier. I taught him all I could, and he’s come a long way. But some things can’t be fixed, only adapted to.” Gently, he added, “It’s a hard thing for him, letting me handle what he physically canno

t.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. Those times I’d thought him nonchalant, slow . . . That’s what Nathaniel is for, right? To make sure you never have to ruffle a hair on your head. I remembered my words this morning with growing regret.

“He didn’t want you to know.” Nathaniel sighed. “I feel useless, just standing here. Is there anything I can do to help?”

I rose to my feet, unsteady. I said tiredly, “Do you know what camphor is?”

“Yes,” he said. “Kate distilled a batch not that long ago.”

“Does she keep it in here?”

“No . . . it’s stored in a closet in our kitchen.”