Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

“Usually when he gets this way, I’m glad,” Zan said. “If he’s gone, he can’t do any damage at home.” He was avoiding my eyes. “But this time he’s decided that every lord and lady must go with him. Myself included.”

“Everyone? The prince too?”

Zan shot a look at Nathaniel and Kate. Hastily, he said, “Him too.”

“You’re not serious,” I said. I struggled to formulate a better response. All I could come up with was “When?”

“We leave tomorrow. Before sundown,” Nathaniel said.

“You’re going too?”

Kate said flatly, “I told him to.” There was still something cold in the way she and Nathaniel were acting toward each other. Nathaniel did not comment; he looked the other way. “Zan needs him,” she said curtly.

“You can’t go,” I said bleakly. “Tell Domhnall no. We need you here. I need you here.”

Zan cleared his throat. “Can we talk? Maybe . . . outside?”

I followed him, arms crossed.

Alone on the stoop, Zan said, “Emilie, I know it’s bad timing, and I don’t expect you to understand—?”

“Good. That’s good. Because I don’t.”

“This is what my king has commanded—?”

“Your king is a feckless half-wit.”

“That doesn’t make him any less a king.”

“Doesn’t it? I thought you were loyal to Achleva.”

“I am. That is why I have to obey the rule of its monarch.”

I heard the echo of my father’s voice alongside my own. “Kings do not rule; they serve. The people do not swear fealty to a king, but he to them.”

“Damn it, Emilie, I have no choice.”

“Look around you, Zan.” I motioned to the decaying mulch of Kate’s garden that only yesterday had been populated with cheerful yellow flowers. “If obeying Domhnall means letting his people suffer, or putting them in danger, you have only one choice.”

“And what is that?”

“Disobey Domhnall. Resist.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand. We’re in it up to our necks here, and you’re going to take a vacation. You’re running away when you need to stay and put up a fight.”

“Like you did, with the Tribunal?”

I said dangerously, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He was inches from my face. “Neither do you.”

“Good luck on your hunt.” I ended the conversation with the slam of the door.

* * *

Kate kept herself occupied with sewing projects while I buried myself in books to distract from Nathaniel’s movements around the house as he packed for the hunt, but though I was turning pages, I absorbed little of what I was reading. After I watched Kate sew and unpick the same seam three times, I suspected she was similarly agitated.