Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

Zan was sitting in a darkened corner, head in his hands. I tried not to stare, but I could hardly help myself; I had never allowed myself to look at him before, to admit to myself how much I truly wanted him, and now that I could, I was like a souse having a first draft after long and torturous sobriety. I wanted to drink him in, every part of him: the way his hair, always askew, fell to perfectly frame his right eye and hide his left. The shape of his shoulders beneath his white linen shirt. The angles of his cheekbones, the trim cut of his waist . . .

“Zan?” I said, finding my voice.

He looked up with a start, and for a minute I wondered if I’d made a mistake coming here uninvited. What if I guessed wrong about how he felt? What if he didn’t care who I really was? What if he didn’t care much about me at all?

“I’m sorry that I—?” I began, but had to stop when he crossed the room, closing the gap between us in one stride, and crushed his mouth against mine. Wonder and doubt collided inside me like two errant stars that, on impact, burst into a cloud of fire and dust.

The kiss softened, and I pulled reluctantly away. “Are you all right?” I murmured into his shoulder. He smelled like cedar and fog, like autumn hearth fires and rain on the windowsill.

His cut-glass mouth formed a sad smile. “I’m fine,” he said tiredly. “Emilie. You must think . . .”

“I’m not angry that you didn’t tell me who you are.” I rested a hand on his arm. “Honestly, I probably should have figured it out sooner. It’s just that you look so much like Simon . . .”

“It was easy to pretend that Simon was my father. It was something I’ve always wished were true. But I shouldn’t have misled you. I didn’t know that you would turn out to be . . . you.”

My eyes drifted from his lips down to the hollow of his collarbone, where I became fixated on the soft thrum of his heartbeat beneath his skin.

“Emilie,” he said with a soft urgency that drew my eyes back up to his, “the things I’ve done today, I can’t undo. There will be consequences for my open defiance at the trial. The guards will be coming to get me soon, so that the king—?my real father—?can decide what to do with me. You have to be gone before then. If he knows about you, I’ve no doubt he will use you to hurt me.”

“Wait! Just wait. Your father . . . Corvalis was a close confidant of his, correct? And Nathaniel said that while he was still working with him, he began some kind of alliance with the Tribunal in Renalt, right?”

“Yes . . .” Zan said slowly.

“Corvalis was also after the name of the person providing Thackery with invitations. He was almost desperate to hear that it was some other child that King Domhnall might have fathered. What if he has been behind all of this? Your father.”

“King’s Gate’s seal requires the deaths of three Achlevan royals. He wouldn’t—?”

“Zan, he’s looking for more royals. Could he be on the hunt for his own replacement in the line of sacrifices?”

Zan stepped back, as if stunned. “The monarchy’s power in Achleva has been waning for generations. The landholding lords, should they decide to unite, would be able to overthrow him with ease. But the alliance between Renalt and Achleva . . .”

“. . . is worthless if the Renaltan monarchy is also in its last days.”

“My father has always been a gambler; he must have looked over his odds and decided to back the strongest horse: the Tribunal.”

“And the first thing the Tribunal would want to do, if aligned with the Achlevan king, is to take down the magical wall that keeps wayward witches like myself out of their hands.”

Outside his bedroom door came the sound of several sets of boots on the floor. “Here,” Zan said urgently, pushing me behind his wardrobe door, “hide!”

“No, wait! There’s more I have to tell you! Zan—?”

He kissed me again, fervent and fierce. “I know what I have to do now,” he said. “And I’m likely to face exile for it.” There was a heavy knock on the door. “I don’t know where I’ll go, but . . . will you come? Will you come with me, Emilie?”

“I will,” I said breathlessly. “I’m with you.”

He pressed a hard kiss into my forehead, eyes closed tight, as another, harder knock thudded against his door. “Pack whatever you need. Meet me at midnight,” he said, taking my hands. “On the wall, by the waterfall. The site of our first spell.”

When he pulled away, he left something in my grasp. A ring. I recognized it immediately. It was his mother’s.

“Prince Valentin,” a gruff voice said through the door, “you’re wanted in the Great Hall.”

I watched through the crack between the wardrobe hinges as they burst through the door and flooded into the room, wrestling him to the ground and pinning his arms behind him while his face once again became a mask of sardonic calm.

“Boys, boys,” he said glibly, face half-pressed into the floor, “if you rip me limb from limb now, my father will be very angry that you deprived him of the opportunity.”

My fingers curled against the door. I could feel the magic pressing against each tip, eager to be let loose, ready to destroy them all for daring to lay a hand on him. But Zan had warned me against making myself known, so I hung back until they’d hauled him out of sight. Then I made a quick nick on my palm and stepped out from my hiding place. “Ego invisibilia,” I whispered. “I am unseen.”

I slipped in step behind them, and none of them seemed to be the wiser.