Greythorne (Bloodleaf 2)

“Really? Through the maze? I seem to recall once finding you huddled up in a corner of it, scared out of your wits.”

“I was ten,” I said. It was how Kellan and I first met: My mother, baby brother, and I had come to celebrate the Day of Shades festival at the end of the harvest, when old legends claimed the line between the living and the dead was the thinnest. And while there were plenty of spirits walking the world that night, it was the living that frightened me. Ghosts I knew. But I was unprepared for the costumed parade, where the townsfolk donned garish, oversize animal heads of plaster and paper, painted with fiendish smiles and hungry eyes. When one of them leered at me, howling in manic laughter, I had bolted straight into the hedge maze.

It was Kellan, then twelve years old, who found me hours later, crying and miserable, in a remote corner of the labyrinth.

He’d held out his right hand and said, “Don’t be afraid. I know the way out. I’ll see you to the end.”

At the sight of us emerging from the maze, my mother showered him with thanks and praise of an equal volume to the scolding she gave me.

He began his soldier’s training the next day; Mother had insisted upon it. Kellan was to be my personal guard. If she couldn’t always be there to keep me from trouble, she’d enlist someone who could.

That moment, in this maze, had entwined our lives forever.

The repercussions of that event were visible even now: he was dressed in a soldier’s uniform, but his cloak was the sleek gold of the captain’s mantle instead of the lieutenant’s cobalt blue. It was embroidered with the Greythorne family’s hawthorn crest, intertwined with the limbs of a gryphon rampant. To anyone else, it would appear to signify his fidelity and fierceness in serving the king—which was true. But I knew the idea for the gryphon came from the charm I’d given him before we breached Achlev’s wall five months ago. Choosing it for his cloak was Kellan’s furtive way of acknowledging me as well. It was a nod to our shared history and bond, however tenuous it could still sometimes be.

He wore the new color, and the responsibility of the position it accompanied, with a stoic regality that made me wish, not for the first time, that I could go back to that long-lost moment when the thing I wanted most in the world was for him to love me.

“You were going to sneak in?”

“That was the plan, yes.”

“Did the plan include attending any of tomorrow’s festivities?”

My silence was all the answer he needed.

He clasped his hands behind his back—his soldier’s pose. “Conrad misses you,” he ventured carefully, watching me closely to gauge my reaction; we’d had this conversation before.

“You know why I stay away,” I replied quietly. “I do it for Conrad.”

“I don’t think it’s for Conrad,” Kellan argued. “It’s never been about Conrad. It’s about you. And what happened to Zan.”

“Don’t,” I warned.

“I’ve kept quiet. Kept my distance. Let you grieve. But you can’t keep going like this forever. There are people—real, live, actual people—who need you.”

I wouldn’t look at him, but that didn’t stop him from taking my hands. His were beautiful: chiseled and strong, with long and graceful brown fingers. They were the working hands of an equestrian and swordsman, but they looked like they should have belonged to a musician.

He paused for a second before venturing, “I sent a few men to Stiria Bay.”

I yanked my hands away. “No. Kellan, you know that—”

“They brought back this.” He took out a small folded kerchief and pulled the corners away carefully, revealing a fierce bird formed of gold and gemstones. “Aurelia.” Kellan gently placed the kerchief and charm in my palm. As he moved, I could see his charm—a brother to this one—peeking out from beneath the collar of his uniform. The gryphon: Fierce, noble, loyal. Just like its bearer.

I looked down at the glimmering, jewel-studded wings of the charm in my hand.

The firebird: Beautiful. Devastating. Doomed to die, but blessed with rebirth.

And Zan had died and been reborn. I just wished I’d known how excruciatingly short his second chance would turn out to be.

I took a deep breath. “Did they find this with his . . . ? Did they make sure it was properly . . . ? Or perhaps . . . ?”

Body. Buried. Burned. All words I couldn’t bring myself to say aloud.

“It was found washed up on shore with the rest of the debris from the wreck. There were no other . . .” Kellan swallowed, looking away. “. . . Remains.”

I shoved the firebird back into his hands, suddenly desperate to remove it from my sight.

“Aurelia, don’t do this to yourself,” Kellan said. “You have to come to terms with all of thi