Greythorne (Bloodleaf 2)

“You look feverish,” Iresine said, glancing at Carlisle. She laid baby Regus away in the bassinet and then put herself between him and Onal, as if she were afraid for his safety from the woman who’d just birthed him. “Carlisle! Make sure Mistress Onal gets back to her room. She’s not feeling well and needs to rest.”

“As you wish, Majesty,” Carlisle said, trying to guide Onal but then, when she resisted, wrestling her arms behind her back.

“No! She was

there. I held her. Dressed her. In a gown I made myself.” She was sobbing now, brittle and broken. “My baby,” she said, over and over. “My little girl. What have you done to her? What have you done?”

When the man pried her away, she screamed. The sound bled across the shifting mists and echoed into the next scene. I found myself back at Rosetta’s homestead. A high-pitched shrieking was already coming from inside.

I was in the Screaming Dream.

It was different, though, this time. More vivid. Expanded. The sounds were sharper. More excruciating.

But soon, the house went quiet.

This was when the Screaming Dream always ended; I never saw what happened next, and I was always glad I didn’t have to.

This time I was not so lucky.

I ducked out of the way as three men in soldiers’ uniforms stormed out the door. “We did it,” one said boastfully to the others. “We made the Empyrea proud.”

“I hope She ropes her to one of her hottest stars so she can burn for all eternity,” said another. “Witch.”

Their bags were heavy with goods taken from inside, and they loaded up their horses with their plunder.

“You don’t get to take from us without expecting retaliation!” one of the men shouted toward the house, spitting on the ground. Then, to his friends, he said, “She won’t be bothering us again, that’s certain.”

They laughed as they mounted their horses and were still laughing as they rode away, leaving the house quiet and the door swinging lazily on its hinges. I approached with dread. A slow-moving tide of viscous red liquid began to flow across the threshold and drip lazily down the stoop.

Hand to my mouth, I slipped inside and followed the source of the blood into the parlor. The blood was everywhere—spread in great arcs across the floral-painted walls, the furniture, the floor. A single, sightless body had fallen against the fireplace, hair matted with blood, hands hanging limp to her sides, head lolling.

Rosetta. I wrapped my hands around my stomach, but the only thing that came from my mouth was a strangled keening sound, audible only to me.

Did you hear that? She cried out!

Let her be.

Was this the future or the past?

On the mantel above her body, the clocked rhythmically ticked.

It had not yet been robbed of its gears. This was the past.

It was also impossible.

I heard voices outside. At first I thought it was the Renaltan soldiers coming back, but I quickly realized there were only two voices, and one was a boy, the other a girl.

“Something’s wrong,” the girl was saying. “I can feel when life ends and tethers break; it happens all the time. It’s gentle, soft. I don’t even notice it anymore, really. But this—I felt death. Ugly death. And so suddenly—”

“Wait, Galantha,” the boy warned, his voice suddenly grim. “Don’t—”

My surroundings blurred, streaking across my vision; the Gray was pulling me away. “No!” I said. “No! I can’t go! I need to know what’s going to happen! Her sister just—”

Sister. The Gray responded by showing me Conrad. He was with a pack of kids, huddled in the dark. Several of them were crying. “It’s all right,” he was telling them. “I know where we can go. A safe place, where my sister has friends who can help us.”

“They took my daddy.” One little girl sobbed.

He shifted his lamp, and I saw that he was sitting at the base of a stone sarcophagus. He and these children—there were twenty at least—were hiding in the crypt beneath the Stella Regina with the coffins and cobwebs.