She was stirring a pot of something that smelled spicy and delicious, and when she turned toward me, her smile was warm and open. “I thought you’d get hungry eventually.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, removing my boots and setting them by the fire to dry properly. “I think I’m just tired.”
“You don’t need to apologize. You’re allowed to be sad, or tired, or even just annoyed with Roan.”
I snorted and rubbed at my cheeks, which were tight from my dried tears. “It’s not just that. Ceren attacked Varenia when we escaped. I have no idea what happened to my family, and it feels as if time is slipping through my fingers like water.”
“Here.” She placed two bowls of soup on the table and gestured for me to sit. “This will help.”
“Why?” I eyed the spoonful in my hand skeptically. “Did you put something in it?”
She laughed. “Yes, if you count chicken, potatoes, carrots, and leeks as ‘something.’”
“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I don’t really understand how magic works, I guess.”
She raised a quizzical brow.
“Not your kind of magic, anyway.”
“They say Varenians live longer than any other people,” she said, watching me take a sip of broth. It was so delicious I almost groaned. “That you heal remarkably fast. That your waters make you healthy and strong.”
I nodded. “That’s all true.”
“And you don’t think that’s magic?”
I chewed on a chunk of potato, considering. “I suppose I always thought of that as nature. We die, our bodies nourish the blood coral, which in turn nourishes the ocean, which then nourishes us. It’s a cycle of life and death, not magic.”
“Hmm,” she said, still watching me.
I realized I’d eaten nearly half my bowl of soup and set my spoon down. She hadn’t taken a single bite. “Do you consider that magic?”
“I think the world is full of magic. It’s in the air and the water and the soil and the trees. But only some of us are capable of harnessing it. I sense you are one of those people, Nor. I think that’s why Roan told you about me.”
I blushed, staring into my bowl of soup. “What would give Roan that impression? He hardly knows me.”
“Because Roan’s mother was a healer, like me. And because he’s an empath, believe it or not. He hides behind sarcasm and crude humor, but he’s far more perceptive than people give him credit for. He sensed you were searching for something that you might find here. I think he was right.”
I dug back into my soup to avoid responding. I wasn’t ready to talk about my healing powers or the fact that Ceren needed my blood, and more importantly, I didn’t want to admit that Roan might actually be perceptive, despite his smug exterior.
By the time we finished eating, the storm had blown away, leaving an innocent blue sky in its wake. A man with a cart came by with my little wooden bed, which was placed in a corner of Adriel’s workshop. I was about to sit down and start reading the book Adriel gave me when she knocked on the door.
“Come on,” she said, tossing my still-damp cloak at me.
“Where are we going?” I asked, slightly cranky at being interrupted. I didn’t have much time to figure out how the bloodstones worked, and Adriel’s constant questioning made me anxious.
“I’m taking you to see the bone trees,” she said, and disappeared outside before I had a chance to respond.
15
Adriel and I left the house on foot and headed for the forest that began less than a mile away. Since the ground was soft from the rain and our boots got stuck in the muddy road, we kept to the fields, tromping through the damp grass and wildflowers. Every now and then, Adriel would stop to pluck a specimen and place it in a satchel she wore across her body.
“Tell me about Talin,” she said after we’d been walking in silence for a while. “Roan said you told him you aren’t lovers, but somehow I don’t believe that’s entirely true.”
“What is it with Galethians and personal questions?” I stepped over a rotted branch as we entered the forest. “My relationship with Talin isn’t any of your concern.”
Adriel cast me a questioning glance. “Apologies. I didn’t realize that was considered personal where you come from.”
“It is,” I huffed. “I haven’t asked you about your relationships, have I?”
“I wouldn’t mind if you did. Although my last lover moved to Leesbrook over a year ago. She wanted to become a blacksmith’s apprentice, and I couldn’t very well move to the city.”
“Oh.” I blinked in surprise.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me only men and women are allowed to be lovers in Varenia. I know how strict the Ilarean royals can be when it comes to marriage and procreation, but I thought the Varenians were a little more evolved than that.”
“It isn’t that,” I said, shaking my head. Varenian girls were groomed to marry a prince, whose sexual preference was irrelevant as far as the crown was concerned. His duty was to carry on the royal bloodline, and he would have to marry accordingly. But if we weren’t chosen, we could marry freely, as long as our parents and the elders approved the match. “I just assumed you and Roan were lovers.”
Adriel laughed. “My tastes are far more discerning than you give me credit for.”
“And the woman who left?”
“Ana.” She pushed a branch aside and waited for me to pass. “I loved her, but the truth is that most hedge witches live alone. I knew she wouldn’t stay forever.”
I mulled over her words over for a moment. “Do Galethians marry?”
“Some do. It’s more of a formality than anything, though. Are you and Talin going to marry?”
I should have been prepared for the blunt question, but it still caught me off guard. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I was betrothed to his brother, Ceren. But I never loved him.” I told her the story of how Zadie had been chosen to marry Ceren and I’d gone in her place, elaborating on how Talin had helped me while I was at New Castle.
“It sounds as if he would do anything for you,” Adriel said after I’d finished. “Do you love him?”
I knew that I did, but it felt strange to admit that to someone I barely knew before I had told Talin. I nodded instead. “But his goal is to help his mother overthrow Ceren, and I have to make sure my family is safe. It’s hard to even think about marriage.”
“Is that why you came? To ask the Galethians to help you?”
We had reached a clearing. In the center was a grove of the strangest trees I’d ever seen. Tall and skeletal, without a single leaf on their slender white branches, they looked more like dead coral than trees.
I turned to Adriel. I knew she was close to Roan, and I didn’t want her going to him before we’d had time to come up with a strategy. “Do you think the Galethians would help us if we asked?”
“That all depends on why you think the Galethians should help, I suppose. This is not their fight, Nor.”
From what I knew of Ceren, this would be the entire continent’s fight eventually, but my thoughts had snagged on something else. “What do you mean by their?”
She walked into the clearing, the light streaming down onto her dark hair. She was objectively beautiful by Varenian standards, but it was her lack of self-consciousness that set her apart from any woman I’d met before.
“My ancestors came from the Penery Islands, to the west. They arrived on these shores back when this land was still part of Ilara and began a small settlement. These trees are all that remain of them.”
I followed her into the clearing. “What do you mean?”
“Just like your blood coral, the bone trees grew from the bodies of my ancestors. When I die, I will be buried here, and my bones will nourish the roots of a new tree. The last tree, unless I choose to have a child someday.” She
placed her hands on the nearest trunk and looked up at the bare branches. “They flowered, once upon a time. The fruit was poisonous, if eaten straight, but the seeds could be made into teas and elixirs with healing properties, just like your pearls.”
“Why did they stop blooming?” I asked. The wind picked up, and the branches rattling overhead sounded eerily like dried bones. A chill ran through my body, and I suddenly had the feeling we were in the presence of spirits.
“When the Galethians came, they drove my ancestors out of the region, back to the islands where they’d come from. A few stayed, but it wasn’t enough to sustain the grove.”
“You said Roan’s mother was a healer as well. Does that mean he shares your ancestry?”
“Only on his mother’s side.” She sat beneath the trees, finding a space for herself amid the roots, as if she already longed to be among them.
I stayed where I was, in the space between the forest and the grove. “If the Galethians were Varenians once, then what happens when they bury their dead? Do they grow some other kind of tree?”
She smiled sadly and looked up, past the branches into the sky. “The Galethians don’t bury their dead, Nor. They burn them.”
Her words sent another chill through me. “And the ashes?”
“Scattered on the wind.”
“Meaning they don’t return to the earth.”
Adriel’s eyes were shiny with tears. “And the cycle of magic—nature, whatever you want to call it—is broken.”
I could tell she considered this a genuine tragedy, and under other circumstances I would have agreed. But if the Ilarean royals really were linked to the bloodstones the way Varenians were linked to the pearls, then it might mean there was a way to break that cycle as well. Without the blood of a royal, the stones would lose their power.
And there was only one full-blooded Ilarean royal left: Ceren.
* * *
That night, I lay awake in my new bed in the little workshop, which Adriel had cleaned up for me, despite my protests. I liked the smell of the herbs, the books and crystals and even the cat, whose name I had learned was Fox (short for foxglove, a flower that Adriel said could either be medicinal or poisonous depending how it was used). Fox had come to sleep at the foot of my bed, curled up and making a strange rumbling sound that Adriel called purring. She assured me it meant he liked me, but I had my doubts.
I opened the book Adriel had given me, the one with the bone tree on the cover. It had come from her ancestors, she said, passed down through generations, and might help me to understand the connection between blood and nature. Though, she warned me, the language was deliberately confusing and arcane to prevent anyone who wasn’t a witch from using it, and she had given up on it long ago.
“Be careful,” she had warned before retiring for the evening. “Blood magic is—”
“Messy,” I’d finished for her. “I’m not planning on doing any, I promise.”
She had smiled, lingering in the doorway for a moment as if there was something more she wanted to say. I had breathed a sigh of relief when she’d turned and closed the door behind her.
But she hadn’t been wrong about the book being confusing. I hadn’t made it more than two pages before I was lost among the words, rereading the same lines several times before giving up and moving on. The writer used tall, narrow script, so uniform that as my eyes grew tired, the letters all began to bleed together, making it difficult to discern an L from an I and a U from a V. After a while, I started to wonder if the letters were actually rearranging themselves on purpose to trick me.
I set the book aside, still not sleepy, and forced myself to close my eyes. My thoughts turned instantly to Zadie. I didn’t like being away from her after everything I’d been through to get back to her, but I knew I’d done the right thing in giving her and Sami space. Something told me that they would soon cross the line to lovers, marriage or no marriage. The thought was oddly painful, a deep ache in my chest. I was happy for them, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was being left behind, that Zadie was moving past me into something that I might never be able to understand.
And there was something about Galeth that didn’t feel right to me. Not dangerous, per se, but almost as if it were a bit rotten around the edges, like a seaflower beginning to wilt. I admired the true equality of its citizens, how much freedom women had in choosing their own paths, though even that was something of an illusion. Otherwise, Adriel would not be an outcast, something I could empathize with all too well. And while passing down leadership through the father the way we did in Varenia or Ilara had always seemed arbitrary and unwise, being the strongest rider in your region didn’t seem to be the best qualifier, either.
My restless thoughts turned to Talin, who was probably sound asleep after a hard day of riding. He wouldn’t mind sleeping in a barracks with other soldiers. He’d had his own living quarters at Old Castle, but he never put himself above his men, other than to lead them. While Ceren believed the throne was his by right and anyone standing in his way was merely an obstacle, Talin followed a moral compass that pointed due north.
I wished he was with me. Another squall had rolled in, and a sudden burst of rain pelted the windows, making Fox sit up. Lightning flashed somewhere in the distance, followed several heartbeats later by the sound of thunder. The candle had burned down, and the total darkness reminded me too much of the New Castle dungeon.
I was used to storms since I grew up at sea. Once, a massive wave had nearly taken off our entire roof. Some of our belongings had washed away, and other families had lost their boats and docks. I wasn’t nearly as vulnerable on land, I reminded myself.
Then a burst of lightning came at the same time as the loudest clap of thunder I’d ever heard, and I sat bolt upright, sending Fox darting into the shadows. Heart pounding, I was half tempted to run to Adriel. She was probably used to this, living out here all alone. I could feel an all-too-familiar tightening in my chest, the kind that would normally be quelled by submerging myself in water. But I wasn’t going to get that now.
Without thinking, I flew out of bed, pulled on my riding boots, and sprinted out into the rain in my shift. I thought perhaps just being outside would release some of my rising panic, but it was the movement that seemed to help, strangely. I was strong from riding, and though my boots weren’t designed for it and my shift was soaked through and clinging to me, I found that running came easily.
A blinding flash of white came out of nowhere. For a moment, I was sure I had been struck by lightning. But there was no pain following the light. It was as if I had left the rainy fields and was inside New Castle. In Ceren’s study, specifically. He was hunched over his desk, his back to me, scribbling madly on a piece of paper. A half-drunk vial of blood sat next to him on the desk, and red stones, both polished and raw, filled a bowl nearby, the way the Varenian pearls had just weeks ago. His own arm was bleeding over a silver bowl, and with his free hand, Ceren picked up a stone, turning it over in his long white fingers before throwing it aside in frustration.
“Such a child,” I said, and then he turned, as if he’d heard me.
His gray eyes darted around the room searchingly. He looked so different than I remembered, and not just because his nose wasn’t broken and bleeding. His once deathly pale cheeks were pink, as were the full lips, which were so like his brother’s. Whatever the mountain had taken from him, my blood seemed to have given it all back and then some. He was beautiful, in his own way. And the fact that I could acknowledge it after all he’d done to me made my stomach churn.
“Ceren,” I said, and his pupils dilated instantly as he focused on me.
“You’re really there.”
I knew he couldn’t hurt me through the vision, but my heart still raced, even as I told myself not to be afraid. I could feel my body in the field, the rain pouring down my frozen limbs, but a part of me was there in that st
udy that I had always hated.
A smug grin played on his lips. “Enjoying your time in Galeth, are you? You look like a drowned rat.”
“We have one of your guards,” I ground out, ignoring his jibe.
He waved a pale hand. “I have a hundred more.”
This was the Ceren I knew so well, the one to whom human life meant nothing. “Why did you follow us here?”
His eyes darted to the vial of blood unconsciously. My blood.
“Why do you still need my blood?” I blurted. “And why are we connected whenever you drink it?”
He shook his head but didn’t answer. He had a weakness, it seemed, but he wasn’t going to reveal it to me. I wasn’t surprised, of course, but I didn’t know when I would have another chance to ask, and he might let something slip in his arrogance.
“Where are my parents, Ceren?”
He cocked his head like a strange white bird. “They’re in New Castle. All your people are.”
“Why?” I growled in frustration, nearly taking myself out of the vision. Somewhere in the distance I could hear thunder, feel my entire body shaking with cold. “What do you want from them?”
He stared into the empty space before him for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure how to answer.
I was about to ask again when I felt a hand clamp around my arm. For one brief moment, Ceren’s gaze sharpened, and then the vision broke and I was standing in a field with Adriel, who was shaking me with a look of wild fear in her eyes.
“Nor! Wake up!”
I sputtered, pushing ropes of wet hair out of my face with my free hand. “I’m here.”
“What are you doing?” Her tone was sharp, but she pulled me toward her and threw her cloak around both of us as well as she could.
I shivered so hard I stumbled. “I don’t know. I was afraid of the storm, and I panicked.”
She half pulled, half carried me across the field until we reached her house. Inside, she sat me down in front of the fire and pulled my soaked shift off over my head before throwing a heavy blanket around me.
Kingdom of Sea and Stone Page 13
