“Get warm,” she said. “I’m going to make you some tea. If it hadn’t been for Fox mewling at my door, I wouldn’t have even known you were missing. What possessed you to go out into a lightning storm? Surely a girl from the ocean knows better than that.”
She was talking to herself more than me, and my teeth were chattering far too hard for me to answer anyway. Foxglove appeared and began to roll on the floor in front of me, exposing the tufts of soft white fur on his belly and twisting his head at me as if to say, Did you forget about me, outsider?
I reached out with one chilled arm and scratched behind his ears, which set him to making that strange rumbling sound again. Perhaps he really did like me.
“Here,” Adriel said, squatting down beside me and handing me a steaming cup. “This will help warm and calm you. I didn’t realize you had such a fear of storms.”
“I don’t, normally.” My violent shivering had finally slowed to the occasional twitch. “I think it’s just that I was on my own. I’ve never lived by myself before.”
She gazed at me with a sad, pitying sort of smile. “You were hardly alone, Nor. I was right here.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I would have preferred that to finding you talking to yourself in a field.”
My cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t talking to yourself, though. Were you?” Adriel pulled a stool over and sat down next to me with her own cup of tea. I was a little relieved to see she was drinking it, too.
She was studying me again in that unnerving way, and while it made me want to curl in on myself, I knew that if anyone might understand my link to Ceren, it was Adriel. Her interest in bloodstones and pearls had worried me at first, but of course she would be interested; they were linked to her heritage, too, via the bone trees. And she had taken me to the grove, a place that was clearly meaningful to her. Maybe it was time for me to be vulnerable, too.
I took a sip of the tea, which had a light berry flavor. “No, I wasn’t talking to myself.”
“Care to tell me about it?”
I told her about the visions and dreams, how twice I’d seen Ceren drinking my blood, which might help explain our link. “I spoke to him this time,” I added. “And he responded. He said he has the Varenians, but he wouldn’t tell me what he plans to do with them.”
She watched me intently, and I couldn’t fight the feeling that she was gathering up my thoughts like she would gather herbs, as if they were ingredients in some potion I couldn’t fathom.
“I understand your fascination with blood magic now,” she said when I’d finished.
I snorted. “I wouldn’t call it a fascination. It’s more of a necessary interest.”
“Fair enough.” She took my cup from me and rose to her feet, stretching. “As I said before, I know very little about blood magic. The bond that you and Ceren have... I can’t say I’ve never heard of anything like it, but I have no experience with it. And for now, it sounds like it might be useful.”
I raised my eyebrows and pulled the blanket closer around me. “How so?”
“You’re able to communicate with him. Perhaps, if you learned to control it, you could even spy on him.”
I shook my head. “I tried my hand at spying once. It didn’t go well.”
“Roan was right about you,” she said with a twist of her lips. “You are an enigma.”
I laughed dryly in response.
“You disagree? You’re a girl from a tiny village in the sea who should never have set foot on land, and here you are communicating through visions with the king of Ilara and telling me you’ve already tried your hand at spying. I’d say that makes you something of a riddle.”
Maybe she understood me better than I wanted to admit. Riddles were in want of answers, and Thalos knew I was in short supply of those these days. Ever since I’d returned to Varenia, all I’d felt was doubt and uncertainty.
She handed me a dry shift. “Here. This belonged to Ana. She left it behind, and it doesn’t fit me.”
“Thank you.” I pulled it quickly over my head. It was a bit long on me, but it would do. “I’ll return it to you as soon as mine is dry.”
“Keep it,” she said as she helped me to my feet. “It isn’t as if she’s coming back for it.”
She said it matter-of-factly, but there was hurt there, clearly. She had taken a lover knowing she wouldn’t stay, and yet she still missed her.
“There’s something I don’t understand, something from my vision,” I mused aloud after a moment. “Why did Ceren take all the Varenians? If it was only my blood he wanted, he could simply have taken my parents hostage and lured me to him that way.”
“They must have something Ceren wants,” she said. “Or more importantly, something he needs. More soldiers for his army, perhaps?”
I shook my head. “They’re malnourished. And they’ll never fight for Ceren willingly. He would have to use bloodstones to control them.” Was that his plan? To lead his soldiers with his mind? The thin vein I’d seen in the tunnels below New Castle wouldn’t yield enough stones for an entire army. “There must be more bloodstones in the flooded mine,” I said, more to myself than Adriel.
“And?” she asked.
A horrible thought struck me, sending chills over my entire body. “He doesn’t need the Varenians to dive for pearls anymore.” I sat down again as the room began to spin around me. “But he still needs the Varenians to dive.”
16
I couldn’t know for sure if Ceren had captured the Varenians to mine for him, but I also couldn’t think of another good reason for bringing them to New Castle. Adriel agreed that it was a likely explanation, so I was eager to share the theory with Talin, Zadie, and Sami. If Ceren really did need the Varenians to dive, he wouldn’t kill them, which bought us a little time. But I wouldn’t know anything for sure until we went to New Castle, and I had no idea if Talin was having any luck enlisting the Galethians’ help.
The old Nor would have already been on the road south, armed with a half-formulated plan and driven solely by the need to act. I thought of my time in New Castle, where I’d been alone and without allies, until I made the decision to trust Lady Melina, Ebb, and finally Talin. I wasn’t without allies now, and I was going to have to trust that we had the best odds of helping the Varenians together.
Adriel herself had become the most unlikely ally of all. Sensing my anxiety, she put me to work to keep my mind occupied. She concocted remedies and tinctures from herbs, wildflowers, mushrooms, berries, and other unidentifiable substances she kept in glass vials for the people who came by the cottage. At one point, she sent me out with a book filled with drawings and descriptions to fetch a special kind of mushroom for a tea. I managed to bring back several poisonous mushrooms along with the correct ones, and the berries I picked on a whim gave me a rash. Fortunately, Adriel had a cure for that, too.
“Have you found anything useful?” she asked the following morning, nodding to the book in my hands. I’d spent all last night reading it and was fairly certain I’d actually lost intelligence in the process.
“No,” I huffed, nearly tripping over a stone as we crossed a field. Adriel was gathering a rare herb that only bloomed one week each year. Lungflower, it was called, or godsbreath, a small, innocuous plant with tiny white buds as soft as down. I would never have noticed it if Adriel hadn’t pointed it out. She gathered the buds, leaving the stems to die and regrow again next year. The buds would be dried and used in tea to ease a sick patient’s congestion.
“Come now,” she said, taking my arm so I didn’t trip again. “You must have learned something.”
Our horses were grazing in the field nearby, and the sun was warm despite the crispness in the early autumn air, but I was too exasperated to appreciate it. “Every time I think I’m getting somewhere, the book tries to trick me.�
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She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “What do you mean?”
“Take this, for example. ‘Bloodstone magic royals keep; bonds of death that run skin-deep.’ Does that mean that the bloodstone only works as long as it’s in contact with the wearer’s skin? Or does that mean that once the bloodstone is removed, the wearer dies?”
She shook her head, lips curled in an amused smile.
“I’m glad you find my frustration comical.” I flipped to another page. “And this. ‘Bloodstone wearers willing are; control is weakened from afar.’ That seems to mean Ceren can’t control his guards from far away, which would make sense, considering how easily the captured guard was taken. And it explains why he would have come to Varenia and Galeth himself. But I could be reading that completely wrong. I just don’t see why the entire thing has to be written in riddles. Aren’t books supposed to be helpful?”
Adriel placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Breathe, Nor.”
“Meanwhile,” I continued, “Ceren has an entire village of Varenians at his disposal, and a mine’s worth of bloodstones he could force them to extract.”
Her grip tightened. “We don’t know that yet.”
I tried to take a deep breath, but I felt like I was wearing a corset. We didn’t know anything, which was the problem. If Ceren could bring on the visions by drinking my blood, then I could be transported back to New Castle at any minute. The visions and dreams had been scary enough when I believed it was my own subconscious controlling them. Being under Ceren’s control was far more terrifying.
“Let me see,” Adriel said, holding her hand out. I passed the book to her, open to the page I’d been studying. I’d alternated between reading each line as closely as possible and skipping around, hoping I might stumble upon something that made sense. The book was filled with a lot of information that had nothing to do with bloodstones or blood bonds, too, and sifting that out took additional time and effort.
“Look at this next line,” she said, leaning closer to me. “‘Wearers linked by mind and soul; power gives but takes its toll.’”
I rubbed at my temples. “And?”
“Ceren controls the people who wear the bloodstones with his mind, correct?”
“We assume so.”
“But it’s taking a toll on him. It has to. No magic comes without cost, especially magic of that magnitude. His power is also his weakness.”
And in order to combat that weakness, he was drinking my blood. The fact that he had come after me could only mean he needed more. “Should we be focusing on Ceren instead of his guards?” I asked. “The mind controlling the body?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps?”
“But we can’t do that from here.”
“Can’t we?”
Before I could respond, we heard the pounding of hooves and looked beyond the field to the road.
Talin.
I rose to my feet, worry coursing through me as I waved at him. When Talin neared us, I ran forward to greet him the moment he dismounted. To my relief, he was smiling.
He picked me up by the waist and spun me around, then set me gently on my feet before looking me over from head to toe, like he was checking for injuries. His eyes flicked up to my hairline and a lopsided grin quirked his lips. “Pardon, Your Highness. I didn’t realize I was in the presence of royalty.” He bowed deeply, glancing up at me with twinkling eyes.
I laughed, completely having forgotten the daisy crown Adriel had made for me earlier that morning. “A fool’s mistake. How should I punish you?”
“Time away from you was surely punishment enough.” I glanced behind Talin to Grig, who had just reached us. “Grig wouldn’t let me travel alone,” he explained.
“Good man,” I said with a smile, waving to Grig. “But what are you doing here?”
“Your hunch was right, Nor. The Ilarean guards who died at the border had bloodstones.”
My pulse sped up. Finally, something useful. “They did? How did you find them?”
“One of the Galethians who had helped recover the bodies had the stones. Roan discovered them when he noticed the woman was acting strangely.”
I sucked in a breath. “No.”
“She didn’t know what they were, only that they appeared valuable. But Roan was furious.”
I could imagine that easily enough.
“What will happen to the woman who stole them?” Adriel asked.
Talin glanced at her, clearly uneasy. “I get the sense that if it’s up to Yana, she’ll be banished to Ilara.”
“What? Why?” I looked from Talin to Adriel.
“Yana doesn’t suffer fools, or traitors,” Adriel said.
I felt something inside of me grow cold. “What does ‘banished’ mean?”
“Sent south. She will never be allowed to live in Galeth again.”
I couldn’t judge too harshly. It was a better fate than Varenian banishment, and certainly better than being put to death, but after what had happened to Sami, I wasn’t sure if it was just, either. “Where are the stones?” I asked Talin.
“On the way to Leesbrook.”
“Roan could have brought them to me,” Adriel said. “He knows I don’t like going there.” She was mostly talking to herself, but Talin and I exchanged a glance. “Besides, the stones on their own aren’t much use. All this tells us is that Ceren is using the stones to control his men, which we already know.”
Talin shook his head. “That’s not entirely true. The Galethian with the stolen necklace seemed listless, half-asleep, just like the captured guard in Leesbrook. She didn’t struggle when Roan approached her, so he decided to try taking the necklace. Whatever hold the stone had on her was gone. It didn’t kill her. It was as if she woke up from a dream. She remembered nothing after she’d taken it.”
“Now we know what skin-deep means,” I said. Talin looked at me questioningly, and I explained Adriel’s book and the lines about bloodstones. “It seems that wearing the stone, having any kind of physical contact with it, causes the bond to form. Which means we can take it from the captured guard, and it won’t harm him. If anything, it will help him.”
“Exactly.”
I smiled at Adriel, but she didn’t seem as pleased with the news.
“When are we leaving?” she asked Talin.
“Immediately. Roan and the others already rode ahead. I stopped to collect the two of you.”
Adriel folded her arms across her chest. “Collect us? Like specimens?”
“I’m sorry?” Talin looked at me, clearly confused.
I shrugged, but Adriel only hitched her bag on her shoulder. “I need to go back to the cottage and leave a note for my patrons. I can catch up with you if you want to go with them, Nor.”
Talin smiled at me encouragingly, clearly eager to spend time with me, but I didn’t feel right leaving Adriel to finish up our work alone.
“You ride ahead,” I said to Talin. “We’ll be right behind you.”
I was relieved when he didn’t argue. “We’re meeting at the fort. I’ll see you soon.”
I kissed him lightly on the cheek and watched him ride back to the road leading to Leesbrook with Grig.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Adriel as we gathered our belongings. “This is a good thing. We might actually learn something useful about the bloodstones and Ceren’s goals.”
“You forget,” she said, mounting her mare. “I don’t actually care about Ceren or the bloodstones. Your prince’s cause is not my cause.”
I flinched, stung by her tone, but my hurt was quickly followed by anger. “None of you understand,” I said under my breath.
“Understand what?”
“Understand what’s at stake! If Ceren defeats Talia’s army, do you think he’ll just let the people he’s controlling go? Do you think he’ll let my pare
nts go?” Hot tears pricked my eyes. “Ceren was close to stripping Varenia bare of pearls. He’ll take all the bloodstones he can, and if he finds something else he thinks will give him an advantage, he’ll take that, too. Everyone is so focused on their own concerns, they aren’t seeing the bigger picture.”
Adriel’s brow furrowed. “And what’s that?”
“Varenians are Ilareans, and Galethians are Varenians. The freedom of both groups depends on the other’s. Perhaps Ceren wasn’t willing to waste his men on breaching the Galethian border now, but once he has thousands of mindless soldiers? What will stop him then?”
“I’m sorry,” Adriel began, but I clucked my tongue to Titania, who immediately broke into a canter toward the barn.
At the workshop, I changed into a pair of thicker riding breeches for the trip to Leesbrook. Foxglove sat on the wooden table where Adriel kept her herbs, licking his paws and watching me with one eye.
“What?” I demanded.
He blinked lazily in response.
Adriel knocked on my door a short while later, already dressed for the trip. “I’m sorry,” she said again, before I could speak. “You’re right. I should care about the bloodstones and Ceren’s plans. And I do. But I also live alone in the woods for a reason, Nor. The citizens of Galeth only like me insofar as I am useful to them. Beyond that, they think I’m strange, even frightening.”
“You’re frightening on purpose,” I said, only half joking.
That elicited a half smile. “Only because it’s easier to pretend that’s why they don’t like me.” She patted Fox on the head, running his tufted ears through her fingers. “I think you know what it’s like to be misunderstood, to feel out of place wherever you go.”
I lowered my gaze, already feeling the tears welling. She was right, of course. I had found plenty of places I didn’t belong, but not yet one where I did.
“I tried to live in Leesbrook with Ana,” she continued. “But it only took a few months before the whispered insults about ‘the witch’ started to take their toll. Ana was defensive on my behalf, but no one would visit my shop. Far easier to come to me out in the middle of nowhere, where no one will overhear if they ask for a cure for a personal problem or a way to prevent pregnancy.”
Kingdom of Sea and Stone Page 14
