Bloodleaf

by Crystal Smith

  “How dare you?” I screamed. “How dare you show me his death and not show me how to stop it! What was it for, Aren? What was it all for? Why was I saved? Why preserve my life and guide my path if you were only ever leading me to this?” I dragged my sleeve across my burning eyes and running nose. “Bring him back!” I screamed at Aren. At the wind. At the stars. I sank down beside him and buried my face into his chest. “Please,” I begged. “Please bring him back.”

  And then I smelled it—​roses. Not the tainted, coppery smell of bloodleaf but the smell of fresh roses on a spring day. Light spilled all around me, and I lifted my heavy head to peer over my shoulder.

  There she was. Not the haggard wraith I’d seen last, nor the slit-throat spirit that had haunted my periphery since childhood. Aren was the way she must have looked in life—​luminous and lovely, with violet eyes and straight, silken hair the color of cinnamon. She crossed the tower to me, reaching out to take my ruined hands into hers, her skin soft and unblemished. Her touch wasn’t cold.

  She closed her eyes, and I was spun into a new vision. This was not a death of the future; it was one of the past.

  She showed me her brothers. How handsome. How doting. How, even as a child, she’d felt the stirrings of a sacred healing power and had visions of the future—​the power to see death and circumvent it. She showed me how, under the Empyrea’s direction, she rose in the ranks of her order at the Assembly, married the Renaltan king, and bore a son, only to have the Empyrea whisper of another hallowed path: There was a rift between planes. An unwilling sacrifice would lay it open, but if she gave up her life willingly during the spell, she could close it forever.

  She went into the spell having already consumed the poison that would take her life, content with her fate, until her brother Cael, enticed by the Malefica’s whispers, turned on her.

  She showed me how dark and brooding Achlev, unknowing of the Empyrea’s designs, could not let her die. She showed me how he used the blade of her luneocite knife from the botched ritual to catch three drops of her blood and embedded them within it, preserving a tiny spark of her spirit as he tried unsuccessfully to save her life, too . . .

  I saw him build the tower and the statue. I saw him place the luneocite knife in her marble hands. I saw him construct his wall and the arduous lengths he went to to spell it and strengthen it, spending every last ounce of his living breath making sure that his brother, now far away, could never come and finish the evil he had started.

  Aren, bereft and bodiless, watched her family suffer and survive without her. She watched them go to war in her name. She spent the centuries feeling every death her poisoned blood wrought through the bloodleaf, her only solace the few lives that were spared from the bloodleaf petals. And she was connected to them all—​she felt every life that was saved, every life that was lost.

  The last thing she showed me was a tiny newborn baby whose parents had given her a bloodleaf petal in hopes that she would live. Aren, watching her descendants mourn, was moved by their love and grief, reminded of her own son who grew up without her. The little girl needed a spark of life, so Aren gave her what was left of hers. The moment I took my first breath was the moment the last three drops of her blood were finally spent. She took her last steps into death and sent my spirit back into the world of the living.

  She and I were tethered together after that, my spirit fueling hers, giving her enough energy to show me her visions. When I cast her away at the tower, I’d snapped our bond and she’d begun to waste away, just like the other spirits trapped in the borderlands between the material and spectral planes. Until now, in this place, when the portals to the spiritual, material, and spectral planes aligned for the first time in five hundred years, finally free of Achlev’s Wall.

  She released my hands. “Do you understand?” she asked in a sweet, sad voice.

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  And then she was gone.

  I had everything I needed. Three pieces of purest luneocite: Achlev’s knife, which had become my own, the knife Cael had left behind, and the one I climbed to retrieve from statue Aren’s hands. I placed them at each point of the triangle: Cael’s next to the black stain left by his disintegrated body, Aren’s at the feet of her statue, and Achlev’s next to the spill of Victor de Achlev’s blood from the vial. Then I pulled the brick from beneath Aren’s feet and retrieved the true vial of the Founder’s blood I had hidden there.

  “The blood of Victor,” I said, tracing the three-point knot into the stain of his blood as bloodleaf blossoms—​tiny copies of the symbol—​fell and dissolved into it. “Descendant of Achlev.”

  I moved to the next point in the triangle. I emptied the Founder’s blood vial onto the black smear left by his disintegrated body. Then I traced the knot into it as well. “The blood of Cael,” I said.

  Last, I pressed my own bloodied hand beside Aren’s knife and repeated the process. “The blood of Aurelia, descendant of Aren.”

  This was the original point of convergence between creation, growth, and death. Long ago, Aren, Achlev, and Cael began a ritual on this spot to close a tear between the planes. With their blood now back in place, it fell to me to give their spell a definitive end.

  Cael had wanted to widen the tear, Aren had wanted to close it, and Achlev had tried to protect it when neither of them succeeded. It was my choice now which effort would finally win, but I no longer cared about their ancient agendas. This was my life, and there was only one thing left in the world that I wanted.

  Carefully, I pulled Zan’s body into the center of the points and, kneeling, opened his shirt so I could place my hands on his skin. Then I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the barrier that separated us, the curtain that stood between my spirit and his—​the place in which, for nearly five hundred years, Aren had lived in limbo, unable to move forward or backwards. I imagined it as a thin gauze—​flimsy. Insubstantial. Behind it, another world.

  I saw everything. The knots, the connections both minuscule and massive. The patterns in the stars and in the roots and limbs of trees and the ley lines and in the cobwebby network of vessels that carried blood from heart to head and hands and lungs and round and round and back again. I saw the three points of Achlev’s gates and the three-petaled bloodleaf flower and the three round circles of red on the bloodcloth. And in the center of it all, it was just Zan and me.

  It was time to cast a spell. The final spell.

  I could feel the pulse of magic deep within the earth, thrumming like a beating heart.

  I concentrated on the flow of blood within my own veins, until my awareness expanded to the other connections hidden within them—​the crisscrossing course of vitality, of life force, that pushed the blood down the channel in the first place. Then I let that power seep out from my hands and into Zan’s chest, traveling the circuits inside him. It was a call to arms; I sent my life force marching through his body, leading his stagnant blood back into motion, ordering his heart to pump and pump again, commanding his lungs to stretch and release, stretch and release . . . but his body would never do this on its own if the wound in his back remained, so I took his wound on myself. His skin knitted together even as mine came apart.

  There was only one more thing left to do: retrieve his spirit.

  It wasn’t hard to find death; hadn’t I always had one foot planted in it?

  It wasn’t a great beyond, like I’d always imagined—​it was just like the world of the living, seen through a looking glass. Two sides of a coin. The same but not the same.

  It was cold in death. Not a winter’s cold, where warmth can be attained by striking a match or huddling beneath a heavy cloak. This was the cold of a place where warmth simply did not exist. I didn’t have to go far, however; Zan was right there, blinking at me as if I’d materialized out of thin air. Perhaps I had.

  “You,” he said in surprise.

  I ached at the sight of him looking so alive. “I should have told you,” I said stumblingly,
“on the wall that night. I should have told you what you were to me. I should have given you the truth.”

  He touched his hand to my cheek, letting his thumb rest on my bottom lip. I couldn’t feel it physically—​in here, I couldn’t feel anything—​but whatever bits of light and noise that made up my unruly spirit surged under his touch.

  “Then tell me now.” His voice was soft. “Before I have to go. What am I to you, Aurelia?”

  I said, “Everything.”

  And then I took the tattered threads of my soul and knotted them tightly around his. When I knew I had him secure, I pushed him over the border and stepped into his place on the other side. My death, as Aren’s was meant to all those years before, would finalize the spell and heal this gap forever. I saw just a flash before the border sealed up—​Zan’s eyes as they fluttered open.

  Aren had given up her last spark of life to save mine; now I had done the same for Zan, exchanging my own life for his. My death, in this place and on this day, would fulfill Aren’s mission and keep the Malefica sealed in her kingdom down below. It was my choice, and I was at peace with it.

  “Aurelia?”

  I whirled around, startled. “Mother? What are you—​”

  “Look at you,” she said wonderingly. She was standing on the wrong side of the border. On the side of death. “So beautiful and strong.”

  “No, Mother. No. You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Of course I’m supposed to be here,” she said. “Did you forget the bloodcloth spell? Three lives now tied to one, bound by blood, by blood undone.”

  “This can’t be happening,” I frantically stammered. “It’s my life I meant to sacrifice. Not yours, Mother. This isn’t what I wanted to do.”

  “My sweet girl,” she said. And she put her arms around me and held me while I remembered all the times I’d treated her ill, punishing her for what was wrong with my life when everything she’d ever done was to ensure that I’d have one. “You wanted to save someone you love, I understand. So do I, dear one. So do I.”

  She stroked my hair as I clung to her, crying because I’d never get to smell the rosemary soap she used in her hair again and she’d never get to chastise me for all the stupid, reckless things I’d done in Achleva, and because she was here only because I forgot that if I died, someone else would die in my place.

  “Mama,” I cried, “I’m so, so sorry. I love you.”

  She smiled, her hand on my cheek. “I know, love. I always knew. Go now and live.”

   38

  A lick of flame formed from smoke and silence. I watched it curiously as it glimmered and grew, forming wide, outstretched wings and great clawing talons. A bird of golden fire. It glittered orange and red, yellow and red, orange and red.

  I blinked and attempted to focus on the bird that was dancing and twisting in front of my eyes. It wasn’t a real phoenix, no. It was small and made of gold and gemstones, and it dangled from a leather cuff. Zan’s cuff, around Zan’s wrist.

  Zan. I tried to sit up, but I cried out in pain. My body creaked when I moved, as if I’d been left too long in the rain and had begun to rust. And my back—​it was slick with blood. My blood, from the wound I’d taken from Zan and made into my own.

  “Aurelia?” he whispered, hands in my hair.

  I reached for him, and he wrapped me up into his arms and buried his face in my neck, half in relief, half in disbelief. “This isn’t real,” he said.

  “You’re here,” I said. “It worked.”

  My happiness was short-lived. I pulled my bloodcloth from my pocket and stared at it, whipping in the wind. The first drop of blood—​my mother’s drop of blood—​was gone completely, erased as if it had never been. It wasn’t a dream or some terrible hallucination. Everything was real, and that meant—​

  “My mother. Merciful stars, she’s dead. She’s dead, Zan. And it’s my fault.”

  He held me tighter, murmuring soft, comforting words against my temple, into my ear. He, too, knew what it was like to lose a mother.

  We spent two days in Aren’s tower as the storm seethed around us and the fire raged below, passing stories of our childhoods back and forth and huddling together for comfort. Zan worried constantly that if he let me close my eyes for more than a minute, I wouldn’t open them up again. “I won’t let go,” I reassured him. “I refuse to let go.”

  Dying once had cost me my mother. I couldn’t let Simon or Kellan face the same fate. I used thoughts of our loved ones as a ward to keep death away.

  The storm broke in the middle of the night, and we woke to the sight of sails on the fjord below. The ship was flying two flags: one, the raven of the Silvis family; the other, the Renaltan royal arms.

  We descended the tower stairs a final time, and I ran my fingers across the stones painted with Aren’s story. Goodbye, I thought, though I knew she would not hear; having passed the weight of her calling on to me, she was in the Empyrea’s care now.

  The ship was waiting for us just outside the rubble of the castle’s shoreline. We emerged from the tower to the sound of cheers; a dozen guards were leaning over the sides of the ship, lowering a plank ladder and jubilantly shouting, “They’re here! They’re alive!”

  Kellan was the first to greet us, offering an arm to help Zan climb over the edge before they both turned to hoist me over together. “Why are you here?” I asked him as he took in our sad states. “It’s a risk to sail through this wreckage when you had no proof we’d survived.”

  He gave me a wan smile. “I’m still alive,” he said. “That was proof enough. Besides, I had no choice. Orders of the king.”

  “Aurelia?”

  I turned to see a small form silhouetted in the doorway of the captain’s cabin. Conrad was wearing a new brocade suit, with our family’s crest on the breast. On a chain around his neck, he wore our mother’s signet ring; his fingers were still too small to wear it on his hand. Next to the ring hung a diamond-and-opal winged horse.

  I tried not to cry when he buried himself in my arms; he was the king now, and I didn’t want to embarrass him with my tears. “Mama’s dead,” he said in a small voice.

  “I know,” I said, swallowing the hard knot in my throat, “and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But look at you! I’ve never seen a nobler king. She would be so proud of you. I know I am.”

  He said, “Aurelia, I don’t think I’m ready. I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be. Toris is gone, and the Tribunal will fold without him. You’ll be the first king in five hundred years to rule without their influence. Imagine what you’ll be able to do! It’ll be hard, of course, but you’ll have me to help you. Mother told me to protect you, little brother, and I will. And look.” I pointed at the ruins of Achlev. “I lived through that. It turns out, I’m very hard to kill.”

  He nodded, reassured, and straightened his kingly shoulders before scampering off to order Kellan, at the helm, to take us home—​no matter that the location of “home” was still rather unclear to us all.

  I turned my attention to Achleva, giving it one last look as we sailed away. Buildings had collapsed; many had burned. The fjord, returned again to a crystal blue, had risen and flooded the streets; entire neighborhoods had been washed into oblivion. And the castle was nothing more than a burned-out, hulking shell. Achlev’s Wall and the three towering gates were gone, as if they’d never existed.

  And yet, even in its devastation, it was still beautiful—​rough and also exquisite, like one of Zan’s charcoal sketches. I was overwhelmed by the wonder and terror of it.

  Zan came to stand with me as we watched the horizon diminish. “Cataclysm,” I said.

  “Annihilation,” Zan replied. “And yet, we made it through. It’s over.”

  I tried not to think about the relentless insistence in Malefica’s whispers, Let me out, let me out. Zan was right, it was over. It was time to look forward, not back.

  “Does that mean I get to collect my payment now?” I asked.


  “If you still want your image in gold, you may be disappointed. I’m fresh out of gold.”

  “As I recall, my price was to tell you a secret and have you believe it, no matter what it is.”

  His green eyes had a new, golden glint despite the hazy light. “I’m listening.”

  I wound my hands into his dark hair, ignoring the lingering pain in my back, to lift my lips to his ear and murmur, “I think I might love you.”

  He gave me a smile I’d never seen on him before: bashful and crooked, and big enough to wrinkle the corners of his eyes. “I thought you were going to tell me a secret. I’ve known that for ages.”

  I laughed with tears in my eyes, and then I kissed him with all the force I could muster. It hurt—​oh! How it hurt—​but in that moment, caught between the ruined city and our unknown future, I felt my blood begin to stir with a new kind of magic.

  “How is this possible?” Zan asked fervently, twining his fingers into mine. “This?”

  “Blood and sacrifice,” I said. “As it is with all power.”

  Acknowledgments

  With five wildly different versions written and queried over six excruciating years, I often joke that while Bloodleaf is a fairy tale, my path to publishing it was anything but. Though it might have been a long and sometimes bumpy road, I am so thankful for the people who saw me through it. The first on this list is my incredible agent, Pete Knapp. Your passion for this story and faith in my ability to tell it are the reason Bloodleaf is on the shelves instead of collecting dust in a trunk. I will be forever grateful for that query feedback giveaway that gave me just enough courage to click “send” one more time. And to the team at Park Literary, foreign rights rock stars Blair Wilson and Abby Koons, as well as Emily Sweet, Andrea Mai, Theresa Park, Alex Greene, and Emily Clagett: thank you all for your efforts on my behalf.

  Huge thanks are also due to my fabulous editor, Cat Onder, whose visionary guidance brought Bloodleaf across the finish line with flying colors and rock ’n’ roll flair. You helped me shine it into something I’m truly proud to send out into the world. To everyone at HMH Teen: I am so happy my book ended up in your capable hands. I know I’ve got one hell of a team in my corner, and I’m thankful for that every single day.