Bloodflower

by K. J. Harrowick

  Although he didn’t feel like a husband because he knew almost nothing about the Guardian apart from some scattered mythologies, he’d already lost one family to the Tower’s orders.

  He wouldn’t lose another—not the men he called brothers, nor the wife now in his care.

  Jàden might not ever be the woman he ached for in his life, or see him as more than a bodyguard, but even Jon had to admit he found comfort in the connection to another person.

  As he tied off the horses in front of the hut where Jàden slept, he patted each one on the cheek. “Rest while you can. I’m going to take care of a little problem.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Meridan

  Jon climbed the sharp incline out of the healer village, thorned berry vines tugging at his breeches. Silent as a fox, he crept through the denser brush onto a smooth trail. The wind blew fierce without the trees to shield him.

  Rakir scouts camped nearby, their large fire easy to smell each time the wind blew. If he didn’t silence them before they picked up his trail, he’d likely spend his next few weeks in chains as they dragged him back to the Tower of Idrér. The heart of Ìdolön’s power.

  Jon would rather die than let anyone chain him.

  He crept along a line of large, rocky crags, scrub trees growing through the gaps. A campfire flickered in an alcove, bordered on one side by a steep cliff.

  Idiots don’t know how to hide their presence. Any scout worth his spit would’ve kept the fire underground to avoid detection.

  Only one soldier sat near the flames, an older man with a bald head shouting at the two picketed horses. Scouts always traveled in pairs, so the other must be nearby.

  Jon slid between a gap in the rocks as a second soldier joined the first.

  “Picket the horses over here.” The older man gestured toward his companion. “They’re too loud, and I need me some sleep.”

  “Move ‘em yourself. I’m going on watch.” Jack Bonin, one of the street patrol soldiers, spat at the ground. His tower and two moons emblem glimmered in the firelight.

  Jon knew the symbol as well as the back of his hand. He’d been part of their ranks, his long years spent securing prisoners in cages. His body remembered the scent of leather armor and how the wool uniforms fit tight across his chest. While he’d never gotten used to the smell or the screams inside the prison, he’d been damn good at his job.

  Jon despised men like Bonin, who was rumored to hold children ransom until their merchant parents paid him to ‘protect’ their shop. He edged into the deeper shadows as the bastard strode by muttering under his breath.

  Slipping from the gap in the rocks, Jon shadowed Bonin toward his perch near a cluster of tall redwoods. Time to rid the north of one more asshole.

  He stepped into the deep shadows and crouched low, whistling softly enough that the noise was barely a whisper above the wind.

  Bonin perked up, a dagger clutched in his hand. He slipped between the trunks as his footsteps faded to silence.

  Jon kept still, the woods silent.

  Rakir were trained to be smart, deadly. Only a whisper of wind on the back of Jon’s neck alerted him to Bonin. He twisted back, slamming his elbow into the bastard’s nose.

  “You fucking cunt!” Bonin spat blood at his cheek and slashed his silver blade.

  Jon dodged the blow and hooked his arm, swiping Bonin’s feet so the bastard crashed onto his back. He stripped the dagger and pressed it to Bonin’s neck. “One sound and I’ll slit your throat.”

  Bonin’s mouth stretched into a bloodied grin. “Jon Ayers. I hear your sister screamed when they lit her on fire.”

  The pain of his family’s death still too raw in his heart, Jon slammed the dagger into Bonin’s hand. The bastard was one of a thousand assholes oppressing citizens of the north, all in the name of serving the six—old, powerful rulers who imprisoned and killed anyone with a hint of magic in their blood.

  He could never let them get their hands on Jàden.

  Pulling the dagger out of Bonin’s hand, Jon punched him hard in the nose and pressed the blade to his throat again. “How many Rakir in these mountains?”

  Bonin gasped for breath, pain etched across his features. “Thousands.”

  Fuck. Ìdolön must have sent half its army to track him down. That bastard Éli Hareth would probably be one of them.

  As if reading his thoughts, a devious grin curled Bonin’s mouth, exposing blood-stained teeth. “Commander Hareth has a message—”

  Jon slid his dagger across the man’s throat before he could finish, his muscles tightening into a hard knot at the name.

  He dragged Bonin into a shadowy thicket to hide his body, but his eye caught a half-muddied emblem chicken-scratched on a piece of paper—a perfect circle around a red orb, four silver leaves spread out from the center.

  The bloodflower. Rakir were after his family’s pendant.

  He stripped Bonin’s weapons and retreated into the darkness. Keeping tight to the shadows, he retraced his steps to the remaining scout who hadn’t bothered with the horses. Already he was curled up in his blanket, snoring loudly. The guy must be half deaf not to hear Bonin’s shouting, or he simply didn’t care.

  There was nothing honorable about killing a man in his sleep, but Jon had tried to stay honorable over the course of his life and it got him nothing. Plus he didn’t have time to be picky.

  He tromped across the small camp, almost hoping the man would wake up, but the bastard snored until Jon’s blade dug into his throat.

  After hiding the body behind a knot of trees, Jon extinguished the fire and hid all traces of the inhabitants as best he could. If there were any more scouts on this ridge, maybe they’d pass right by and never find the trail. Likely these two were headed straight for the healer village and planned to be there by midmorning.

  “Looks like you’re coming with me.” As he secured the scouts’ weapons onto the saddles, he mounted one of the horses and held the other one’s line as he rode back to the healer’s village.

  He’d been up for two days now, and exhaustion tugged at him as gray streaked the early morning horizon. The horses hung their heads as he plodded past the statue of Herana, the sharp angles of the Guardian’s face so much like Jàden, or what he imagined if someone hadn’t starved her.

  Feira came out of her hut, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders to fend off the morning chill. “I thought you were leaving.”

  Dropping to the ground, Jon placed the reins of both horses in her hands. “Here’s your trade. I’ll take those supplies now.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Meridan

  Someone wouldn’t stop screaming. Jàden curled tighter into the pillow as heat washed over her, reminiscent of the fireball from Kale’s crash.

  “You’re safe,” a voice whispered to her.

  It had to be her protector. But when she opened her eyes, the man with the tattoo across his forehead laid a hand on her arm.

  “Wake up. You’re safe.”

  The screaming stopped. Jàden’s heart raced as if some terror chased her out of a peaceful slumber, but she didn’t remember dreaming. “Where’s Jon?”

  He furrowed his brow then seemed to understand. “Soon as we check that shoulder, I’ll take you to the captain.”

  On cue, the pain seeped into her wound, pushing away the cold. But as she sat upright, Jon’s strength flowed through her veins. She could feel him now as if he held her tight.

  Jàden had never tied anyone to her before, as such energy bonds were forbidden. If the two people became intimate, the tie became irreversible, sealing them as a bonded pair.

  Guilt pressed on her slowing heart as the tattooed man set a bundle of clothing beside her.

  “I’m Mather, Jon’s best friend,” he said. “Gonna re-bandage your shoulder if that’s okay.”

  He had a gentleness to his tone as the Flame slowly translated his words.

  Jàden nodded and looked
away, trying not to focus on the shaved sides of his hair.

  Not Frank, she told herself.

  Wincing as he tugged the last bit of fabric away from her skin, she glanced toward her swollen shoulder and the purple bruising.

  “How—” She tried to find the right words in his language as a dictionary of bizarre sounds and meanings unfolded in her head. “How long before it heals?”

  “A few weeks.” He wiped green paste across the stitched threads, a cool tingle dimming the soreness. “You’re lucky it was your shoulder and not between the eyes.”

  Jàden shuddered. The old man in the other pod had barely gotten the hypersleep serum out of his lungs when the arrow had struck. That could have been her, lying in the mud and left to rot.

  Tears burned in her eyes. “Why did they want to kill me?”

  Mather tightened his jaw as he placed a fresh bandage and rewrapped her shoulder. “They were chasing me and Jon. I suspect they only stopped when they saw dalanath waking up.”

  “Dalanath.” Jàden didn’t quite understand the word, but the Flame’s energy pulled in meaning—sleep, glow, faces. “You mean sleepers.”

  “Ain’t never seen a sleeper wake up. ‘Specially not a…” Mather looked her over then turned away to stoke the fire. “Get dressed. I’ll take you to the captain.”

  Jàden slid off the table and very slowly untied the front of the sleeping dress. Perhaps she should have been more wary of a stranger in the room with only underclothes on, but she’d lost any dignity over her body years ago. Frank and his scientists poked and prodded her while she slept with no regard for her feelings.

  She was nothing now and had lost so much weight she was barely more than a skeleton. Refusing to look at herself, Jàden dressed the best she could, getting help from Mather to slip the thicker overshirt on.

  By the time she finished, Jàden itched to explore and find a working computer. She could use the firemark to give it power.

  “Come on. Captain’s outside.”

  Jàden followed him out the hanging door, relief washing over her that the frost had disappeared under dark storm clouds sprinkling a light mist. The world was now filled with brown, amber and green, and Jàden pulled the hood over her head to keep off the weather.

  Villagers stared at her and made their gestures, but she ignored them and trudged across the muddy plaza, scanning all the old pillars behind the huts to piece together the size of the Enforcer base. In her time, it probably held no more than a few hundred people, and the landscape beyond the oaks must have been a shipyard to move Enforcers on and off Sandaris. Kale would have known the base better than her since all she had to draw on was her knowledge of a few public militant areas.

  But if she read the landscape right, there would be a statue nearby of the Guardian Élon.

  Most of Hàlon didn’t believe in Guardians or how they were deified, but Élon was a symbol of strength and bravery. His statue was placed in central areas where Enforcers could pass by on their way to a patrol mission and press two fingers against the stone for luck.

  “You coming, Jàden?”

  She turned back toward Mather and spied a statue on the far corner near the road into the village. Jàden needed to see Élon’s features for herself so she had a familiar starting point.

  But as she edged around the other side, lead dropped into her stomach. A woman’s dress flowed toward the edges of a grand circular pool, the water long gone and replaced by fallen leaves and muddied lichen. High cheekbones and an angular face sharpened beneath hair pulled back into a long tail with bangs fringed across her forehead.

  Jàden pressed a hand to her mouth, staring at the familiar features as if her Guild photo had morphed to stone. “It can’t be.”

  Someone had turned her into a Guardian.

  And these villagers must believe it as they sang a haunting melody, crossing the plaza toward her and gesturing signs across their cheeks.

  Except she’d done no great deeds of heroism. She’d screamed and begged for mercy in her cage like a child. With a statue this large, Frank would find her in seconds.

  This had to be his fault. He’d made sure she could never hide from him.

  “You fucking bastard.” Jàden picked up the closest rock and lobbed it at her own face. “I’m not going back in the cage. I’ll find Kale, and we’ll get the fuck off this damn moon.”

  Mather laid a hand on her good shoulder. “Easy, Jàden.”

  “No.” His gentleness offered no comfort, nor the same strong tug Jon did each time he laid a hand on her cheek. Where was her protector anyway? Jàden searched the crowd for Jon’s thick beard and shaggy hair, but everyone was clean-shaved with their braids slicked back.

  As the tears burned in her eyes, the sonorous melody halted. The red-haired healer who’d cut her arrow out stepped from the crowd and made a gesture across her cheek. “Herana, welcome to Meridan. We would be honored if you would stay with us.”

  As the red-haired woman finished her words, the others bowed. If the woman had any sense, she’d see the tears on Jàden’s cheeks and know something was very wrong.

  “My name is Feira.” The red-haired woman grasped Jàden’s hand. “I understand your companions are eager to leave, but you would be most welcome to stay as long as you like.”

  Feira’s expression and body language held an edge of anger. Jàden had seen that look before on one of her ex-boyfriends when he got into his childish moods, a stubborn edge between digging his heels in and throwing a tantrum. And Feira had a similar intensity to her features.

  Jàden pulled back. She couldn’t stay in this place now, not with a giant statue of her practically screaming for Frank’s attention. “No, I can’t.”

  It might be better to search the ruins for a working computer, but that would be like waving her arms in the air on a deserted plain.

  Frank couldn’t miss her.

  She’d have to find another base, maybe one that still had power. Tugging her hood lower to cover her face, Jàden turned away from the others.

  But Feira caught her arm.

  “Herana, wait—”

  “The Guardian said no.” Mather had his sword against the healer’s neck. The change in his tone from gentle to deadly toward the healer shot a shiver down Jàden’s spine. How had he drawn his blade so fast?

  Light sizzled into Jàden’s veins at the woman’s tight grip. She may crave the touch of another, but the way Feira’s fingers dug in repulsed her. The Flame’s light crackled through her veins, and Jàden clenched her fists as the unbidden power leaked between her fingers.

  Fear often triggered the Flame, pulling it like silk into her veins with destructive intent. Jàden didn’t want to hurt these people, and she couldn’t lose control again. She just wanted to hide.

  As Feira released her arm, Jàden stepped out of reach.

  Anger burned in Feira’s eyes as she spat at Mather’s feet. “Rakir don’t believe in Guardians. He should not speak. This man will only lead you into death, Herana.”

  “Woman, you must have cotton in your ears for how well you listen.” Jon trotted through the crowd on his horse, pulling Mather’s along beside him. Both mounts were loaded with blankets and sacks. He pushed himself in front of the healer, forcing her away from Jàden as Mather re-sheathed his sword. “The Guardian chooses her path, not you.”

  Relief flooded into Jàden as she wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “Get me out of this place.”

  As Jon lowered his hand to her, Jàden grabbed his forearm to steady herself. She was too weak to climb up, but Mather grabbed her waist and lifted her behind Jon.

  She always felt safe on the back of a horse, even as a child. Wrapping her arms around Jon’s waist, she leaned against his back, inhaling deeply of his masculine scent—pine and smoke and mountain all blended together. This was her safety now.

  “Herana, please.” Feira’s voice held a note of desperation.

  Jàden p
itied the woman, but she couldn’t stay.

  Only one thing mattered—finding Kale and getting off this damn moon—and she couldn’t do that inside a cage.

  Go back to the beginning.

  But the beginning of what? A dozen different things popped into her thoughts—their first dance, first kiss. But one day stood out among them as the worst, the beginning of her nightmare.

  “I know where to start.” Ignoring the healer, Jàden tightened her legs around the stallion as Jon turned them away from the gathering crowd.

  “Remind me never to come back to this place.” Mather wrangled his horse alongside, and they trotted onto the road, every small jolt sending pain into her shoulder.

  “Jon,” she muttered. “We have to go south to Ironstar Gate. I need to start at the beginning.”

  The Bloodflower Gate was closer, but she couldn’t risk running from Frank straight into the arms of Enforcers. If she was lucky, the Ironstar Gate would be open and she could get home unseen. At least long enough to track Kale in his new life.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Forbidden Mountains

  Jàden traced her fingers along the ridges of a bark mushroom on a tree, slimy after the day’s downpour. Between the pain in her shoulder and puking up most of what she ate, everything since Meridan had been a blur. After so long shut down, her body and mind were finally waking up, so she’d found a quiet spot to gather her thoughts.

  Jàden was eager to keep going, but even she had to admit the horses needed rest. Especially Jon’s black who now carried two riders.

  Plus, she still hadn’t found another base.

  They could be heading in circles for all she knew. Only trees and mountains were their constant companions. Without technology to navigate her toward Ironstar Tower, one of six gateways between the moon’s surface and Hàlon, there was no telling how long before she’d be home, and she needed to reverse her energy tie with Jon.

  Hopefully the gate was still open. She’d never seen a gate key. Always surrounded by an entourage of Enforcers, the Keepers kept each key hidden in a secret location no one could access.