Bloodflower

by K. J. Harrowick

  Mather laid a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault, Jon. Not your family and not this.”

  “I held their ashes in my hands,” he muttered, unable to shake the surge of anger. Just like the one gripped in his hand, his parents’ bonding cloths had been laid on a box full of ash.

  “Another family lost because of me.”

  He traced his thumb across the burned fabric. Several families, if the dozen or so smoldering mounds were any indication.

  Mather brushed aside the snow to reveal black cloth embroidered with a silver emblem. Rakir soldiers. “This doesn’t make any sense. We have a lead on the closest scout unit. How did they get ahead of us?”

  Both men glanced at Jàden, standing in front of the horses and scratching their noses. He’d ordered her to be ready to run, and she obviously hadn’t listened to a word.

  “I don’t think they did.” Jon nudged the Rakir uniform, his boot pressing on the dead soldier’s frozen arm, buried under at least a foot of snow. “A fleet of ships could sail to Nelórath in half the time. These bastards have been here for weeks.”

  “No wonder the scouts are hanging back. They’re running us right into a trap. Half the army’s probably waiting for us nearby.” Mather gripped his bow gripped so tight Jon thought he might break it in half. “I hope the others are still alive.”

  Jon leaned his forehead against his hand, wishing his father was here. The older Ayers always had a way of helping Jon think straight.

  They couldn’t backtrack, or they’d run right into the scouts. And east was far too dangerous for humans. Jon cursed himself for not following the coast or sticking to the high passes. He should have known Éli was clever enough to get ahead of him. “Get Jàden out of sight. I’ll have a look around and meet you on the road. Be ready to run hard. I’d rather deal with a few scouts than whatever Éli’s cooked up.”

  He re-tied his bow and quiver to his horse, then laid a hand on Jàden’s good shoulder. “Stay close to Mather and keep your face hidden.”

  “We’re in danger, aren’t we?” She tugged up her hood, worry in her wild eyes.

  “If there’s trouble, you stay low and out of sight.” He didn’t need to add more stress to the anguish etched into her features. She had suffered enough.

  But Mather had no horse to return home now, and who knew what they’d find on the road ahead.

  “Whatever happens, don’t use your magic,” Jon said. “Rakir will kill anyone with a hint of power. I didn’t keep you alive only to see you killed.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The Forbidden Mountains

  Jàden bit down on her lip as Jon squeezed her shoulder. The small gesture sent a tingle of heat straight to her gut.

  Every day it became clearer why Enforcers forbade energy ties. Even for those who had no love between them, something sparked along the shared energy. Jàden wanted to blame it on her years of loneliness. And yet something tugged her toward Jon before his strength ever flowed through her veins.

  As he disappeared into the trees, she grabbed the reins and tried to climb onto the saddle, but her body was still weak from so long in a cage.

  “I’ve got you.” Mather shoved her until she could swing one leg over and sit upright. The heavy snow already covered Jon’s tracks. But what if soldiers hid in the trees? Jon shouldn’t be on his own.

  “What if he gets hurt?” she asked.

  “Captain knows what he’s doing. Let’s go.” Mather wrangled his horse onto the road between the buried mounds.

  She nudged Jon’s black alongside. Charred cinders poked up from the ground. “What happened here?”

  “Rakir burned them all.” His shoulders tensed as he passed by a carved stick in the snow, something that looked like a child’s toy.

  “Jon lost his family this way, didn’t he?”

  Mather nodded. “Rakir are trained to show no mercy when they have a kill order.”

  Just like Enforcers. Jàden glanced toward the woods, aching to comfort Jon’s grief. She’d lost her family as well and understood the pain that came with tragedy.

  They passed the remains of a stable, several bracing poles still holding up part of a roof. She should have been there searching for a horse to lead Mather home, but nothing remained.

  “Maybe the next village—” she started.

  “Don’t worry about it.” His tone bitter with grief, Mather kept his eyes straight ahead, an arrow against his string. “I’ll find a way home. Sharie ain’t gonna have our baby alone.”

  They passed to the far side of the village, and Mather ushered her under a copse of young redwoods. The dense canopy blocked out most of the storm and the sky as she searched for any sign of a ship.

  Frank could still be out there somewhere.

  “Captain will be here soon. Keep your voice low and try to make as little noise as possible.” Mather slid off his horse. “I’ll make sure you and the captain find the others. Then I’m gone. Horse or no horse.”

  The determination in his voice spoke volumes about his worry as Jàden dropped from Jon’s horse and tied him off to a thick branch.

  Mather reached over and yanked her knot loose. “These boys ain’t like normal horses. Never tie them up unless you want a fight on your hands. Norshads don’t stray from their riders, not even when they’re spooked.”

  A twig snapped.

  Mather turned toward the woods, tension tight on his arrow. “Hide.”

  She crouched between the horses. Jàden crawled beneath Agnar, some desperate part of her hoping the large stallion would kick her so hard in the head she could recycle her own life and start over. But as Jon’s strength flowed through her, it pushed against the fear seizing her chest. She slipped between a large bush and a tree trunk.

  Gold-armored wardens stepped through the trees and surrounded them, a black sun emblazoned on their breastplates and helms.

  They had no emblems on their shoulders like Guild patches. So, not Rakir.

  By the way they unsheathed their swords, these were more people who wanted to kill Jon and Mather.

  Or maybe this time they were after her.

  “Well, look what we have here, boys. Rakir scum.” An armored woman nudged her horse forward, a black band around her left arm and her hair pulled back in a series of braids beneath her helm. She spat at the ground. “I’d know them Tower-bred horses anywhere.”

  Jon’s stallion whinnied, eyeing the wardens with his ears laid flat.

  “Where’s the other Rakir?” one man asked Mather. His skin was white as snow, his eyes so black they seemed to suck the light out of the air.

  Jàden’s heart pounded as she crouched lower, trying not to make a sound. Heat rushed into her veins, crackling along each capillary until the Flame’s power tingled her palms.

  No, not now. She didn’t want to lose control of her power, nor use it against others unless she had to. But she also didn’t want to take another arrow to her shoulder. The last one still ached as she gripped the tree’s bark.

  The moon’s heartbeat thrummed in her ears. Almost as if Sandaris egged the Flame’s power on.

  The more its power surged through her body, the stronger the connection became, and the harder to stamp it back down.

  She curled her hands tight, trying to hold the energy back.

  Mather held up his arms, arrow in one hand, bow in the other. The corner of his mouth tugged into a half grin. “I’m all alone, which almost makes this a fair fight.”

  “Kill him,” the woman with the brains ordered.

  Mather dropped the arrow. He grabbed a knife and threw it into the white-skinned man’s neck, his helm tumbling to the ground. The warden gripped the dagger’s hilt, but the light went out of his eyes and he hit the ground.

  Mather attacked them like a wild dog. He shoved a second knife into the woman’s knee between the seams of her armor then hammered his bow across another man’s jaw.

  Jàden pressed
her palms against a tree trunk. Maybe a little power wouldn’t hurt, enough to knock these wardens off their feet and give Mather a fighting chance.

  She breathed deep, trying to focus the Flame’s energy so it didn’t overwhelm her. But something else lurked, a sensation easing toward her thoughts like a shadow. The strange eeriness crawled up the back of her neck until her scalp tingled.

  He’s here, a voice whispered into her thoughts.

  Jàden peered through the gloom for another figure as Jon slipped between two of the armored men and slit their throats.

  Stay out of my head. She kept stone still. If she could sense them, could they sense her too?

  Herana, run! the voice in her head screamed.

  Arms wrapped around Jàden and yanked her off the ground.

  “Gotcha,” a distinctly male voice said in her ear. He sounded young, but the guy was strong.

  She howled and kicked out her legs, slamming her feet against the black’s rump. The horse bolted, trampling over a warden and crushing her chest.

  “Jon!” She tried to twist away, pain searing into her shoulder.

  The attacker pressed a knife to her throat.

  “Jàden!” Jon scrambled from the shadows and fixed his hardened gaze on the attacker at her back. With a knife clutched in each hand, he eased toward them with all the tension of a coiled snake. “Let her go.”

  The wardens who were still alive retreated, led by the woman with braids in her hair.

  Fire crackled in Jàden’s veins as the Flame fed her fear, nudging her open to draw on its full power.

  “Don’t do it.” Jon’s words rippled through Jàden’s body, as if they could quell the fire in her veins.

  She needed to protect herself, but the harshness of his voice stung. The Flame’s power could uproot the trees and spook everyone away. She grabbed her attacker’s pants as her power surged, clenching her fists to suppress the flow of energy.

  No, she needed to do something.

  Pacing back and forth with his daggers gripped tight, a terrifying anger hardened Jon’s features. “Last chance, boy. Let her go, and you’ll walk out of here alive.”

  The young man’s putrid breath rolled across her neck. “I can’t.”

  The soft, lilting boy’s words deepened into a man’s icy, sadistic laugh.

  Even the energy changed, almost as if the boy stepped away from his body and someone else took his place. The voice turned cold and confident.

  “Remember what I promised, Jon,” the man-boy said. “This ain’t over until I say it’s over.”

  Jàden had only known of one other person who could do such a thing. One of the other test subjects in a cage three floors above hers.

  Dreamwalker. An ability nearly as rare as her own, dreamwalkers could open a hole inside a person’s psyche and manipulate their dreams. Was this boy’s conscious mind asleep?

  “Éli.” Jon froze, his knuckles white around his daggers. “You stay away from her.”

  Dark energy pulsed, an oily slime gripping Jàden’s senses and stifling the Flame’s power. The man-boy pressed his nose against her ear and sniffed deeply. “Can’t wait to meet her.”

  Jàden opened her hands, energy pulsing from her fingertips as she fought against the Flame. This was the man she’d heard whispers about, the one both Jon and Mather seemed to have a vendetta with.

  Jon dropped his daggers, and only the hilts stuck up from the muddy snow. He unsheathed the sword on his back. The rage in his eyes chilled her.

  “Say goodbye, Jon.” The man-boy tossed a glowing violet firemark at Mather’s feet.

  A dozen black and gold arrows slammed into Mather’s body.

  “No!” Jàden screamed.

  Steel brushed against her hair as Jon’s sword plunged into her captor’s skull.

  She gasped. The man-boy held her tight as bone crunched sickeningly next to her ear, both of them flying back.

  CHAPTER 14

  Nelórath

  Éli hit the ground hard, pain sizzling across his back. The woods dissolved into a softly lit room, each wall covered in dozens of dark fabrics with golden dream symbols woven into the threads. The stabbing pain in his head dulled as his connection to the warden boy severed.

  A sword splitting his skull was not the way he wanted to die. It took him a moment to catch his breath and be fully back in his own body.

  Only the scent of the woman remained, some mousy brunette who didn’t have a single enticing quality save one.

  Touching her enraged Jon.

  A dark laugh escaped him as he pushed to his feet, his body aching from the force of the fall. Kicking aside the overturned chair he’d been sitting in moments ago, he grabbed the tankard of ale from the small table and downed it in one gulp.

  Kesh Einar, a tall woman with a meaty build, narrowed her eyes and leaned an elbow on the table. “Tell me that boy is dead.”

  Her voice rough as chapped leather, she clenched her fist tight. The woman commanded a unit of soldiers along the mountain boundary near the redwood city, but her burnished bronze skin was only one feature that made her look almost identical to the smith across the way.

  “Ain’t movin’ anytime soon. That warden’s got a sword buried in his skull.” Éli glanced toward Granger, who lounged on a chaise near the back of the shop, gaze on the two scantily clad women by the door.

  The dark and cozy shop was located beneath a thriving harlot house. Even the small room smelled of sex and ale. But he gave his captain a silent gesture to say, Keep it in your pants.

  Einar’s golden armor gleamed in the low lamplight as her dark brows pulled tight over a suspicious gaze. “You’re certain?”

  “I’d bet your life on it.” Éli refilled his tankard, the faux bloodflower pendant heavy in his pocket.

  He didn’t know if the two sisters were working together or if they really didn’t like one another, but he no longer cared. Everything he needed to get his son back was in his pocket, and the satisfaction of Jon’s rage would tide him over for a few days.

  Yet, it hadn’t been his magic forging the connection.

  A scrawny, trembling body sat next to Einar’s knee, legs pulled tight against their chest as tears streaked their cheeks. They muttered the same words over and over: “I’m sorry.”

  Relief flickered across Einar’s features. She rapped the heavy wooden table once with her meaty knuckles and leaned back in her chair. “Good. That’s one bastard out of my way.”

  The boy had witnessed the woman beating one of her soldiers to death when he took the Oath of the Seven to serve the Guardians in their towers. Éli hadn’t even tried to find the boy’s crime, but his mind flooded with memories the moment he’d connected. The boy had been right to fear for his life.

  Éli didn’t care. Wardens were all the same—Guardian worshipping scum who spent far too much time in their temples.

  A whisper of energy brushed behind his ear as Éli sensed the presence of soldiers outside the door. Granger pulled back the curtain a fraction and clenched his fist.

  They had company.

  “Before I go, I want to know where you found that.” Éli jutted his chin toward the form cowering at Einar’s knee.

  Through the dreamwalker, he’d practically stepped inside the warden’s senses. The woman’s soft scent and palpable fear triggered his ache for vengeance.

  Thin, frightened and protected by Jon Ayers.

  He’d find a way to pull her into his plans and watch Jon squirm.

  Einar clenched the iron chain, locking stone cuffs onto the trembling figure curled at his feet.

  “Oh, this? Found them hidden in the mountains half-starved. Most of their kind can only enter a sleeping mind, when natural defenses are down. But this one”—Einar scratched their head like she would a pet—“they can walk through anyone’s waking reality. Makes them see and say whatever they want.”

  They shuddered, curling their knees tight a
gainst their chest. They stared somewhere beyond Éli. Soft, incomprehensible mutterings escaped through their lips.

  Éli had never been inside another’s head before, but the rush lingered in his senses.

  Except now he wanted the woman—Jon’s woman. “And the shackles?”

  Granger stood calmly from the chaise. One woman slid a comb from her hair, letting her raven locks fall around her shoulders. And she was no kitten, a gleam in her eyes telling them both they’d run out of time.

  Éli was starting to like the freedom of the road and the thrill of the hunt, and he never wanted to go back to stone walls and echoing screams.

  Einar waved away the question. “They’re from the old world. Something in the stone hinders the ability. Tried to use it on me once, but they know better now.”

  The dreamwalker scratched their ear, twitching at the hidden threat in their master’s words.

  Granger leered at the women, grinning until his yellow teeth showed.

  Crouching in front of the cowering form, Éli rubbed a hand across his sparse beard. He didn’t need another mouth to feed, but he had use for these abilities.

  “I kept my end of the bargain, Commander.” Einar slid a piece of paper on the table.

  Éli picked up the parchment, everything he needed written and sealed inside. Safe passage through Nelórath for him and his men to help them capture Jon.

  His chest tightened, the cold slither in his senses uncoiling to a strong warning.

  Even Granger seemed to pick up on it as he clutched the hilt of his sheathed dagger.

  Einar had no intention of letting them out of this room alive.

  “I’m also going to need one more thing. Your pet.” Éli unsheathed his sword and sliced it across Einar’s throat before the woman could protest.

  Einar stared at him wide-eyed, her mouth moving as blood poured down her golden armor. Her expression dulled, and she slumped in her chair.

  Blood dripped from the silver steel blade as Éli touched the tip to the ground and crouched in front of the trembling dreamwalker, ignoring the tussle behind him. No doubt Granger would silence the two women, and he’d do nothing but bitch about it for a least a month.