Bloodflower

Captain Éli Hareth often heard that revenge was a confession of pain. But his late brother Sebastian told him once that revenge was a liberation of anguish, if a man could target his enemy well.

As the morning storm blew off the sea into the foothills, Éli trudged across the muddy camp, the familiar tingle of the Dark Flame brushing his senses. Smooth as silk when it slid across his thoughts, the thrumming power called to him like a beautiful mistress he’d been forbidden to touch.

He clenched his fist to keep it contained, hating that he could wield his sword without mercy, but even a meager amount of magic would get him executed. Éli refused to die, at least until Jon Ayers suffered for what he’d done.

“How long do we have?” Éli said.

Granger, his second in command and most trusted ally, fell into step beside him. “Message received an hour ago. They’re three days out.”

Flurries blew with an icy wind as they walked the line of picketed horses. The animals hated to be tied up, and most could easily escape their ropes, which was why they’d had to use locking nuts to keep them from scattering.

Granger grabbed Éli’s arm, stopping him in his tracks. Then Granger lowered his voice. “Ayers ain’t ridin’ with his men though. Scouts say he’s got some woman with him.”

“A woman?” Pain punched his gut as Éli digested this new information. It couldn’t be Jon’s sisters. They were all dead. “Where the fuck are his men?”

“Mather rides with him. The others disappeared weeks ago.”

“Fuck!” Anger burned in Éli’s chest as he clenched the dagger at his waist until his hand hurt. He scanned the giant sequoias, half-expecting an ambush of Jon’s men. “They’ll be close. Find them.”

He would destroy them all just for the satisfaction of debilitating Jon under a mountain of grief. “Who’s the woman? Anyone recognize her?”

“She had her face covered.” Granger looped his thumbs through his belt, his gut hanging over the front. “I sure could use me that whore to get warm though. Don’t matter what she looks like.”

Two things his captain loved most were sex and violence, and the two were never mutually exclusive.

“No one touches her until I figure out who she is.” Éli wasn’t about to let anything slip through his hands, especially a woman he might be able to leverage against Jon.

“There’s somethin’ else.” Granger spat at the ground, biding his time as if he didn’t want to tell Éli the news on the tip of his tongue. “Selnä’s got Connor.”

“What?” Éli snarled so loud half the horses startled and tugged on their ropes. He clenched his jaw so tight it throbbed. Not that he cared much for the little prick. His son was bred for one purpose: revenge.

“The boy sails with the high council barge.” Granger gestured toward the sea, just out of sight beyond the woods.

“Those fucking bastards.” Éli couldn’t shake the notion that he’d become like Sebastian—a soldier desperate to sever all ties with the Tower and protect his bloodline from the same fate. If he didn’t get Connor back soon, his son would be branded to the Tower’s fate and the cycle would start all over again.

Éli slapped a nearby tree trunk, startling the horses again before he grabbed a blanket to saddle his stallion. The whole point of this mission was to ambush Jon from all sides and retrieve the bloodflower key, but Éli had no intention of killing that bastard.

Death was too good a reward. He needed to suffer, to feel the same anguish Éli had borne all these years since his brother’s death. Tightening the girth on his stallion, he untied the lead rope on his horse and climbed into the saddle.

“Send a message to the scouts…” He trailed off as he glanced toward the camp and the large black tent in the middle. A whisper of power brushed against the brand on his arm, a symbol of the Tower’s hold on his life.

Black threads of that power rose from inside the tent, brushing across each branded soldier as the high council member inside kept a tight rein on them all.

Only Éli could see the black threads that bound them to six hypocritical old crones. They killed any man, woman or child with a hint of magic, all to protect their own. It was why he’d asked to work inside the prison, so he didn’t have to bear witness every day to the woven threads of his doom.

“Commander?” Granger nudged his horse alongside. “What message should I send back?”

“Never mind.” Éli sure as shit didn’t want anyone on the high council knowing his thoughts on the woman. She was probably some mountain bitch riding the same trail, but with Jon, Éli could never be sure he hadn’t picked up some damsel in distress. “We need to find that blacksmith. What’s his name?”

“Sproki.” Granger spat at the ground again, this time a mass of mucus clinging to his beard. “You have the jewel?”

Éli patted his chest. It had taken nearly everything he owned to secure a real ruby, one that looked similar to the jewel buried inside the bloodflower pendant. “Let’s go.”

He nudged his horse onto a trail that would lead him toward the coast and small village built inside giant trees to the south.

Beneath the giant redwoods, great holes had been cut into the trunks and served as small marketplaces. Inside the trunks, stairways carved into the wood rose to small homes.

In Éli’s mind, the cozy quarters might keep out the cold weather, but all an invading army had to do was light a fire to the tree and hundreds would be burned alive.

Southerners and northerners didn’t like one another, and people here were no different. They stared at Éli and Granger, and most turned away quickly. Half a day’s ride south and they’d be killed for wearing these uniforms. But in this place, the tree folks were used to tradesmen from the mountains and across the sea.

Éli stopped his horse in front of a blacksmith stall and slid from the saddle.

“Don’t work for Rakir,” the man shouted without looking up.

“You want to go home to your wife tonight, you’ll work.” Éli slapped a sheet of paper onto the man’s workbench before the smith could swing his hammer.

Not a man—a woman who turned one eye to him, the other a hollow socket. “You deaf, northman? Your kind ain’t wanted here.”

She looked about to say more but glanced at the drawing on the paper.

“By Élon’s light, where did you get that?” she asked.

“You see this symbol before?”

The woman dropped the hammer and crossed herself. “Not for many years.”

“I know where the real one is.” As soon as the woman’s head shot up, Éli knew he had her. “I need you to make one just like it.”

“It’ll cost you, northman, and you ain’t got enough money in the world to pay me.” Her gaze drifted to something behind Éli as the horses snorted. “Tell you what though. That bitch across the way has been on my ass for months. Get rid of her, you and me are square. I’ll make your pretty trinket.”

Éli turned to a small shop barely a dozen spans away. Colorful draperies hung, each with a symbol to the seven Guardians. He clenched his fist, scanning for the emblem for Erisöl, a duplicate of the mark inked into his forearm. Éli didn’t believe in Guardians, but Sebastian had been born under the signs of Élon. From the time he was little, he and his brother had been inseparable, just like the two Guardian brothers.

At nine years old, Sebastian had taken Éli to get his tattoo, binding them as brothers for life. A year later, Jon had killed Sebastian, and Éli’s life fell apart.

Before he could turn away, something else caught his eye. A banner, buried behind the others and barely visible, with colorful threads woven together in a series of lines. Embroidered into it was a small diamond shape with two arms stretching outward into a circle—the sign for a dreamwalker.

He glanced at Granger. The last time he’d met a dreamwalker, the woman kept digging into his dreams and searching for secrets to blackmail him with. Maybe the smith really didn’t like the woman over there, or she too wanted to see what secrets were in his head.

Éli jutted his chin toward Granger, a silent gesture to take a look around. When he turned back to the blacksmith, a sneer tugged the corner of his lip.

“Make sure that medallion is done by dawn.”

He handed her the ruby he’d carried in his pocket for weeks. “I’ll take care of your little problem.”

But not before he got what he wanted. To learn exactly who the woman was and how he could use her to strike at Jon.