Bloodflower

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.