Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(19)

“That’s a brilliant idea,” Kellan said. “Do it. Quickly.”

“No,” I said firmly. “It’s too dangerous. Think of what your mother went through—?”

“It’s because of my mother that I’m offering,” Emilie said, face aglow with fervor. “I was helpless to save her; I am helpless to avenge her. But I can do this for you.”

Speechless, I put my hand on her shoulder. She said, “If anyone can make the Tribunal pay, it’s you. Maybe if I help you today, you can someday return and make it right for us all.”

“Hurry!” Kellan said. “The crowd is moving.”

I worked with clumsy fingers to extricate myself from the green dress, handing it to Emilie when I finally succeeded. “Find a safe place and lock yourself in. Tell them I did it,” I told her as I pulled her simple shift over my head. “Tell them I forced you to give me your dress. Say whatever you have to. Make them believe it.”

“Yes, my lady,” she said as I helped her do up the laces on the stained gown. She smoothed out the fabric. “I’ve never worn anything so lovely.”

“Someday I’ll pay you back with a better one.”

“It’s a deal,” she said, and removed her yellow headscarf, situating it on my head and shoving my recalcitrant hair beneath it.

“Emilie,” I said under my breath, “I won’t forget this. I won’t let you down.”

Kellan, at the door with Conrad, waved me to follow him. Time was running short.

“Wait!” I said before leaving. “In the pocket.”

Emilie pulled out the broken bracelet and handed it to me. On impulse I found the dragon charm—?emerald, like her mother’s favorite stone—?and yanked it from the chain. Pressing it into her hand, I whispered, “Thank you.”

She nodded, clutching the charm, a token of her mother and my promise to avenge her.

We made our way back to the Kings Hall. Kellan went to scout out the way ahead, but not before situating Conrad and me behind the tapestry across from the portraits of famed King Reynald on one side and his trusted second-in-command, Lord Cael, on the other. The Founder of the Tribunal.

I peered out from my hiding place, and the rigid man in the painting stared coldly back at me: cornflower eyes; square, chiseled chin; sandy hair slicked back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. There once were two brothers and a sister, the most promising mages of their orders, who gathered one day to cast a spell . . . The stories all began the same way. The middles matched up as well: everyone agreed that the sister, Aren, died during the fateful spell. The endings, however, varied wildly: Some say Aren killed herself. Some say Cael saw evil in her and knew he had to protect the world from it, performing the first witch execution on his own sister. The version written in the Founder’s Book of Commands and upheld by the Tribunal as immovable truth, however, says that she was murdered by her older brother, Achlev, and that Cael died nobly in her defense, using every last drop of his blood trying to save her. The book’s account had it that the Empyrea was so moved by his bravery and selflessness that she chose him to return to earth and become her emissary, spreading her joy and light to all. He woke from death, whole and pure and charged with a holy mandate: found an organization to purge the world of all magic.

This is because of you, I thought, accusing Cael. You and your Tribunal and your cursed Book of Commands. There was speculation that his body was too pure to decay, and that it was hidden away somewhere in the mountains, encased in a glass coffin, as fresh and youthful as the day the Empyrea first called him to do her work.

Wherever the Founder was, I hoped he was rotting.

Conrad whimpered beside me, and I awkwardly placed my arm over his shoulders, trying not to notice the way he shrank beneath my touch. “It’ll be all right,” I whispered to him.

“How do you know?” he retorted in a creaky voice.

Kellan appeared and motioned to us. We followed him down a set of service stairs, pausing as a group of people searching for me went by below, laughing and describing what they’d do to me when they found me. We scrambled backwards, Kellan standing protectively over us until they’d passed. “We have to go that way,” he said. “Hurry!”

We weren’t quite to the next set of stairs when we heard a man yell, “Halt! Wait!”

We stopped. My heart beat a thundering, out-of-rhythm pattern. I looked up to see the shape of a billowing green dress disappear around the corner of the adjoining corridor. The searchers roared past us after her.

“Emilie,” I whispered.

“She’s given us a distraction. She’s given us time.”

We took the stairs two and three at once and flew from the service entrance into the herb garden. I swept Conrad up and held him as we dashed across the open courtyard to the carriage house, where Lisette’s horses were already harnessed to the carriage and Toris was positioned in the driver’s seat.

“You’re late,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Kellan helped Conrad into the seat next to Lisette, who fussed over him. “Look at you, love. So brave! Now, there. Don’t cry. I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you.”

I slumped into the opposite corner, pulling my arms into myself.

Kellan mounted Falada and reined her next to the carriage. “We’re ready.”