Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(20)

The driveway to the castle gate was long, winding alongside the courtyard where a pyre had been erected. The simmering mob congregated at the foot of the stacked wood, torches waving erratically as they chanted, Burn the witch! Burn the witch!

At the gate we were stopped by men in Tribunal coats. “No one is going in or out until we locate the witch.”

I hunkered down in my seat and concentrated on the faded floral pattern of Emilie’s dress. Please don’t look in, I prayed.

Toris’s voice was clipped and commanding. “I am Lord Toris de Lena, magistrate and bearer of the blood of the Founder. My daughter is inside this carriage, and I will be escorting her away from this violence. Do not make me wait any longer, I pray.” His tone went low and flat. “You will regret it.”

There was a pause, and then the sound of the iron gate opening. I gulped and held my breath, turning from the window as we went through. Before I could release the breath in relief, the Harbinger was suddenly next to me in the carriage. She was there and then she was gone, like a puff of smoke.

As the gate began to creak closed behind us, I heard the clerics call out to one another in excitement, “Look at that! They got her!”

“Thank the Empyrea, the witch will burn tonight!”

The carriage was picking up speed, but I flung open the door sash, emitting a strangled, animal sob when I realized what it was I saw.

They were forcing a girl up onto the pyre. A girl in an emerald gown.

“No! Stop!” I shrieked. “Stop! We have to go back!” But if Toris could hear me over the pounding hoofbeats, he wasn’t listening, and he didn’t slow down.

I climbed frantically out onto the carriage step, ready to jump and run back, when Kellan and Falada came galloping up from behind. He wrested me from the carriage step and pulled me up onto the horse with him.

“It’s too late now; you can’t go back. She made this sacrifice for you. It was a gift. A gift, Aurelia! You can’t waste her gift!”

I wept into his cloak as we turned the corner, and the only thing I could see from beyond the city rooftops was a towering orange flame reaching toward the sky.





?8




It was nearly a fortnight later when we reached the edge of the Ebonwilde. We were sodden, sore, and miserable after a parade of difficult days spent slogging through Renalt’s meandering back roads, sleeping in marshy gullies, and eating whatever Kellan could catch. Grouse and gnarled old field hares if we were lucky, rodents if we weren’t. The Tribunal must have figured out they’d burned the wrong girl; after a few close calls with their scouts, we gave up fires as well and were forced to scavenge to eat. Mostly pennycress and wild clover, as it was too early in the season for much else. We were carriageless now, too, after ours sank up to the sash in spring mud and could not be pulled free. Kellan had wanted to try longer, but I insisted otherwise; I could see that ours was not the first party to find calamity in that spot, and I did not fancy joining the sallow, bloated spirits hopelessly clawing at the mire. We were fortunate it was only the carriage we lost. Many others had not fared so well.

I marked the passage of days with tired resignation more than fear; it was now the first day of the month of Quartus, four weeks from my wedding day.

Morale was low for all but one. Toris seemed to get more and more cheerful the farther we traveled, often whistling an old Renaltan folk song to himself. When we first sighted the forest on the horizon, he even started absently singing the words.

Don’t go, my child, to the Ebonwilde,

for there a witch resides.

Little boys she bakes into pretty cakes,

Little girls into handsome pies.

You’ll know her by her teeth so white,

Eyes so red and heart so black,

But if you see her, child, in the Ebonwilde,

You won’t be coming back.



He was about to launch into the second verse, about a cursed and headless horseman, when I could take it no longer and snapped, “Please. No more.”

He flashed his teeth in an irreverent smile, but the singing stopped. The whistling, however, did not. It continued for the duration.

That night we camped just outside the tree line, not far from the bank of the River Sentis, and made our first fire in days. Kellan had caught a collection of perch with a long thread from the frayed hem of Lisette’s dress and a hook fashioned from one of her earrings. She protested mightily about being deprived of them until the fish were off the fire—?after that she made no more noise. It was our first decent meal since Syric.

Conrad ate quickly and fell asleep with his head on Lisette’s lap. He’d barely said two words to me the entire journey, and he cried often—?big, round tears that slipped quietly down his cheeks only to be hastily wiped away before anyone could notice. But he never complained, despite the wearying travel and the sting of being deprived of his mother and home for the first time in his young life. I burst with the urge to reach out and comfort him, but I never did; he had Lisette for that. I watched her carefully move him from her lap to his bedroll, tucking a blanket tightly under his chin before lying down herself. They fell asleep swiftly.

Toris took first watch that night and left for a better vantage point not long afterward.

Kellan and I were alone. He settled a fur blanket around my shoulders. “Toris will watch the first half of the night, and then I’ll relieve him.”