Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(46)

“‘Divinum empyrea deducet me.’”

He hovered the match over the bowl. “‘Hic unionem terram caelum mare.’” Here at the union of land, sky, and sea.

“‘Hic unionem terram caelum mare.’” Heat was spreading from the bowl into my fingertips, where it morphed into pinpricks scouring the underside of my skin. Inside the bowl, the blood had begun to form a circle around the lock of Falada’s mane.

“Keep going,” Zan said. “‘Nos venimus ad te dedi te in similitudinem.’” We come to thee with an offer in thy likeness.

“‘Nos venimus ad te dedi te in similitudinem.’” The pinpricks were like sharp pieces of glass hurtling through my veins, around and around in my head, down my throat, in and out of the valves of my heart before screaming down my legs and out the bottoms of my feet, into the wall. And then, expansion. It was like I grew outside of my skin and bones and existed instead as a circle of light.

“‘Magnifico nomen tuum, et faciem tuam ad quaerendam.’” Thy name to extol and thy favor to seek.

I could barely form the words. I had little awareness left of myself. It was hard to know which parts I needed to move—?I had no sense of mouth or lips or tongue with which to speak. Wind was whipping around the wall like a hurricane; I borrowed it. I bent the air to form the required sounds. Magnifico nomen tuum, et faciem tuam ad quaerendam. It wasn’t my voice but the melancholy whistle of the wind.

Zan dropped the match into the bowl, lighting the contents inside with a whoosh and a flash. In that instant I felt the power of the white-hot fire rise and join the wind, swirling into a burning column, carving a circle in the sky.

And then I saw them: the ley lines.

The world outside of Achlev was covered with dazzling streaks of white light. Right, left, back across . . . they wove like a net over the earth, everywhere except within Achlev’s Wall, around which they spun and spun . . . but even as I watched, the lines began to slowly dim; the wind began to wane.

“Don’t stop,” Zan commanded.

The blood in the bowl consumed Falada’s mane, turning the fire from gold to silver. I saw a vision of her, riding free across a great, misty moor. I felt her fierce pride, her exuberant joy, her wild passion. It was as if she knew that if she chose it, she could run fast enough to fly and join the goddess in the sky. She was Empyrean. She was magic. And she was going to give me everything I needed. Because she loved me. She trusted me. She didn’t use words, but I knew she was telling me that she wanted to help me, because Kellan would have wanted her to help me.

But then the fire sputtered. “Wait! Wait!” I begged. “I’m not done! Not yet!” I stepped out of the triquetra, chasing after the diminishing vision.

“What are you doing?” Zan asked as I dropped the bowl and spilled blood and ash in a line across the chalk drawing. “Wait, Emilie. Don’t!”

“I heal too fast,” I said in a daze, trying to hold on to the silver fire as it ebbed away. “The pain isn’t enough.”

All those other times I’d experimented with magic, it wasn’t pain I used to make it work. What had Simon said? Blood magic is rooted in emotion: the faster your heart beats, the faster your blood pumps. At home I never used magic without being terrified that the Tribunal would somehow find out. When I rescued my pregnant mother, I’d done so out of sheer desperation. When I’d burned my assailants in the streets of Achlev, it was to end their savage assault on my person. Out loud, I breathed, “Fear. I need to feel fear.”

I pushed Zan aside and ran for the battlement, clawing at the top of the merlon and hoisting myself upon it. Broken mortar crunched under my bare feet, and a few loose pieces of gravel tumbled into the yawning void below. I leaned out over the edge, remembering what it felt like to watch Kellan slip from my hands to his death, and my heart lurched into an angry, drumming rhythm. If I fell, I would die—?but my life wasn’t the one I feared to lose. The only way I could be frightened enough to finish this was to put the lives tied to mine on the line. I lifted my hand one more time and let the blood fall directly onto the battlement stone.

It worked, but I knew it would not be for long. Frantically, I reached across the void to where Falada was waiting for me. She bent her head and put her beautiful white muzzle into my bleeding palm. “Thank you,” I told her, drawing the silver light of her spirit into my hands. I took only what I needed and held it inside, letting it circulate and expand. Then I stretched my awareness and again found the fissure in the wall, and I salved it with Falada’s silver spirit. Almost there! I thought, but the fire began to fade again. My body was stopping the flow of my blood, and with it my access to the magic inside the wall—?I was clotting, binding, healing myself. I needed to be more scared. I leaned even farther out, standing on my toes . . .

“Emilie!” Zan said, catching my hand as I teetered there. “Emilie, don’t. It’s dangerous. Don’t!” He gave me an angry pull, and I tumbled from the edge into his waiting arms.

I was shuddering. I was covered in blood. But I’d failed. Failed.

“Are you all right?” His white collar was askew, his hair tangled, his eyes as dark as the black woods themselves. We stared at each other. And slowly, I lifted my bloodstained fingertips to his face, resting them softly against the line of his jaw. There was no sound.