Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(88)
“What happened to you?” I asked, aghast.
“Aurelia!” Onal chided. “Where are your manners?”
“Bleeding oneself daily does take its toll,” he said, and I nodded. Back in Renalt, I’d been so eager to learn blood magic, so dismissive of the pain and exhaustion, mental and physical, that would accompany it. I understood better now: the strongest magic requires the greatest sacrifice.
Simon carefully shifted Ella back to Nathaniel. “It was a good thing Lord and Lieutenant Greythorne acted when they did; I’m not sure how much longer I could have lasted. And the Tribunal were like wolves outside a farm gate, licking their chops and waiting for their first chance to get in.”
“You are not out of the woods yet,” Onal said, turning her attention back to Conrad’s hair. “That’s why I had to come along on this little jaunt: to make sure he didn’t die on the way here.” She gave him a sideways glance. “Though he’d be doing better if he just took my concoctions without constantly complaining like a dumb baby.”
Sorry, I mouthed to Simon. Onal’s concoctions were notoriously potent in efficacy and rank in flavor.
“I’m glad you’re both here,” I said. “There’s a lot I need to tell you all and very little time in which to do it.” I looked over my shoulder at Kellan, who was waiting quietly for me by the door flap. “I’ll need all the support I can get.”
* * *
In a private tent, Onal provided me with a bucket of frigid water and orders to scrub myself clean (“Down to the bone, if that’s what is necessary to get that smell off of you”), then left me alone while she took my tattered clothing away.
I doused myself with water and soap, chattering with cold, resisting the temptation to be hasty by telling myself I couldn’t rescue Zan smelling like I’d climbed out of a swamp. “If you burned my dress,” I said when Onal returned several minutes later, “I’ll have nothing else to wear.”
“Nonsense,” she said, brandishing an entire uniform made up of pieces borrowed from women of the guard. I got into the breeches well enough myself but required her help with the tunic. Lifting it over my head, she had a good look at the plentiful bruises and scars I’d acquired over the last weeks. Sighing, she said, “If your mother knew what you’ve been through, her heart would surely break in two.”
I wanted to say that I was fine, that I’d made it through unscathed, but I couldn’t. I was changed in vast, irreversible ways.
When she was finished helping me resettle my cloak back over my shoulders, she handed me a weathered hand mirror to hold while she brushed and plaited my hair down the side.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a good look in the mirror. I wanted to think that, after all of this, I’d be able to look at my reflection and see some new strength written there, or some beauty brought to the surface through adversity, but I looked the same as I always had. Ashy blond hair, pale cheeks, and eyes like silver saucers—?too big and too strange for the rest of my face.
“Onal,” I said thoughtfully as she wove my hair with her long, nimble brown fingers. “Nathaniel’s daughter, Ella . . . did you take a look at her?”
“I did. Perfectly healthy babe, if a little small.”
“She was a little early, you know, so tiny and precious. But she had these beautiful brown eyes.”
“That’s nice,” Onal said absently.
I continued, “After Ella was born, both mother and babe were in a bad way, and the woman acting as midwife gave me a potion she’d distilled from bloodleaf flower.”
Onal’s hands grew still. She was listening intently now. “Even so, Kate—?my friend—?wouldn’t take the potion herself, and insisted that I give it to the child instead. I respected her wish.” I felt my throat constrict. “Ella woke from the very brink of death, Onal. But afterward her eyes were different, more silver. Like they are now.” Without looking up, I asked, “What color were my eyes before you gave bloodleaf flower to me?”
There was a long pause.
“I don’t know,” Onal said quietly. “You never opened them before you received it.”
?33
The king and queen had tried for several years to conceive, and when they did, they were elated. But—?as was by then tradition—?they chose not to reveal their joy to the public until after the birth. Arrangements were made. If the baby was a boy, the birth would be celebrated throughout the land for weeks. If it was a girl, she would be spirited away in the night, given to a family somewhere far away, and the kingdom would never even know she existed. They were more than prepared for either outcome.”
Onal sighed and sat down beside me. “But then the babe arrived, so silent and still. They had been ready to send her off, knowing that she’d live a full and happy life, but this was a parting they had not considered. Such sorrow I’ve never seen, before or since. So I went to my stillroom. I’d kept my three preserved bloodleaf petals secret and safe for nearly thirty-five years by then. I knew it was pointless to waste one, that in the face of death they are useless . . . but if you had seen their faces . . .” She shook her head. “So I took that little babe in my arms, and I parted her tiny, blue little lips and pressed that petal onto her tongue . . . and then she opened her eyes. You opened your eyes. And they looked just like they do now.