Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(95)

One step, then another. Up, up, up, alone save for the howl of the wind and the painted figures on the wall, telling the tragic story of those doomed siblings who started this all. Achlev. Aren. Cael. I lingered at the last panels for a moment, gazing at their inscrutable faces. Then I steeled myself, ready to put an end to the sequence they’d put into motion all those years earlier.

This is it, I thought, armed with Victor de Achlev’s vial of blood in one hand, my luneocite knife in the other. Then I pushed the door free and strode out onto the tower’s open pinnacle.

Outside, the firestorm was raging, whipped by the circulating wind into a cylinder of flame. The city below was completely engulfed, the scorched streets standing out like a black triquetra-shaped brand against the blaze. Above my head, however, hung a perfect circle of star-studded sky, the eye of the storm. Marking its center was a dim void: the black moon.

“So glad you could make it, Princess.”

Toris had Zan forced to his knees, still bound and gagged. They were surrounded by a thatch of bloodleaf that had grown voraciously, clawing into any crack in the mortar, any imperfection in the stone. I took one step toward them, then another. Zan watched my approach with heavy, feverish eyes, shaking his head as if to say You shouldn’t have come.

Toris tapped his knife on Zan’s shoulder. “I think the prince here was hoping you’d renege on our bargain.” He laughed. “He must not know you at all.”

“We had an agreement. I’ve come to deliver my end of the deal.”

“Would it surprise you to know that I never had any intention of delivering mine?”

“Not in the least.”

“I can’t finish my business until the last gate has fallen, and for that to happen, the prince has to die. There is no other way.”

“So what purpose does this serve in your scheme?” I lifted the vial and unstopped the top. “Why do you need this blood so very badly?” I gave it a lazy little swirl. “The blood of our most revered Founder. It’s supposed to be just a symbol, and yet . . .” I tipped it and let a splash of blood fall out onto the tower stones. “You treat it like it has a greater importance.”

Toris’s eyes were locked onto the vial. “Do that again and I’ll kill him.”

“You just told me you would kill him no matter what.” I tipped the vial and spilled the blood again but more liberally this time, a long, thread-like stream. “I want to hurt you, Toris, for what you’ve done. To me, to my country, to everyone I love.” My eyes flicked back to Zan, who was struggling to breathe against the gag. “If this is how it must be done, so be it.”

“Stop!” Toris demanded, eyes bulging. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me why this blood is so important to you.” I tipped it again and let it splatter on the ground. A third of it gone. A half. Two-thirds . . .

“It’s mine!” Toris barked. Through his teeth he said, “So help me, if you spill even one more drop . . .” He lifted Zan’s chin with the point of his knife, and a bead of blood slid down the edge and onto Toris’s hands. His knife was luneocite glass, twin to my own, the one that had once belonged to Achlev himself.

That’s when I knew.

Toris’s visage was little more than an illusory overlay, like the one I’d used to make Falada’s white coat seem black. A simple trick that, once seen, could not be unseen. I circled him in astonishment, staring at a truth that was simultaneously incredible and intolerable, extraordinary and obscene.

“I see you,” I whispered. “I know who you are now. Who you really are.”

His eyes were no longer brown but a chilly cornflower blue, gleaming with a mixture of mirth and malevolence. Under my appraising stare, he regained some of his poise, straightening his clothes and procuring a white kerchief from his pocket to daintily clean the trickle of Zan’s blood from his hands.

Order in all things. Was that not always his motto?

I might have laughed, had things been different.

Centuries had passed, and he still looked exactly like the man in the portrait hanging in Kings Hall in Renalt: chiseled jaw, sandy hair, lips pulled into a thin sneer.

The Founder himself. Cael.

“It’s been five hundred years since you stood at this point, hasn’t it?” I asked. “Stood here with your brother and your sister for a ritual of magic meant to seal up a rift. A dangerous hole between the spectral and material planes. But then, in the midst of it, you turned on Aren. You killed your sister. Why?”

“I had to take a life, so I took one. My mistake,” he said, “was choosing Aren. She just happened to be standing closer, you see. Easier to grab. It should have been Achlev. All of this . . . this mess”—?he motioned with flippant disdain at the fallen city, the raging storm—?“could have been avoided if he’d been standing there instead of her . . .” He shook his head. “So good at seeing death, she was, yet never saw her own.”

“You were triumviri. A leader of your order. Sent to this spot to do something good. And instead you destroyed everything you ever loved.”

He laughed. “Love is weakness. I lost nothing because I loved nothing.”

My eyes slid to Zan, whose breathing was getting more and more rapid, more distressed. How much easier would it be if I’d never met him? I wondered. And then: How much would I have lost if I hadn’t?