Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(34)

I scrambled toward the path out of the cave. Gusts twisted around me and pressed on my chest, shoving me onto my back. Wisps of wind worked their way beneath my clothing and dug into me like teeth and claws.

“Get off me!” I screamed.

“Foolish child. This sacred ground is not for you.” The malice in his baritone voice was as palpable as the force of his magic.

The pressure on my chest increased, and darkness began to creep in at the edges of my vision. The wind he controlled was stealing my breath. If I didn’t do something, he would asphyxiate me. I might have welcomed death at Ina’s hands; it would have been fair after what we’d put each other through. But being destroyed by the whims of a random monster wasn’t.

My heart pounded in my chest, quick as the wings of a sparrow. I flailed desperately, only managing to scrape my wrist on a sharp rock. A hot trickle of blood ran down my fingers.

The man stopped moving toward me, the wind momentarily ebbing. I crawled backward, leaving a thin trail of blood. Some of my panic must have bled out with it, for everywhere my blood touched, it created grooves in the stone. He raised a hand again, his magic shoving me hard against the floor. My own gift pulsed at the edges of my open wound, urging me to write a way out of this situation. I held it back with all my remaining strength, no longer able to flee.

The man slowly bent down to where my blood had splattered on the floor. He touched the blood with a knobby fingertip, then brought it to his tongue.

A soft cry escaped his lips. The wind departed as swiftly as it had arrived, leaving dust to swirl through the sunbeams angling into the cave. Now that the man wasn’t attacking me, he looked much weaker. Age had hunched his shoulders, and his hands trembled with some kind of palsy.

“You taste like him,” he whispered reverently.

“Like who?” I clutched my injured wrist to my chest, terrified of what he might do next.

“Veric,” the old man said. “This is his sanctuary in which you trespass.”

“Who the Hells is Veric? And who are you?” I asked, scrambling to my feet to take advantage of the reprieve from his attack. I was getting very tired of being accused of trespassing when all I wanted was to be left alone to mourn what I’d lost.

“I am Leozoar, son of the wind and guardian of the Sanctum,” he answered.

I started. He was one of Hal’s brothers—or at least claiming to be.

“You don’t look like a demigod.” Nor did he behave like one. Not all of us were especially moral, but we generally didn’t kill the way he’d apparently been doing for generations.

“Ah, so you have the Sight, do you? How useful.” Leozoar edged closer. “The gods forsook me when I took the first life in protection of this Sanctum. But my vow was to Veric. He was my family, too. My love.” His gaze grew distant, as if looking for a memory too far away to grasp.

“I see.” Worry needled at me. Did all the death I’d caused in Amalska mean the gods had turned away from me as well? Or perhaps I’d been cursed and abandoned by them since birth. That would certainly explain a lot.

“Go to the dais and offer your blood.” Leozoar’s words sounded like a command, not a choice.

“No. I want to leave,” I said, my voice weak. The day had been long enough. I didn’t want anything to do with this wind wraith and his dark magic.

“But you have everything to lose and just as much to gain,” he said. His dark eyes grew fierce and the wind picked up again. The meaning was clear: if I didn’t obey him, he’d kill me. A tingle of fear zipped down my spine, then faded away. I barely had the energy to be afraid anymore. In a way, it was almost a relief.

“Tell me why I should,” I said.

He huffed in frustration, sending another gust through the cave. “Because I am tired of waiting here and you might hold the keys to set me free.”

I crossed my arms. “What’s in it for me?”

“Everything. Your past and your future,” he sputtered. “Do you dare dishonor the only other like you? The only one with your gifts?”

“Which gifts?” I asked, fear finally creeping its way in.

“Your ability to make the future what you wish, just as Veric could.” His hands trembled more fiercely.

“Veric was a bloodscribe?” I stared at the man in shock. If that was true, Veric and I had to be related. Finally, I had a lead on my origins.

“It’s like you haven’t heard a word I’ve said!” Leozoar shuffled up until he was barely a handbreadth from me.

I backed away along the wall. If Veric had been a bloodscribe, that meant some secrets of my past might be preserved here. I had never expected to find any keys to my past. Then again, I had never known I needed to search for them back when I thought I was the daughter of wind.

I had to do it.

“Where’s the dais?” I asked.

“Follow the stones,” Leozoar said, raising his arm to send another burst of wind through the chambers. Dust blew aside to reveal a mosaic of polished granite winding a glittering path through the stone floor of the cave. Leozoar limped along beside me as I followed the intricate designs. We walked past the pool through an archway into another smaller room that also had windows on the cliff-facing side. The patterns on the floor twined toward the center, and I followed them as if tugged by an invisible wire.