Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(35)

A circular stone dais lay between two columns at the heart of the cavern. Text spiraled around its surface toward the center.

I gift you my blood so that I may serve my kingdom.

I take your blood so that I may know your intentions.

If my blood is your blood

And your heart is my heart

The past and the future will be yours to command

Until the blood of us both is but memory and dust.

A shudder passed through me. The similarities to the rite Ina had used to take her manifest stood out to me in sharp relief. Old blood magic had been practiced here. A handprint much larger than mine lay embedded in the center of the stone table. Perhaps it was Veric’s.

I touched the indentation, the coolness of the stone seeping into my fingertips. Apprehension stirred, sending a shiver through me. I looked back at the old man, and instead of hostility in his expression, I saw something else.

Hope. For what, I didn’t know.

“Offer your blood,” Leozoar said, his voice fervent. A groove through the center of the handprint seemed made for just that. His dark eyes shone with intensity, freezing me in place.

Did I dare tempt fate by offering the dais my blood? Did I even have a choice? Ina had left me. Now I had to take care of myself. Perhaps the secrets of my past would help show me the way to a better future. I took a shaky breath, gathering what little strength I had left. I couldn’t turn my back on something that might provide information about the only other demigod like me.

I squeezed the wound on my wrist to reopen it and let a few drops of blood fall onto the handprint. They dripped into the groove, tracing a red path toward the center. The earth trembled and groaned as the dais turned on an unseen axis until a chamber appeared. Inside lay a leather booklet containing a single sheet of folded vellum.

The binding was stiff and aged, but clean—safe from the grime that had overtaken the rest of the cave. On the outside of the vellum, a single line was written in an ornate and slanting hand. The ink was a deep scarlet that could only be achieved by mixing blood with midnight thistles. Even though the folio had to be centuries old, even now, the handwritten letters burned with magic in my Sight. My throat tightened as I read them.

The next bloodscribe born will find this before their eighteenth winter.

“You see?” Leozoar said. “Veric wrote that you would come here. His words shaped your destiny, just as you will shape others’.”

My hands began to shake. My fate had never been entirely mine. Emotions assaulted me from every side. Anger that my future had been tampered with. Relief, because someone else might be partly responsible for the events that led me here. Guilt, for even momentarily trying to blame someone else for my failings.

“My time as guardian of this place is over. You’ll send me to meet the shadow god—to be with Veric again.” He grasped my arm so tightly it hurt, and a rapturous expression came over his face.

“What are you talking about?” I broke free of his grip and shied away.

“I want you to free me,” he said, gripping my arm again. “This must be why you’ve come down from your mountain. To bring me peace. Do it. Do it now!” His hysteria intensified.

“How do you know where I’m from?” I accused him, gripping the strap of my satchel until my knuckles went white.

“I tasted it in your blood,” he said, his voice taking on the hissing tone it’d had upon our first confrontation. “All you have to do is take my power. Make it yours. Do what you want with it—I don’t care. Please.”

Cold dread coursed through me. “You want me to kill you?”

He touched my wrist with trembling fingers, and memories broke over me like waves.

The first time I wrote with my blood.

The way Ina had looked at me those hot summer nights last year.

The smell of burning as Amalska was reduced to ash.

The expression on Hal’s face when he’d woken up this morning and I was still there.

“Veric promised me you would,” Leozar insisted. “His legacy awaits you. I’m no longer needed. Please have mercy on an old man. I’m ready to see Veric again. You know I’ve killed many—you could stop that right now.” His tone grew wheedling as he tried to take advantage of my guilt.

I wasn’t that easy.

“A death for a death does not bring absolution for either one,” I said bitterly. Neither did the death of bandits make up for the loss of a village. Nor would the death of the king.

“Then help me because I am in pain. Everything hurts. I’ve already lived more than half a dozen mortal lifetimes. The wind is the only strength left in me.”

I dropped into my Sight and studied the patterns of darkness curling through his aura. He was already a broken thing, slowly fading away. One day he might be little more than wind, slowly returned to the earth like all demigods. But what would it do for the poison in him to pass on that way? He might remain as a killing gust at the top of the cliff forever. He might continue to take lives long after his corporeal form disappeared.

“If I do this, it will be a true death, and you’ll never hurt anyone again?” I asked.

“Never,” he said fervently. His icy hands gripped mine.

I’d only used my power to kill when it was necessary to end the suffering of trees or animals too diseased or broken to survive. I tried to convince myself this would be no different.