The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(85)

She smiled. “No, it doesn’t. But I think spending the day together is as much of a moment as we should seize.”

He laughed a little. “You’re probably right.”

The tension between them eased as they shared a lunch beneath the hazy summer sun, surrounded by meadow grass and butterflies. And then lunch was over, and it was time to face what waited for them in the Wilds.

Kellan held out his hand. “We go in together, and we stay together. No matter what.”

“No matter what,” she said, and let his hand swallow hers, his fingers tangling between hers like they belonged.

The meadow ended at the edge of a spongy marshland with scattered stones and tall grass growing in clumps. To the left, the marsh met a cliff that overlooked the glittering expanse of the Chrysós. To the right, the mountains loomed. Kellan and Blue began trekking up the incline that led through the marsh and into the Wilds.

The Wilds spilled across the marsh’s edge in a tangle of thick trees, rubbery vines, and dark patches of moss that covered the ground and the bottom of the tree trunks with black. The tree limbs locked together at the top, forming a dense canopy that allowed the faintest slivers of sunlight to drift past. As Blue and Kellan stepped into the Wilds, brushing vines and thorny bushes out of the way, the guards behind them drew their swords.

The gate was at the top of the incline that led deep into the Wilds. Blue and Kellan walked forward, the sounds of the sea, the buzzing of bees in the meadow, and the breeze that had tugged at their clothing all disappearing, absorbed into the thick shroud of silence that held the Wilds in its grasp.

“Oh.” The word escaped Blue as if she’d been struck as they climbed past a rotted log, the sunlight barely illuminating their passage, and looked up at the gate.

The path was strewn with bones. Some were still vaguely shaped like small humans. Some were just scattered pieces lying about. Closer to the gate, there were three shapes that still had clothing on. All the shapes were smaller than Blue.

Kellan cursed, and one of the guards behind them turned and vomited into the bushes.

“Children,” Blue said, her voice catching on a terrible grief that was rising to choke her. “Someone is bringing the children here and killing them.”

Kellan pulled her closer to his side, though it was hard to tell if it was for her comfort or for his. His eyes were dark pools of horror, and his mouth was grim. “We’ll find whoever is doing this. We’ll put a stop to it.”

Blue pulled free of Kellan and walked closer to the gate. Closer to the bodies that still wore clothes.

“Blue, stop.”

“I have to see.” Her voice was ragged. Tears gathered in her eyes as she passed a bundle of bones from a child who couldn’t possibly have been more than three years of age.

What kind of monster did something like this?

She reached the first clothed body. A boy who looked to be about five years old. Probably the one Lucian had told her about. Dread sank into her as she moved on, shivering as the gate came fully into view.

It was a narrow thing made of iron. No wider than her own front door, and wedged between two massive oaks, their bark entirely covered by black moss. The lock was a metallic rope woven in and out of the bars—she could see a strand of silver, a strand of gold, and a strand of rose lead, which was smart. A good way to bind the potion. The triple strength of the metals combined with the other ingredients would make it harder to break.

But someone must think it could be broken. Someone must believe they could free the wraith, and that the monster would be grateful enough for the many sacrifices brought to this gate that it would do its releaser’s bidding.

Kellan joined her, and they stepped closer, their harsh breathing the only sound.

Blue stared at the bodies that lay just in front of the gate. One was a young boy with a thatch of curly black hair not much different than Kellan’s. One was a slender girl with long brown hair and pale skin.

Ana.

Blue’s heart broke, and the last shred of hope she’d been desperately clinging to dissolved. She fell to her knees beside Ana’s body and carefully smoothed the girl’s hair away from her face.

“Her arms,” Kellan breathed, and Blue looked down.

Ana’s arms had been torn open, two perfect circles with jagged edges. Blood stained her arms, though the rest of her skin was incredibly pale.

“She was drained,” Kellan said. Neither one of them needed help remembering the stories. The wraith had once been a witch who longed for more power than she had, and so she’d begun drinking the blood of innocents, taking their lives, their energy for her own. It had increased her power, but it had also turned her from fully human into a wraith who needed blood to survive.

The stories said the mark of the wraith was a circle with jagged edges—teeth marks. The blood would be drained from the body, leaving the skin gray and translucent. Any doubt that the blood wraith was killing again, and indeed from the look of some of these bones had been killing for the past sixteen years of its imprisonment, was gone.

“They should have just killed the wraith,” Blue said, anger warming her voice. “Destroyed it like the monster it is, and then this would never have happened.”

“I think they tried,” Kellan said. “But it was too powerful. The best they could do was contain it.”

Blue straightened Ana, holding her nose when a wave of sickly sweet decay hit her.