Page 26 of Blood of the Stars

“Which is why we need to leave,” Sylmar said. “Now.”

“That still doesn’t explain how you knew I’d be here.” Aeliana crossed her arms over her chest. “Tonight.”

“We didn’t,” Velden said. “Not exactly. It’s the drop-off point for the Lorvandan starbridge, and we knew you’d arrive here sometime between your seventeenth and eighteenth year. Your parents always planned to have your father bring you back sometime this year. Only… he didn’t bring you back. Arvid and Vera did. So we got a bit lucky on the timing.”

Their answers only stirred up a dozen more questions, reminding her they could be telling just as many lies as Arvid and Vera.

“Run to safety now, answer questions later,” Velden said. He tugged on Cyrus’ sleeve and angled his head toward the woods, but Cyrus let out an awful moan.

Velden released his grip, and Cyrus pulled back his sleeve. The gash on his hand seemed longer, stretching into his wrist and continuing to pool blood. Aeliana gasped, closing the distance between them.

“Oh, Cyrus.” She held out a hand, but he flinched back from her touch. “I’m so sorry.” He never should have crossed the barrier. He should have been worshiping the Stars under the watchful eyes of his grandparents, who should both still be very much alive. Why in Rhystahn had every little detail gone wrong to leave him here like this?

Sylmar kneeled down in front of Cyrus, who still held his hand protectively against his chest. Velden stood behind him, placing his hands on Cyrus’ shoulders, holding him in place.

Aeliana’s skin prickled. “What are you doing?”

Sylmar positioned his hands on Cyrus’ arm, eliciting a whimper that elevated to a cry.

“You’re hurting him.” Aeliana yanked on Sylmar’s arms, but he was like a rock, eyes closed, hands sliding along Cyrus’ exposed flesh. She pulled harder, but her efforts only brought Velden around to pull her away.

“Just watch,” the man whispered as his sticky fingers held her wrists.

Cyrus’ cries settled into a sigh, his eyes closing. This time, when Aeliana pressed forward, Velden let her. Beneath Sylmar’s hands, Cyrus’ flesh melded together, the line of the cut more stain than wound. It was sloppy, but effective, and the bleeding ceased.

“Thank you,” Cyrus murmured.

“I can only do so much. We need Lukai.” Sylmar opened his eyes to half slits and rubbed at the scruff of his beard. “Wrap the skin. It will be tender.” It seemed like he wanted to say more, but he sat back in a slump.

Velden reached into a bag tied at his waist, pulling out what looked like dried seaweed. It expanded before Aeliana’s eyes, dripping with water coming from Velden’s webbed fingers. He wrapped the moist plant around Cyrus’ hand like a bandage, the seaweed clinging to itself as if growing into one solid mass.

“That should help some with the pain, too,” Velden said.

“But you—you healed him,” Aeliana said.

Velden glanced up at her, his smile shifting to a smirk as he stood. “What did you think we were doing?”

She clamped her lips down, aware her mouth had hung open like a child’s on Winter Solstice.

Velden turned to Sylmar, not waiting for an answer as he bent over the older man to assess his strength.

She’d expected Velden and Sylmar to act as Arvid had. To use Cyrus’ vulnerability to their advantage. But healing him…with magic?

That idea had never occurred to her. It made even less sense than her assumption, and yet she’d seen it with her own eyes. She supposed that was what Arvid did on a much smaller scale each time he cut her and then sealed her skin. From Arvid, it had seemed like self-preservation, to ensure no one knew what he’d done, but from Sylmar it had seemed…kind.

She scratched at the edge of the marks on her back, the ones Arvid had placed when they first arrived. She was tempted to ask them to heal those wounds but wasn’t sure she trusted anyone to use any kind of magic on her. What would happen when her magic made its second mark in a few days? Would the marks go away on their own, or would she have to ask someone to remove them?

Out of habit, she scanned the skies, but there were no dark spirits.

“You’re half-lights.” She said the words slowly, as if drawing the truth out of them with each syllable. “And you use your blood for magic?”

Velden’s head bobbed back and forth as if weighing her words. “We use the energy in our blood, yes.”

She glanced at his hands, both exposed and fully intact. “Where do you draw it from?”

Velden’s brow furrowed, but it was Sylmar who responded with his own question, his voice wary. “When did Arvid and Vera take you from your father?”

“My father?” She hated how the word rekindled that same hope. It was like they knew the mention of the parents she thought were dead was enough to get her to stay and hear them out. “I’ve never met my father.”

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