Page 49 of Bloodguard

Furniture cracks.

Where’s that damn spring? The one where they get water?

Imustput out these flames.

Someone else finds my fist, and another my injured foot.

An eruption like an avalanche of stone has me whirling and falling over. I don’t quite hit the floor. Something strong snatches me up by the throat.

Maeve screams. “No!”

My legs kick hard and my fists swing, trying to connect with what has me. A roar, primal and animalistic, blasts against my face.

Whatever has me shakes me hard, trying to snap my neck.

Air is squeezed out of me. I start to sleep.

No.

I start to die.

Forgive me, Dahlia…

Maeve’s screaming jolts me awake. “Caelen, rein in your beast!”

I’m thrown on something hard. A…creaturecrawls over me, holding me in place and making it almost impossible to keep breathing, words fading, then returning to scream over me.

A sword pulls free of its sheath. “He dies, you die with him,” Maeve warns.

“Youdarechallengeme,” an unearthly voice growls.

“Not a challenge,” Maeve says. “A promise. Hurt him, and I’ll kill you. I swear it.”

Giselle’s panicked and furious voice calls from across the room. “Enough. This ends now.”

There’s a moment when everything stills, between my almost breath and the flames blistering my skin.

Before life as I know it ends.

chapter 19

Leith

Light flickers over my closed eyes, nudging me awake. Slowly, I blink them open. I’m in a bedroom somewhere near Maeve’s garden. The scent of herbs is heavy in the air. There’s a circular window above me where the sun’s rays peek through the branches of a fairy elm. Its branches are overgrown now, only the topmost limbs reaching the light, while lower branches are shaded and barely blooming. In the forest, a good fire would take this tree out, and its thick bark would weather the flames to bloom richer and healthier again.

A raven squawks somewhere in the garden. And a cluster of gnome cardinals swoops up and down, back and forth, round and round, showing off the aerial acrobatics they’re known for.

But the best thing here is the sound of Maeve’s voice.

“Leith?”

Her gorgeous face comes into view, skin flushed and eyes bright as she examines my face. She’s in a white dress—no, a white nightgown—with a plunging neckline, exposing the last trail of scar just above the swell of her right breast. She reaches for a robe at the foot of the bed and slips it on, hiding a body I wish I didn’t want to see.

The long braid I remember is gone. Her mountain of hair is tied up at the top of her head. “For someone who wants to become a Bloodguard, you’re trying really hard to die.”

I laugh as she intends, though it hurts. “Believe it or not, I want to live.”

She winks. “Well, then, it’s a good thing you made a blood oath with a healer of exceptional skill.” She reaches for a pitcher of water and pours some into a goblet.

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