Page 109 of A Sun Scorched Bloom

Lea looked at the position of the sun, which was just beginning to set, so she busied herself picking the ripe vegetables, stacking them in baskets, and leaving them next to the ladder. There was no use in letting them rot away.

Once the magic of the night had spread across the land, her hair blowing around her face and the moon illuminating the ground in a soft glow, Lea pulled a small dagger she’d swiped from the training room and a tiny, crescent-shaped moonflower seed from the scratchy pocket of an apron she’d found amongst the tools. The hilt of the knife was cold in her warm fingers, its blade sharp, thin, and honed to a fine tip.

Kneeling on the moist ground, Lea pushed the seed down into the soil, just a few inches, then held her hand out in front of her.

Eudora’s voice echoed in her mind.Blood. That is the key.

Before she could overthink it, Lea dragged the knife over her open palm. The moonflowers required an offering of blood, and so she would give it.

She hissed at the sharp sting of the blade against her skin and winced as she cut a clean line from one edge of her palm to the other. Sending up a prayer, Lea overturned her hand and allowed her blood to soak directly into the earth above the seeds.

With her wound still open and oozing, she pushed her blood-soaked fingers down into the soil, using her light to urge the seed to sprout. The seed cracked beneath her fingers, and it didn’t take long for the deep green vine to poke out from the dirt. She pulled her hand away, avoiding healing her wound to allow blood to continue to flow onto the plant, and the vines began twisting around her hand, attempting to slowly grow up her arms.

Lea’s entire body buzzed.Is it working?Gently, almost tenderly, she untwisted the vines from her body and watched as they trailed along the ground. After several long moments, dozens of small buds began to open, the white petals inside peeking out from their fibrous leaves. Electricity buzzed along Lea’s skin, her mouth going dry in anticipation.

This was it—what she had sacrificed so much for. Her fingers hovered above a bud as the petals fully unraveled, and with a deep exhale, she used her uninjured hand to pick a single flower. Lea held her breath, afraid that even the slightest movement might cause the flower to crumble away into the mountain air.

The flower remained white and Lea cried out in a mix of shock and joy, a gasp breaking free from that small sliver of hope she held inside her heart. She picked another and another, closing her fists around the beautiful, whole petals. Her heart pounded and her hands shook.I did it.She would have shouted it from the mountaintop if her voice would work, but she couldn’t speak. Could hardly think.I did it!

Lea jumped up, needing to tell Gray—no,showhim. She put her foot on the first rung of the ladder, then opened her hand to look at the flowers once again, unable to believe she was actually holding plump, living flowers.

Her fingers uncurled from her tight fist, and—No…Bile rose up the back of Lea’s throat, the bitter taste of failure making her head spin. In her hand, where the beautiful, pristine, white petals had been onlysecondsbefore, was a pile of black ash.What went wrong?

Lea tried to blink away tears as she ran back to the flowers, picking a few more, but this time she left her hand open, holding her breath as she stared without blinking. After about a minute, the flowers withered away and died. "Dammit!"What am I missing?

She had done exactly as Eudora had said! But maybe she had misunderstood. She’d said to water the seeds with blood… Did she need to mix her blood with water? Or maybe she needed more blood? She was close. She had to be! Lea had never gotten them to live for this long before.

Pulling another seed from her pocket, Lea pushed it down into the soil. The scab across her hand had begun to heal, but Lea followed the line of crusted blood with her dagger, digging deeper than she had before. Now bleeding profusely, she made a mirrored cut on her other hand, deep enough that blood ran down her fingers, dripping onto her apron.

She pocketed the dagger, then pushed her hands down into the dirt once again, completely saturating the soil with warm, sticky blood.The blood must soak the earth, Eudora had said. That had to be it. She just hadn’t offered enough the first time.

Little Flower?A voice spoke into her mind, but she couldn’t answer as she focused all of her light into the soil.

She kept her healing magic tightly coiled in her chest, continuing to water the ground until her eyelids grew heavy and her head swam.

Azalea!

Her vision blurred, and Lea placed a hand on her forehead, trying to steady herself.

"That’s enough," Gray snapped from somewhere behind her, the moon suddenly obscured by dark storm clouds. Thunder crashed in the distance, and before lightning could even follow it, Gray was at her side. "What are you doing?" He grabbed Lea’s hands, healing them immediately and pulling her tightly against him.

Lea pressed her face into the crook of his neck, taking slow, deep inhales to calm her racing heart. "I needed more blood for the moonflowers. It didn’t work, and I—" The world tilted and she covered her mouth, holding back the nausea bubbling in her stomach.

"You could’ve killed yourself," Gray barked, his shadows wrapping around her body and searching her for other injuries. "Do you have any idea what I thought was happening to you out here? I called out to you, and you didn’t answer!"

Thunder boomed and lightning flashed again, illuminating the garden, and Lea got a look at Gray's face in the darkness. Her blood ran down his neck and covered his hands, trails of crimson spreading across his shirt.Shit. She’d bled far more than she’d realized.

Gray lifted her in his arms and carried her toward the ladder. "Come on, you need to rest."

Lea nodded weakly. She needed sleep desperately, but a small gust of wind tickled her eyelashes. Cracking open her eyes, she suddenly wasn’t so tired at all. Lea gripped Gray’s arm as she craned her neck to look over Gray’s shoulder. "Stop!" she ordered, and he obeyed, turning to see what she was looking at. Just feet away, hundreds of moonflowers grew from several long vines. It was the most vigorous plant Lea had ever seen. The moonflowers were creeping along the ground toward Gray, following him.

"Don’t move," Lea ordered as they wrapped around his legs and climbed up his trousers. They circled themselves around his waist and up toward his shoulders.

Somehow, the vines maneuvered around Lea’s body, consuming Gray alone. He gently set her down, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head. He removed the sword from his waistband, awkwardly slicing open his hand with the long blade. The vines immediately reacted, twisting and growing rapidly to get to the blood.

Gray held his hand out to the side, allowing his blood to drip into the soil. After enough blood had fallen to form a small puddle, he healed his hand. As soon as the blood stopped flowing, the vines began to unravel themselves from his body, moving away from where his hand no longer bled and pushing down into the bloody soil.

"They didn’t do that for my blood," Lea almost whispered, confusion sending waves of shock through her body. "I’ve never seen them react like this at all."

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