Page 56 of A Sun Scorched Bloom

Leaning over, he whispered something to the queen, something that Lea was unable to hear through the steady patter of rain and the blood roaring in her ears. The king took something out of his pocket, a clean piece of cloth, and dipped it into the blood soaking the ground, saturating it fully before tucking it back away inside his cloak with an evil grin.

The king stayed only another moment, long enough to ensure that the queen had taken her final breath before fleeing away into the night, his blood-stained boot crushing the satchel of petals as he ran. There was no spell to steal her magic, no slow death through the disease he had created, and Lea’s shoulders lowered in relief. Had the king known then that he could steal the queen’s power, she doubted that there would be any chance that the rebellion could defeat him in the future.

As the king disappeared into the night, Lea watched with tear-filled eyes as the beautiful white petals still growing from the vines turned black and crumbled away into black ash, the wind carrying them off into the dark night. It was a sight that caused painful memories to flash through Lea’s mind, her heart stuttering.

She’d watched those petals die again and again as she’d tried to save her mother, and nearly every day since until she was brought to the castle. She’d tried repeatedly to find the right time to harvest them, a way to keep them alive long enough to stop the curse, to cure the disease that she now knew was nothing but a spell cast by an evil man. But every time, they had dissolved into nothing, just as they had moments ago as they’d fallen into the queen’s blood.

Still standing frozen in shock, Lea realized two things. Before the king had slain Emmaline, the petals had lived. The queen had shown no signs that she worried they would rot away. There had been an urgency for them to bloom, but she had stuffed them inside the pouch without a second look. Once plucked from the vine, they’d remained plump and white in her fingers as she’d continued to gather more. Had she known the king was coming for her? Had she needed them to save someone? Lea wished she knew.

The second thing she realized, as the rain and wind continued to pelt down upon them, was that the queen’s cloak had fallen away when she’d collapsed to the ground. A swollen belly protruded from her nightgown.

The queen was with child, and she appeared to be quite far along. Emmaline’s hand rested limply against her stomach, her arm thrown across it as if she could protect her unborn child from the same fate. Lea’s heart thundered, pounding against her ribs. The king hadn’t just murdered the most beloved queen the Kingdom had ever seen, but also herheir. An innocent baby. It was too cruel, too barbaric.

Without thinking, Lea tried to run again, and unlike the last time, her body obeyed. Released from whatever magic had been holding her back, she flew across the ground, collapsing at the queen’s side. Emmaline’s stomach moved, a kick from the baby stretching her skin as it fought for its life. Without thinking, or even trying, Lea‘s hands warmed, her palms glowing a faint blue.

Lea placed her trembling palms against the queen’s stomach, feeling, praying for movement. She closed her eyes, searching for a thread of life from beneath her fingers. Reaching inside her chest, Lea gathered her light, her healing magic, and pushed it into the queen’s skin. She felt athumpvibrate along the magic tether—a heartbeat. Then another, followed by a pause, and anotherthump. Sporadic, but still,there. Digging deeper into her magic, she forced more healing energy into the queen’s belly.Thump… Thump.

The heartbeat slowed, the rhythm sluggish and uneven.

"Dammit! Work!" Lea shouted into the night. "Come on!" She tunneled even deeper inside her chest where her magic lived, now searching for her darkness, hoping it could chase away the blackness of death that was preventing her healing magic from saving the baby. Pressing her hands more firmly against the baby inside its mother’s womb, she focused on its movement. She could feel the curve of a head, the point of a foot or an elbow. Moving her hands to where she believed the baby’s chest to be, she concentrated on funneling her magic into it, into its heart, and yet still she could not seem to penetrate the queen’s skin.

Looking around in a panic, Lea searched for a solution. She could not let this baby die. Would not. The weight of its tiny life felt heavy on her shoulders. She had to do something.

Gray had burnt out before, had used all of his magic in the days he’d tried to save her from the Lonely Death, and yet when she had been in danger he had somehow found more, had been able to summon a darkness unlike anything she had ever seen. Reaching down as deep inside her well of magic as possible, she pulled every ounce of healing energy she could find and focused it into her palms, her fingertips. She thought only about the life and the sluggishly beating heart inside the queen‘s body, wholly absorbed with compelling her magic past her skin.

In the back of her mind, Lea wished that she could have saved the queen as well, but by the amount of blood soaking into the already wet ground, it was clear that she was well beyond saving. Tears pricked her eyes. This had been the beginning. The beginning of the cloud of death that had shadowed the kingdom for the past two hundred years.

Lea felt the baby's heart beat faster, a little stronger. She focused on that beat underneath her fingers, allowed it to course through her body, motivating her to dig even deeper into her magic. Deeper and deeper she went, and—there,hidden behind the magic she normally found waiting for her, was something else. It felt unfamiliar, wholly unlike her day and night magic. Whatever it was was wilder and darker, but it wassomething. She pulled from it, wrangling and molding it into what she needed. Lea focused again on the baby, found the firm curve of its head, and directed all she had into healing it.

Sweat beaded on her brow and pain burst behind her eyelids, but none of that mattered when the baby's heart kicked into a normal rhythm.Yes. Come on.Lea looked around, searching for a solution. Keeping the baby alive was no good if it was still inside a dead mother. Lea called for help as she searched for a way to remove the baby.

"Someone! Please!" Lea continued to shout, but there was no one around. Even if there had been, Lea didn’t know if anyone would be able to hear her cries. She wasn’t even sure that the queen had been aware of her presence, though it had seemed that she’d looked at her with that sad, knowing look.

She tunneled further into her darkness, something that she was not yet comfortable with. It felt dangerous and outside of her control. Lea looked up at the sky and screamed, frustration and desperation causing her to shoot her magic up into the air in anger. She had to get someone’s attention. A flame like a shooting star lit the sky, traveling up into the wispy clouds.

Clouds.

Closing her eyes and keeping the healing energy flowing into the queen‘s belly, Lea focused on the sky. She called the largest storm clouds she could imagine, picturing them in her mind and willing them to justbe. She searched for every ounce of anger in her heart, all the pain that had been caused by the king's actions, the fact that this child she was trying to save would grow up without its mother. Lea allowed the hurt she had fought against since her mother’s death to fill her. She thought about all those the king had killed, including Gray’s sister and Erik's mother.

So much death. So much destruction. Lea let the fire and electricity rebuild inside her, crackling behind her eyelids and through the base of her skull. She waited, pulling herself deeper into it, honing it into a fine point before letting it detonate into a crash of thunder and lightning that could rival Gray’s. Silver-blue streaks crashed all around her, striking the castle and its walls. Needing to get someone’s attention, she focused all of her energy on Gray's quarters.No. At this point in time, those rooms belonged to the queen.

Thathadto be where she lived. It was where she’d left from, after all. Though Lea wasn’t sure why she’d chosen those rooms instead of the king's suite on the other side of the castle. She allowed her lightning to crash into the castle’s windows, shaking its thick stone walls as she prayed that one of the queen's ladies' maids would come to check on her in the storm.

"Help! Someone help the queen!" Lea looked up toward the sky, watching her lightning crash in a frenzy, striking the castle, the trees, the ground. A storm that now surpassed any that she’d ever seen Gray create.

Reaching out for the wind in her mind, she called it across the courtyard, pulling it in as if taking a large breath, sweeping and bending the trees and rattling the windows. She crashed another strike of lightning directly onto the queen's balcony, crumbled bits of stone flying into the air from the force of it.

Another deafening crack of thunder boomed, and the balcony cracked, pieces of the railing tumbling to the ground. She pulled her attention back to the baby, realizing its heartbeat had grown sluggish as she’d sent her energy elsewhere.Stay with me, little one.

A pair of gardening shears caught her eye in the periphery of her vision. Is this what she would have to do? Cut the baby from her mother’s womb with a dirty instrument?

Reaching forward, fingers numb, she grabbed the rusted shears in trembling hands, but dropped them when she heard an ear shattering scream. Lea‘s head swiveled toward the sound and she sobbed in relief as a woman in a once pristine white uniform, now soaked with rain and muddied at the hem, collapsed at the queen’s side. The woman sobbed uncontrollably, placing her hands to the queen’s neck, then to her belly.

"Oh, Emmaline!" she sobbed. "I came to find you. The storms… What happened? Who could have done this?"

"It was the king," Lea cried, but the woman couldn’t hear her. Lea shifted to the side a bit as the maid crumpled across the queen's body.

"My dear friend," she whimpered, rocking Emmaline’s corpse in her arms. All of a sudden, the maid froze.

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