Page 26 of The Bloodstone Oath

Selara’s private terrace had been transformed into a sickroom. Her bed, a lattice of living branches, now rested beneath the open sky so she could watch the crimson fall of Bloomrest’s leaves. She lay propped against pillows, skin wan as pale bark. Ruby veins traced starved lightning across her throat and wrists. Each breath rattled like failing forge bellows. Veyla sat bedside, fingers braided with her sister’s, while Rootborn healers smeared powerless, dull green salves on her shoulders.

For one heartbeat Kaelor froze in the doorway, terror eclipsing every vow he had made. “Hold this.” Varienna shoved a cedar coffer as she moved past him with surprising speed, copper coils whipping like molten wire.

Talia deftly took the box from the Kaelor’s hands and followed Varienna.

“Clear the air,” she commanded. “I smell rot-resin, useless against an oath-curse.”

Veyla’s regal facade slipped at the healer’s authority, but she rose, smoothing her emerald cloak. “Do what you must.”

The High-Healer turned to the elders. “Here is moon-ash,” she said. “Mix it with your heart-seed and root-dream crystals and spread them in a circle among the roots, extending fromSolthorn’s trunk. It will block the bond between the stone and your god-plant. It will no longer need blood to flourish.”

As the old men hurried to the tree at the heart of Bloomrest, Varienna knelt by the bed, performing a swift ember-rite; palm over Selara’s sternum, whisper of ancient Fireforged syllables, a pulse of red light rose from the Bloodstone.

“The tether is half fire, half root,” Varienna muttered. She dug into her satchel, withdrew a vial of shimmering moon-ash, and sprinkled a faint crescent across Selara’s chest. The ruby veins retreated a finger-breadth, but Selara’s breath hitched.

Kaelor watched helplessly until Veyla caught his sleeve. “Prince, your pacing will not mend her. Let your High-Healer do her work.”

He wanted to argue, but Selara stirred, gold-green eyes finding his. “Kaelor,” she rasped.

His heart cracked. He bowed his forehead to her knuckles, wishing only to see her sparkling gold-green eyes again. “Hold on, love. I brought the best in the realm.”

A ghost of a smile. “Knew you would.”

“Do something useful, crown-bearer,” Varienna growled at Kaelor. “Stand by her head and when I tell you to, hold her still. She needs your strength, not your worry.”

The High-Healer drew a blade no longer than a sewing needle, volcanite tipped with moon-ash, and traced a circle of runes in the air over Selara’s sternum. “Ignis Vitae Sanguinis, by oath of root and flame, unbind,” she intoned.

A raw crimson flare leapt from the gem, but Varienna pressed her palm flat against the stone, letting the light pour through the sigils tattooed across her wrist. The runes drank the heat,turning briar-purple. Varienna’s jaw clenched. Selara arched, mouth open yet she did not cry out.

“Now,” Varienna said through gritted teeth, sweat pearling on her upper lip.

Kaelor slid both hands beneath Selara’s shoulders, steadying her while Veyla and Talia pinned drifting vines away from the wound. Varienna angled the needle-blade, slid it between stone and skin, and twisted.

The Bloodstone screamed, a sound felt in the marrow of all in the room, then it gave way with a hiss like quenched iron. Veins of living ruby snapped back into the jewel and the gem fell into Varienna’s waiting cloth, still pulsing but contained.

Instantly the fiery tracery across Selara’s neck and ribs dulled from red to rose-gray. She sagged into Kaelor’s arms, breaths shallow yet steady for the first time in days.

Varienna wrapped the stone in triple layers of sigil-encrusted gauze and set it in the cedar coffer. The wards on the box glowed red, but it held tight to the blood stone. “It is out,” she announced, voice trembling with spent power. “But the root-fire tether is raw. I must seal the breach before dawn, or she will bleed life into the air itself.” Varienna delicately massaged the heart-seed resin paste across the incision.

Kaelor brushed damp hair from Selara’s temple, awe and terror warring in his chest. “Do whatever it takes,” he said.

Veyla released a long, shuddering breath. “All of Bloomrest stands at your call, High-Healer.”

Light from the shuttered lanterns caught the silver of Varienna’s blade and the dull, harmless glow of the caged Bloodstone, proof that, at last, the battle for Selara’s body had begun to turn.

Varienna looked up. “She needs quiet. Go, crown-bearer. You will see her if she lives.”

If…The word nearly felled Kaelor. Yet he straightened, brushed Selara’s brow, and forced himself away.

He had come to etch his promise into living wood and living memory alike.

Bloomrest’s main square thrummed with wary Rootborn and armor-dour Fireforged. Kaelor mounted the vine-woven platform, palace cloak discarded for plain forge-leathers still dusted from the road. He felt every suspicious gaze, Cassian angled beside Talia, hawk-eyes glinting; Rootborn archers lining the rail; Kaelor’s Inferno Guards standing like basalt statues.

Kaelor drew his old short sword, pitted, blood-marked, honest. “Years ago, this blade opened Rootborn veins.” He said loudly to the growing crowd, who murmured hostility in return. The Inferno Guards shifted their gloved hands to their hilts, ready to strike against the masses to protect their king.

The volcanite-steel blade was held high in Kaelor’s iron grip. With both hands he drove it point-first into the living wood. The living dais shuddered once, then stilled accepting the blade, sap-beads glimmering around the buried steel like dewdrops made of blood-amber. “Today it stays here until Rootborn and Fireforged share harvest and guard without suspicion.”

A startled hush rippled through the assembly, murmurs from the archers fluttered through the trees, yet no arrows flew. Leaves overhead trembled once, shedding a faint gold dusk-pollen that hung like torch-smoke around the blade.

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