Bloodkin (24 page)

“I … thank you,” I whispered. I could hardly understand the words I was hearing. “You … you’re talking
about selling yourself to Midnight. How can you possibly think of
me
at this time?”

Marcel smiled briefly. “My magic brought me to you years ago, Kadee. I do believe I saved your life, and I will never apologize for that, but you are a woman now, not a child. You have your own soul to guide you. If your path takes you back to the beginning, I would be honored to walk beside you, in spirit if not in flesh. For now, please excuse me, but I have affairs I must see to.”

Once she was gone, Vance wrapped his arms around me, and I turned my face to bury it in his shoulder. How I wanted to tell the Shantel,
Don’t do it, don’t make a deal! Stand up and fight!
But I couldn’t tell them to sacrifice everything for principles and hope.

Another sleepless night, and then we were back in the royal receiving room. King Laurence and Prince Lucas were inside, but Shane was not. The older sakkri was there with them, shaking her head.

“He came to speak to us last night,” the sakkri explained, “and my sister left with him. I do not believe he has run from us, but I do know she is hiding him from us. My sister … she does not approve of this decision.”

“How do you feel?” I asked.

The sakkri drew a deep breath, and closed her eyes. “My time here is nearly over. My power has lessened, and the land does not speak to me as clearly as it once did. I
have had no vision about these days. I think perhaps my sister has.”

“Then you think she is right?” Laurence asked.

“No.” The answer was swift and unequivocal, and obviously took Laurence aback. “I think my sister has corrupted her power, and is listening to her own heart, instead of listening to the heart of the forest.”

“How do we find her?” I asked.

“I had hoped she would come to us,” the older sakkri said, sighing. “I do not like the notion of tracking her down like a beast in the woods.”

“She seems to leave us no choice,” Lucas said, falling into his throne with a frustrated cry. When he looked up at the sakkri again, his gaze was like that of a small child begging for comfort. “Are you sure we are doing the right thing?” he asked her.

“Chaos before the fall,” she whispered. The air around her had gone still, and silent. My tongue seemed to lock in my mouth as I listened. “Each great nation will give its flesh and blood to the beast. Every land will know betrayal and bereavement. A white queen will rise in desperation and brutality. The line is drawn. Players take their places. The battle cannot be won, but it will not be lost.”

Both of the Shantel men leapt forward to catch the sakkri as she collapsed, her prophecy complete.

I remembered what Marcel had told me—that a sakkri’s prophecy always came true. Now, having heard what the
Shantel considered a true prophecy, I felt I knew even less than before.

What did any of that
mean
?

I wanted to ask a thousand questions, most notably about the “white queen” that the sakkri had referenced in a less than positive manner. Before I could, though, the receiving room doors burst open, and the younger sakkri leapt in, running like a gazelle to her sister’s side.

“Are you all right?” she asked, as if she had not been hiding in the woods with the prince who now hung in the doorway behind her, looking guilty and resigned. Without speaking, Laurence nodded to one of the guards, who ushered Shane inside and moved to stand behind him so he could not slip away again. Then we all turned our eyes back to the two sakkri.

“I am sorry,” the older sakkri said to her sister, the whisper choked by tears. “I see now what you saw, but you do not understand. You
cannot
—”

“We cannot save ourselves by selling our own,” the younger sakkri insisted, looking back at Shane with tear-filled eyes.

“Your affection for the prince is clouding your judgment,” the other sakkri replied. “Your affair with him … it should never have happened, sister, and this is why.”

“Shane?” Lucas hissed, staring at his brother in shock.

Shane looked away, and took a step back … then defiantly moved forward again and knelt by the sakkri’s side.
He touched her arm, to many protests from his brother and father, and implored her, “You need to let me go.”

“I can
not
,” the younger sakkri spat, rising to her feet and pushing them all away. “Do you not understand me? We cannot save ourselves if we pollute our own royal blood with slave-trading. I cannot change my belief on this, and the forest knows what I believe. I will not bend and neither will it.”

I felt my breath leave me in a rush, as the sakkri spoke words that had bubbled inside me for days now. Each time, I had forced them back down because I felt we had no other choice, but now the most powerful woman in this land was stating as fact what I had wanted to cry in hopeless frustration.

“Shane—” She took a deep breath. “I love you. You know this. I have loved you for years, since we were both children and you came to the temple to study, and I will love you always, but it is not for you that I protest what we are doing here.”

“If I do not go to Midnight,” Shane said, slowly and deliberately, “then we will all die in this forest. You
saw
what their magic can do. You—”

“I will not allow it,” the sakkri said simply in reply.

“But can you
stop
it?” Lucas demanded.

We all looked up as, outside, the wind began to howl, ripping through the trees around us and making them raise a mournful sound. I shuddered. I trusted the sakkri not to
hurt her own people, but I was glad not to be out in the woods at that moment.

“Sister, please, see reason,” the older sakkri begged.

“As you did, when you brought the Obsidian children here despite my pleas?” the younger sakkri said.

“I saw the fire that would engulf this land if we did not satisfy the blood-drinkers demands,” the older one replied. “So did you! We have no way to stop it unless—”

Her sister interrupted her with five flat words: “
I
will go to Midnight.”

“Absolutely not!” Laurence protested at the same moment that Shane said, “That
I
will not allow.”

“Sister,” the older sakkri said, grasping the other woman’s hand. “My time here is nearly done. I will take my last breath before autumn ends. If you leave us, there will be no one to guide the next sakkri … if she will even be born, with your essence taken to foreign soil.”

“Would you rather we all die here?” the younger sakkri asked.

“The land itself will not allow us to lose you!” the older sakkri cried. “The royal family is like the leaves of this forest. They come, and they fall in winter, and the land mourns them for a season until they are reborn. But we are the roots of this land. We cannot simply leave it. The land itself would hold you, even if we were all mad enough to give permission.”

“We are not gods,” the younger retorted, “and the roots
of a tree are no more immortal than its leaves. Entire trees may split and become rotten and hollow, a place for new life to begin in the place left behind.”

I looked to Vance, wondering if he was as lost within all the nature analogies as I was.

“Is this argument getting us anywhere?” I interrupted. “Trees and roots and leaves are fine, and I know someone is going to tell me that occasionally an entire forest burns to the ground and the ash nurtures the soil, but I do not think any of us want to go that far.”

Vance said, “Whether it is Shane or the sakkri, we need to—”

He broke off as the younger sakkri spun to stare at him, her eyes widening. “You’re right,” she said—but it did not sound like she was agreeing with his words. “There is only one way to end this.”

Vance stepped back warily and said, “I am not sure I want to be—”

Graceful as a willow, or wind in the trees, the sakkri turned around. Her hand found the sword sheathed in the nearest guard’s belt, and as she continued to turn, she raised that sword and turned it on Prince Lucas.

“What are you
doing
?” Shane yelped, jumping in the way as his brother narrowly dodged the blade. If he thought his lover would hesitate to hurt him, however, he was wrong. A red slash appeared across his chest.

I was standing near enough that Shane’s blood splashed
me, hot on my skin. The very air around me quivered, as if it were in shock. What was she
doing
? Would she kill Shane to keep him from Midnight’s grasp?

I heard shouting as guards scrambled to respond, but they were too slow. Royal Shantel blood flew across the reception hall as the blade made another arc, this time striking Shane in the arm he had raised to defend himself.

The blow was not fatal, but the shock and pain on Shane’s face was stark, even before the sakkri shifted her grip and raised the sword a final time.

One of the guards put himself between Shane and the seemingly mad woman, but it was Lucas who changed shape and pounced. The older sakkri called his name, and the distance between his start and his target seemed to lengthen, so instead of cleanly driving her to the ground he managed only to rip claws in a line down her back.

She gasped, and stumbled to her knees. When she tried to stand, the guard who had tried to protect Shane grabbed her wrist, and took the sword from her grip. Lucas returned to human form and stared, horrified, at the sakkri’s blood that remained on his hands.

Blood pooling on the ground beneath her, the younger sakkri looked up at Prince Lucas and said, “I have spilled the blood of the royal family. I have committed treason. The law says I must be executed. As your sakkri, I will offer one alternative: send me to Midnight. Otherwise you will be forced to kill me.”

Wide-eyed, Lucas stammered, “We— I—” He looked to his father, whose face held the same horror, but with dawning resignation.

“The quetzal was bluffing when he threatened Shane,” the sakkri snapped. Outside, the wind rose even louder. The building around us groaned under the force. “I am not. Let me go.”

She stood, stumbled, and would have fallen if the guards had not caught her.

Laurence nodded. Lucas shut his eyes as he said, “Vance … Kadee … take her. Tell … tell Midnight we have nothing of greater value to give.”

THE SAKKRI HOOKED
an arm over Vance’s shoulder so he could help her stand, and we limped out of the Family’s receiving room.

We were still in the front hall when the fleshwitch who had treated me years ago approached us at a run, reeled upon seeing the sakkri, and started speaking rapidly to her in the Shantel’s native language. The sakkri shook her head. When she replied, I only understood one word, but that was enough: “Shane.” She was sending the healer to the prince.

Her lover, who she had assaulted—even threatened to kill—so she could take his place at Midnight.

“Can you heal yourself?” I asked as the fleshwitch disappeared inside and the sakkri let out another gasp of pain and seemed to collapse in Vance’s arms. The ragged claw
marks ran from her shoulder blades to the top of her hips, and were still bleeding freely.

She started to shake her head, and let out another little gasp instead.

Looking around desperately, I grabbed the first thing nearby—a wool tapestry depicting some kind of forest scene, which had been hanging on the wall. I didn’t care what it showed. The scene turned red as I folded it and pressed it tightly against her skin. Vance added his hands to mine on the sakkri’s prone body.

“She isn’t going to be able to walk,” he said.

“If one of you can help me, I can ride,” the sakkri assured us, each word clipped with pain. “Tie off the bandage. We must go.”

“Are you sure?”

As I tore strips of fabric from a table covering to better bandage the sakkri, I realized that none of the Shantel were in the room. Were they all preoccupied with Shane, or were they intentionally rejecting the sakkri?

“Will you be able to fight the vampires?” I asked as the sakkri once more struggled to stand. She was the most powerful magic user in this land, and she had taken Shane’s place voluntarily—by force, even. She must have a plan.

“The sakkri is forbidden to shed blood, forbidden to be possessed,” she replied. With short, painful strides, she led us to the stables. She leaned against the wall as Vance saddled two horses, who shied from the smell of blood. He
murmured soothingly to them as the sakkri continued to speak. “I can already feel the land rejecting me for what I have done here. Once I cross Midnight’s threshold and declare myself their property, the bond will be severed.”

The sakkri rode in front of Vance, his arms around her obviously the only thing keeping her in the saddle.

We reached the edge of Shantel land sooner than all logic said we could. This land wanted us gone,
quickly
. The sakkri had healed enough to walk, slowly, so we released the horses before we left the Shantel forest. The sakkri assured us they would find their way home. Her wounds had started to knit shut, enough that the heavy bandages were no longer necessary.