But his eyes shifted from my face and fixed on some point behind me. With one jolting movement, he pushed me away from him and I stumbled on the stairs, looking up just in time to see the arrow fly from the back of the hall and land square in his chest. The person wielding the bow was the same boy who’d caused me to spill the wine on my dress—his features were contorted into a mask of rage and disgust.
Lowering his bow, he cried, “Death to the witch! Death to all practitioners of the dark—” But his war cry was cut short by the sleek shaft of metal that appeared in front of him, protruding from his belly.
Kellan freed his sword from the boy’s body and strode toward me, while I turned back in horror to the bleeding man on the dais. Mother had grabbed Conrad and was turning him away from the grisly scene, covering his eyes with both hands.
I crawled toward Simon, but Onal had beaten me there and was already bent over him, assessing the injury. “It didn’t get his heart, I don’t think.”
“Wouldn’t matter if it did,” Kellan said, removing the arrow with a swift yank and pressing a cloth firmly against the wound. “Look at the shaft. The thing has been coated in bloodleaf poison.” He tossed it away. “He’s as good as dead.”
“As good as dead is not the same thing as dead,” I said, clutching Kellan’s shoulder. Simon didn’t deserve to die this way . . . To Onal I pleaded, “Can’t you do something?”
“I would if I could,” she said.
“This is my fault.” The cold realization dawned on me. If I hadn’t seen the Harbinger’s vision, I wouldn’t have come back to the banquet. If I hadn’t come back to the banquet, the vision would never have been fulfilled. “This happened because of me.”
If he died, there would be no one to teach me how to use whatever strange power I had inside me. The Tribunal would go on with its endless executions, Renaltans would go on masking their fear with hate, and I would have to add another name to the list of those whose lives were lost or plundered by another of my great mistakes.
There was only one acceptable outcome: Simon could not be allowed to die.
Setting my jaw, I pulled the knife from Kellan’s belt and drew it across my palm, a slim second cut paralleling the one from the unfinished ritual. When the blood began to well up, I let three drops fall onto Simon’s chest.
“What are you doing?” Kellan said angrily. “Aurelia, stop!”
“Ego præcipio tibi ut . . . uh . . . heal. Curaret!” I struggled to find the right word. “I command you to heal. Heal!”
“I know what you’re doing,” Onal said, “and it will not work! Stop now, child, they are watching!”
I looked up and found a hundred pairs of eyes on me and my upheld hand, dripping blood. But I didn’t have time to care; Simon’s eyes were going glassy and rolling into his skull. His rattling breaths were slowing.
Onal was right; it wouldn’t work. I could feel it—the magic was resisting. Blood magic wasn’t used for healing; that’s what Simon had said.
I pulled out the glass capsule I’d hidden in the folds of my gown—wine stains commingling now with blood—and broke the seal.
“Where did you get that?” Onal gasped. “Aurelia, no—”
But I had already poured the contents—water, petal, and all—down Simon’s throat.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
7
“Will he live?”
“Yes,” Onal said, pacing in front of the settee Simon had been transferred to in my mother’s study. “He’ll live.”
“Please don’t be angry,” I said, though I knew I deserved every drop of her wrath.
“Angry? Angry doesn’t begin to cover what I’m feeling at this moment, you stupid, stupid girl.”
“I saved his life, did I not?”
“You broke into my rooms! You stole something most precious—”
My mother had put Conrad to bed in the adjoining chamber and now sat anxiously by the fireplace. “That petal was meant for you, Aurelia,” she said. “We were going to send it with you. And now it’s just . . . gone.”
I struggled to find words. “I’m sorry. Can’t we just buy another? I know they’re rare, but Onal got hold of them somehow . . .” I trailed off. The idea that we could waltz into the marketplace and purchase a bloodleaf petal was so absurd, it was laughable.
I’d made a mistake. A terrible mistake.
“Sorry?” Onal shrilled. “I acquired my bloodleaf petals when my sister was stolen away from our house during the night and we found her murdered the next day in the forest. I lost my sister but harvested bloodleaf flower. Who would you be willing to sacrifice to gain another?”
I directed all my anger at myself toward Onal instead, to avoid having to fully accept my own idiocy. “But you wasted one yourself, did you not? You knew that bloodleaf petals don’t work on someone who’s already dead, and yet when my father—”
“You fool. How dare you compare us? I took care of your father from infancy. I loved him like he was my own child, my own heart. It was useless for me to even try to bring him back. He’d been dead for days when they brought him to us. But I did try. I had to. Because I loved him. And I will never get that petal back, but I don’t care. But you . . . you steal my last petal and immediately waste it! How long have you known this man? Less than a day!”
“That arrow was meant for me! I couldn’t let him die. And if he, as an emissary from Achleva, were to die in our court, it could have been blamed on us. It could have meant war . . .”
“War may have come—it was a possibility. But what you have done has made the danger to you a certainty,” Mother said gravely. “We’re all in danger now.”
Kellan entered, wiping sweat from his brow. “The halls are quiet for the moment, but the Tribunal magistrates have already begun to gather. I suggest we get Aurelia away, before word about the banquet spreads further.” He put his hand on the pommel of his sword. “Maybe my family can take her in, just for a little while?”
“And what will your family do when the Tribunal arrives on their doorstep, bloodthirsty mob in tow?” Onal had always been imposing, but now she was like a prowling, angry cat. “As they will, undoubtedly, now that there is an entire hall full of witnesses to Aurelia’s witchcraft.” To me she said, “Mark my words: they will come for you, they will kill you, and they will kill anyone who tries to stand in their way.”
“This isn’t how it was supposed to happen,” Mother said. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be.” Her eyes were glistening. “We never finished the ritual, and the bloodleaf petal is gone. I can’t just send you away with no protection, no assurance of your safety.”
From the settee, Simon’s voice came in a bare whisper. “We can finish it.”
“You’re awake,” I said, amazed. “It really worked.”
He groaned as he pulled himself to a sitting position. Looking down at his bloodstained clothes, he said, “How was this accomplished? The last thing I remember—”