To Bleed a Crystal Bloom by Sarah A. Parker

I’ve never been so frustrated with a picture book in my life.

Sighing, I close the front cover and stare out across Vateshram Forest. Te Bruk o’ Avalanste was not written in the common tongue, so I spent all morning trying to decipher its contents from the drawings littering some of the two thousand gossamer pages. My instincts are telling me this is much more than just a collection of pretty sketches, and I need answers.

Now.

Thankfully, my hangover has almost run its natural course, and though I doubt I’ll look at food the same for a while, I’m stable enough to face another being without the risk of spewing verbal venom.

I wedge the book inside my bag, then change into something more appropriate for the cool breeze blowing off the ocean. Hair trailing behind me in unkempt disarray, I make quick work of Stony Stem and the hall that leads me to the western wing, one destination in mind.

Fresh ocean air salts my skin as I land ankle-deep in the sand and sprint toward the jagged rocks. I’m just dangling my legs in the water when Kai emerges by my feet—hair slicked down, jewel-toned eyes giving away his signature smirk before his mouth even crests the waterline.

“Two visits in one week? Treasure, you flatter me.”

I shrug. “What can I say? You’re my favorite fish.”

He frowns, sharp gaze flicking over my features. With a splash of his powerful tail, he’s half out of the water, looming over me and wearing concerned eyes. “What’s wrong? You don’t look well.”

This day hates me.

Avoiding his stare, I pick up a shard of rock and toss it in the water.

“Orlaith ...”

“You know that sugar kelp I asked you for a year ago?” I risk a peek at him.

“Yes. You said its chalky texture was perfect for a special project you were working on. That you intended to grind it down and use it for paint.”

I lied.

I did grind it down ... but I certainly didn’t use it on a rock.

His eyes narrow, then go so wide I swear they almost pop right out of his head. “Do not—” he shakes his head for long enough that I realize the chance of convincing him to collect more is probably next to none. “Do not tell me you used the sugar kelp to make Exothryl, Orlaith. Do not.”

His disappointment is just as punishing as Rhordyn’s lashing anger.

I consider lying ... then think better of it. Perhaps if I’m honest, slap on some pleading eyes and tell him his scales gleam like ocean gems, he’ll take pity on my hungover ass and gift me another stem or two.

“What would you say if I told you I did, in fact, make Exothryl with it?”

Kai makes this low, caustic sound that seems to expel from the delicate gills tucked behind his ears, then his fingers are in my mouth, forcing it wide while he has a poke around.

Not the best sign.

“Gid I kell you how glowious your kail wooks koday?” I garble around two digits that taste like the ocean. He seems to ignore my spontaneous flattery, manhandling my head and pulling my lids, inspecting my eyes. He even sniffs my hair before making another sound that has me wishing I had a shell to scuttle into.

“You’ve got it bad.” He pushes away from the rock, leaving a wake of disdain, his eyes a pair of fishing hooks gouged in my skin. “How long? Six months? A year?”

He’s definitely not getting me any more.

“Let’s not get tangled in the detai—”

“Did you know overdosing on those things can lead to heart failure? They pop, Orlaith. Like bubbles. Poof, dead.”

My blood ices.

The handwritten recipe I discovered in the back of an old herbs and medicines book didn’t go into detail about the side effects. Simply said that exo was good for ‘boosting one’s morale post klashten’ ... whatever the hell that means. Everything after ‘boosting morale’ felt like unnecessary scripture.

There was certainly no fine print about hearts popping.

Now I regret taking three at once. No wonder I felt like I was about to sprout wings and flutter off like a sprite.

“Rhordyn found my stash and took it all,” I mutter, kicking at the water perhaps a little too ferociously. “So my heart’s safe.”

At least in a physical sense.

Kai drops low into the water, gaze seeming to assault the castle. “Well, that’s something,” he says, and there’s a bitter shadow to his tone I’m not familiar with.

I consider asking about it, but he jerks his chin toward my bag. “Got anything interesting to show me today?”

His voice is still cold, but I latch onto the change in conversation like it’s a streak of sun breaking through the clouds on a gloomy day.

“Actually, yes ...” I reach behind, peel back the lip of my bag, and reveal Te Bruk o’ Avalanste—the pressed pages bookmarked in places by leaves, feathers, and various other bits now poking out the top. “I found a book.”

Sort of.

Kai spears forward into my personal space, planting strong arms either side of me as he lifts enough to inspect the book still nesting in my knapsack.

My breath catches.

He’s so close I can feel his beat thrashing against me, wild and unleashed. Like the air around him has its own violent pulse.

“A pristine, intact, original copy of the Book of Making!” he blurts. “Is it?Is it intact?”

“Ahh ... I think so. I didn’t find any damaged pages while I was flicking through.”

He makes a trilling sound that pebbles my skin, and I clear my throat, setting the book on my lap as Kai lowers into the water.

“The Book of Making ...” I trace the engraved text with the tip of my finger. “So that’s what this means?”

“Yes!” He grabs my hand and plants a kiss on my knuckles. “It’s a very rare find, Orlaith. Quite remarkable. The last time I saw an original was years ago, and it was half eaten by moth larvae. I never expected to see another so well-preserved.”

In Kai language, that’s: you pissed me off, I’m disappointed in you, but I’m impressed by your treasure hunting skills.

“It’s written in ancient Valish, unlike the recent translated versions.”

Huh.

“Well ... I found it in a barricaded storage room. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

His brow puckers. “Not even one of the modern editions?”

“Not that I can remember, no.” I split the book at a spot I’d earmarked with a dried mulberry leaf. “But this is beautifully illustrated, so I was able to make out bits and pieces. Sort of. Where’s this?” I ask, pointing to the pristine sketch I just revealed.

I wish I could draw like that. My own freehand, emotion-driven style has nothing on the finer details that make this illustration so incredibly lifelike.

I feel like I could step right onto that volcano and touch the stone spires reaching from its crown. Clouds flirt with the tapered tips of the sharp, toothy fence that guards over the crater lake nesting in the center of it all.

“Mount Ether. Home of the prophet Maars. Frightful creature, but he transcribes the future through riddles he carves into stone,” Kai says, pointing to the twelve surrounding spires.

Something climbs up the length of my spine and leaves me battling a shiver.

“There’s a band of hardcore worshipers called the Shulák. They hang off his every chiseled word like a suckling babe.”

I frown, peering up, but his eyes are still cast on the text he can apparently decipher. “Like a ... a faith?”

“Yes. Many believe he speaks for the Gods.”

Canting my head to the side, I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “Gods?”

His eyes narrow, a line forming between the white strokes of his shapely brows. “Yes. Surely your tutor taught you religious studies?”

“Ahh, no. I wasn’t aware that was a thing. I figured Gods only exist in the fantasy worlds I read about ...”

Kai looks toward the castle, expression grim. “You’re far too sheltered up there,” he growls, and there’s an unbridled storm in his frosty words. One I try to temper by placing my hand on his cheek to divert his attention back to me.

He lifts a brow.

“I’m not that sheltered, Kai.”

A lie. Of course I’m sheltered, but I built the walls of my own prison.

I flip the page, seeking distraction, and my mouth twists in a cloying smile.

“So, wait ...” I tap the illustration of a tall, slender female with hair that sways to her knees. She’s tossing a piece of kelp into the volcano’s basin of water that appears to be spitting out a version of ... well ... Kai. “Does that mean Ocean Drakes were made from—”

“Seaweed,” he interrupts, voice monotone. “Yes.”

I peek at him, catching his lackluster stare, chewing my bottom lip to stop myself from spitting laughter ... though a little manages to bubble out.

“You’re terrible,” he flips to another leaf in the book. “And you were made from stones, so you’re not much better off.”

“I think that’s perfectly appropriate, actually.”

He tips his head and laughs, the sound a splash of joy I wish I could swim in. His beat has calmed to that of a lapping wave by the time his chest stops shaking. “You’re right.”

Smiling shyly, I divert my attention to the book, running my fingers over the drawing of an Ocean Drake rising from the water—the frills that adorn the length of his long, powerful tail slicked flat against his scales. Beside it is another image of the same drake walking on two muscular legs.

The smile slips off my face as I lick my lips and peer up through my lashes. “Is this true? Can your kind walk on land?”

There’s a bubble of hope in my heart that pops the moment Kai shakes his head, eases my hand away, and flicks to a different part of the book. “Not all. The originals could. And some of their direct descendants.”

My shoulders droop. “Oh ...”

“What do you garner from this page?”

I look to the woman plucking a fallen leaf from the ground, her hair seeming to blend with the clouds. In the adjacent picture, she’s blowing it into the volcanic basin. From there, a swarm of sprites are emerging.

“Um, that sprites were made from falling leaves by the Goddess of”—hell, I don’t know—”air?”

“Correct,” he says, leaning closer, his briny scent washing over me. It’s a smell like no other, as though the entire ocean has been boiled down into a thick, perfumed syrup.

He’s the sea incarnate. Rich and wholesome and—

My best friend.

He points to the feathers sewn into the Goddess’ bodice. “Falanthia can take on the form of an eagle.”

I nod, my exo-starved mind clinging to the information as he turns a few pages.

The corner of his mouth kicks up. “And this?” he asks with a wicked lilt to his tone. “Forest nymphs from ripe plums by the God of ...”

My blood turns molten, and I cast my gaze on the sprinkle of whitecaps crumbling the ocean in the distance.

That page ... well. When I first looked at it, I felt all kinds of strange feelings I’ve never felt before, and now that picture is branded in my mind, destined to be the source of impromptu blushing until the day I die.

It wasn’t the nakedness that threw me. Not even the way the woman was stretched out, back arched, pinching her nipples and chewing her bottom lip.

It was the way her thighs were parted.

It was the man holding them open, face buried in their apex. It was his posture—half crouched like a feasting cat—and that long, hard, naked length looking ready to drive up into her.

“Fertility?” I ask, hating the way the word squeaks out of me.

He turns me to face him with a grip on my chin, and I note a gleam in his ocean eyes that wasn’t there before.

“Correct,” he purrs. “Clever girl.”

“I doubt my tutor would have congratulated me for such a feat.”

“No,” he chuckles, releasing me. “Probably not.”

Cheeks scalding, I turn the page.

“I don’t know what that one is,” I say, pointing to a man cloaked in black, the handle of a sword poking over his shoulder. All you can see of his features are a sharp jawline and the slash of a mouth that’s pinched in a frown.

Except he’s not a regular man.

There are three different versions of him melding together, and each has a different face, the two either side less vivid but no less chilling.

The one in the middle is carving off a piece of the blackness falling from the wide breadth of his shoulders, letting it flutter into the volcano’s crater lake.

“Kavth. God of Death,” Kai rumbles. “He can take on the many forms of the dead, and he made the Irilak with a piece of his shadow.” He taps the illustration of a wraith easing from the basin—a familiar shadow with a face that looks like it was carved from a bleached piece of wood.

“So that’s what they’re called,” I whisper, tracing the creature’s chalky features.

I’m so caught up on that new slice of information—of finally having a species name to attach to Shay—that I don’t notice the tension strung between Kai and myself until his finger slides under my chin.

He guides it up until I’m staring into narrowed eyes. Pinned by his keen attention.

“What?”

“Orlaith. Don’t go getting close to an Irilak.” His tone is hard like the rock I’m sitting on, edges just as sharp. “They’re temperamental. Deadly.”

“How so?” I ask, pushing a loose ribbon of hair off my face.

“They feed on fear ... among other things. They’ve been known to lure children into the forest, leaving nothing but a husk of skin clinging to skeletal remains.”

I repress a shiver at the crude picture he’s painting, thinking about the hard, fluffy lumps left behind after Shay’s finished feasting on my offerings. But aside from ... that, he doesn’t seem all that frightening. He’s never once tried to attack me in all the years I’ve been flinging mice his way. I practically hand-fed him the other night, shaking with fear as I shoved an arm over my Safety Line for the very first time, and he still preferred the mouse.

The moment stretches while Kai searches my eyes, then sighs, transferring his attention to the book. “I’m guessing you brought this down for other reasons?”

He knows me so well.

“Thing is, I recognize a number of the creatures in here just from illustrations I’ve seen in other books,” I say, turning to a page marked by a dried flower, “but there were plenty that threw me. Like this one.”

The Goddess on this page is the most enchanting woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, with willowy lines and a dress that pours off her like petals. She’s tossing a twinkly rose into the crater lake, and from it, the creature climbing out is no less striking than the deity he was made by.

His pale skin holds a light shimmer, his eyes like buffed crystals. Poking out from amongst the strands of whitewash hair is not a regular ear, but one with tiny, delicate thorns lining the shell that slims to a point.

“I was wondering if you could tell me what they are?”

Kai’s voice drops to a low, almost mournful whisper. “In Valish, they’re called Aeshlians. It means ‘eternity without a shadow.’ There are very few left.”

My brows pinch together, and I glance up. “Why? What happened to them?”

He drives himself out of the water in a torrent of long, tapered muscles, scales, and ...

I swallow.

Why am I only now noticing that my best friend has so much ... allure? It’s a wonder he doesn’t have females chasing his tail all day long.

“That’s a very long, very sad story,” he says, parking himself on the rocks beside me, silver tail sweeping back and forth through the water. “One I wouldn’t taint your pretty ears with.”

He pinches my nose, and I gaff him with a glare. “But you tell me everything.”

All mockery drips off his face, and he cups my cheek like it’s made of glass. “Not that, Orlaith. Never that.”

It’s a common misconception that Ocean Drakes are tidal—easy to sway.

Not mine.

I know Kai well enough to know that when he says no, he means it. He’d sever his own tail before going back on his word.

I look at the picture again, choosing not to bring up the déjà vu it strikes me with. The fact that a little boy who wears the same eyes comes to me in my dreams.

Always reaching.

Never catching.

Ignoring the tightness of my chest, I turn to the page marked with a toothy blade of shadow grass. “And what about that?”

There’s something very unusual about the lithe, powerful-looking man emerging from the basin. I barely noticed his pointed ears or impeccably sculpted cheekbones. Even his guarded eyes didn’t strike me at first or the way they’re peering out of the page with some obscure war waging behind them.

There’s just an air about him. A sense of primal prestige that locked my spine the moment my gaze flew over the picture.

Some innate part of me wanted to close the book in the very next moment. Still does, like a flower closing up in the face of a blistering storm.

The silence between Kai and myself stretches on a little too long, and I meet his eyes, shadowed by a pinched brow.

“What?”

“Did your tutor have a bad case of selective teaching? How do you not know any of this stuff?” he asks, slashing his hand through the air. “Some of the races in this book forged your way of life!”

I stare at him blankly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Well, take the Unseelie for example”—he indicates the picture—”pulled from the volcano by Jakar, God of Power. Thousands of years ago, they were the dominant, over-lording race, driven by their compulsion to sow seed and strengthen. To nest, fuck, and breed.”

I flinch at the rawness of his words, cheeks burning at the way he emphasized that crass four letter word.

“The plague of their archaic beliefs still echo in your society,” he continues. “For example; slaving was a very serious problem back then. As a result, bleeding one territory to bolster another is now forbidden, which is why changing one’s territory colors must be a voluntary choice.”

Tongue a chalky lump in my mouth, I shake my head, wondering if I should have waited to ask these questions when my brain is fully functional. “I don’t get it. If they were so transcendent, why aren’t they still around today?”

Kai lifts my hair, sweeping his fingers down the length of it, sending a shiver across my scalp. He tucks the weight over my shoulder so delicately you’d think he was handling a weave of spun gold.

“Their voracious hunger for control planted the seed of their demise,” he says, eyes bleak. “The Unseelie devastated races, Orlaith. Even their own. Ripped each other to shreds in a great battle that destroyed an entire territory and threatened global extinction. Some believe Jakar himself tore apart the sky, unleashed bloody ruin, and exterminated what was left of his ... miscreations,” he growls, attention falling back to the page. “The reek of that wash of power still taints the sea in some parts.”

I frown, studying the picture again.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. My world, it seems, is getting smaller by the second.

I look upon the next marker, and a ball of tension gets lodged in my throat, making it hard to breathe.

Slowly, I peel back the leaf of paper.

“And him?” I ask, barely able to look at the man depicted across a stretch of two pages.

He’s built from powerful slabs of brawn, his hair dark gray, eyes black like the night sky. He’s unrefined, beastly in his bearing, as if all that’s stuffed inside him is almost impossible to contain.

He reminds me of the storm clouds that chew on my tower sometimes.

There are five versions of the man, each more haunched and distorted than the last, showcasing his gradual metamorphosis into a monster.

One I recognize.

“Bjorn. God of Balance. As you can see, his form is depicted similarly to the common day Vruk.”

Sharp shrieks echo through my memory, and I nod, remembering the ground trembling so much I thought it might crack open and swallow me whole.

“His ... his talons,” I bite out, jerking my chin toward the long, black hooks glinting off a shaft of sketched moonlight. “Does it say anything about them?”

Kai taps a slant of script riddled across the page. “Klahfta des ta ne flak ten. Simplified, it means something akin to unparalleled.”

“Oh,” I whisper, nodding, thankful I didn’t try to stomach breakfast or lunch. “And the common day Vruks this depiction was based on?”

“A Vruk’s talon is lethal.” Kai clears his throat, stare casting out across the bay. “To anyone.”

I frown at the turmoil failing to hide in the depth of his ocean eyes.

“Kai?”

“Safety is important to you, yes? Above most other things?”

“I guess so. Why do you ask?”

His tongue slips out, sweeping the glitter of sea salt off his lips. “Be right back.”

“Wai—”

He dives, disappearing beneath the water, his gossamer tail a slash that sends a string of seaweed topside.

I sigh, waiting patiently for his return.

When he reemerges, his arms are burdened by a small, tarnished chest he lumps on the rock beside me before prying the lid open. He digs around inside and reveals what appears to be a curved blade sheathed in leather. Its unworn hilt is forged from a dark metal, unadorned but for the end—tipped in ebony stone.

“What’s that?” I ask, eyeing the thing like it’s about to leap out of his hand and bite me.

Kai hesitates, then suspends it between us. “Something that can protect you from anything. Always.”

Unease spills through my chest.

I reach out, hand shaking as if my body knows something my mind is yet to catch on to. I grip the curved sheath in one hand, the hilt in the other, and tug ...

Only a few inches of the weapon are exposed before I slam it shut, stomach churning, heart beating hard and fast.

A talon.

It’s a fucking talon.

“W-wow ...”

“I just thought, well, you said you hate your new sword, and I ... Are you okay?” he asks, tone tender, his beat tapping around my edges.

I stuff the thing in my bag. “Never better,” I lie, closing the book and placing it atop the talon so I can pretend it doesn’t exist. “I just want to make sure this special gift is nice and safe in my bag.”

“Treasure ...”

Looking up, I paint my face with a grin. The big, dazzling sort that usually gets him right in the gills. “I’m fine. Really. And thank you. It’s such a thoughtful offering.”

He frowns. “You’re lying. I can feel a rise in your core temperature. You don’t have to accept the gift if you don’t li—”

I grab his face, pull him close, and plant a kiss on his wet, salty cheek, making his eyes glaze the way they do when I’m offering him an apple or something coveted. “I love your gift, Kai. I really do. Now, tell me the tale of when you got a fishing hook caught in your ear again?”

A slow, watery smile lights up his face. “You like that one, don’t you?”

“I really do. And you tell it so well.”

I manage to make it to the end of the story, back to the castle, and through a side door that spits me out by a bed of ivy before I vomit. When Baze finds me knotted on the ground with bile strung from my lips and asks if it’s the withdrawals, another lie slips off my tongue.

Truth is, withdrawals have nothing on the extra weight tucked in my knapsack. A weapon that may or may not carry the weight of many lives taken. Slain. Destroyed.

The weight of families torn to bits and feasted upon, scattered across the soil.

And now it’s mine ...