To Bleed a Crystal Bloom by Sarah A. Parker

Wrapped in a robe that’s too dense against my fervid skin, I pace back and forth, wearing a path into my fluffy rug while I clobber myself with questions. The roaring fire glints off the sharp piece of metal pinched between my thumb and finger ...

The one that knows the softness of my flesh; the taste of my blood. The one that helps me drip into this goblet sloshing with an inch of clear water.

Do I feel safe in this tower?

To a certain extent, yes.

Do I want to leave my safety circle?

Never.

But I’m suddenly wondering how much of that has to do with me bleeding into this goblet every day for the past nineteen years, giving little pieces of myself to a man who was never mine. A man who’s given nothing of himself in return.

Nothing

Rhordyn’s simply a shadow that sometimes drifts through this castle. Just a specter that has a voice dense enough to make him seem real. And now he’s downstairs, sharing a meal with another female while I’m preparing to stab myself in the finger. For him.

I sigh, bottom lip caught between my teeth, looking down at the pin like it’s a sword about to pierce my stupid, vulnerable heart.

White-hot fire blazes through my veins.

Screw it. Screw him. And screw his fucking needs.

I let the pin fall to that little porcelain plate and set the goblet on the table. Stalking to my bed, I snatch Te Bruk o’ Avalanste and crack it open to a random page, pretending my insides aren’t churning.

Minutes pass, eaten by the constant tick of my bedside clock while I pretend to read, though I haven’t turned a single page by the time that long, slender hand kisses the thirty-minute mark.

Footsteps echo up Stony Stem—dense, thunder-clapping ones that could only belong to one person.

I hear the little wooden door being unlocked, then opened.

Silence.

The waiting sort of silence that’s deafening, stretching for over thirty seconds before the door slams shut and those same footsteps hurriedly descend.

I expel a mighty breath.

Five minutes later, more footfalls approach—as I’d expected them to.

They’re rushed. Frantic.

Familiar.

Knuckles rap against the wood, and I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear, the silky strands damp from my bath. “You may enter.”

The door opens and Baze strides in, gaze darting around the room before landing on the book open in my lap. His brows bump up and he quickly catches my eye. “Sorry to, ahh ... interrupt. Are you okay?”

Interrupt?

“Better than ever. Just enjoying a bit of light reading. Why?”

He clears his throat and steals a quick glance at the pin still cradled by my plate. “Have you—have you forgotten something?”

I lift a finger to my lips and tap, pretending to think while my heart bruises itself against bone.

“No,” I finally answer, eyes dropping back to the page of ... God of Fertility. Crap.

Cheeks ablaze, I swiftly turn the page. “I absolutely have not forgotten anything.”

He retrieves the pin and walks over, waving it in my face.

I peek up, mouth popping open, hand coming up to cover it. “Ohhhh, that!”

Baze sighs, all terseness melting from his shoulders as he sets the pin on my bedside table and retrieves the goblet of water.

“I’m not doing that anymore.”

He stumbles a step. It’s quite funny, actually. I’ve never seen him do that before.

“Excuse me?”

I shrug. “Yeah. Tell Rhordyn he can go fuck himself. Or her. One or the other.”

He takes a risky step closer. “Orlaith, you’re acting extremely out of character. Is it because I caught you looking at dirty pictures? It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

I don’t think, I just do.

The book flies through the air, almost clocking him in the cheek. It would have, too; my aim is superb.

Unfortunately, so are his reflexes.

With a sharp hiss and a hand that strikes with the poise of lightning, he snatches the book from the air. “What the hell was that for?” He barks, studying me like I’ve suddenly grown a tail.

“Out!” I scream, leaping up and herding him toward the door, seizing the goblet.

He slides back until he’s over the threshold. “Laith—”

“And don’t forget to pass my message on!” I slam the door in his face and stalk back to bed.

It’s not until I’m nesting amongst my pillows, the red, misty anger ebbing from my vision, that I begin untangling the past few moments.

Regret lumps itself into my belly.

I just threw that beautiful book through the air. Tossed it like it was nothing more than a hunk of trash. And now Baze is in possession of the ancient, stolen relic ...

“Shit.”

* * *

Iset down the hairbrush, lifting my gaze above my vanity to the stout, timber-framed mirror—the only thing that doesn’t bend to fit the curve of my walls.

The reflection staring back shocks me, as it always does. Makes me wish I hadn’t looked.

My tutor used to say eyes are windows to the soul, but no matter how much I’ve searched mine, I’ve never found myself.

Eventually, I stopped looking.

They’re large and soft lilac flecked with gold, and they dominate my other features.

My nose is small with a dusting of freckles that skip across my cheeks, giving my otherwise fair complexion a sun-kissed glow. I touch thin, shapely lips, fingers drifting down my sharp chin before pushing the mass of golden hair behind me. Untying my robe, I ease it off bladed shoulders, exposing honed collar bones and slight arms despite Baze’s grueling training regimen. I let the material drop a little more, reveal my budding breasts, and tilt my head to inspect what I’ve been flattening with my wrap since they first appeared ... as if controlling my body meant I could control everything else.

My entire life.

Rhordyn wants to inject me into society, but there’s a reason I don’t attend monthly Tribunals anymore.

Tried it. Don’t like it.

You can’t control a crowd. Can’t control the way they look and whisper and unravel you with their words.

“Why her?”

“Why not our mothers, daughters, brothers instead? What makes her so worthy of being spared?”

Questions I’ve asked myself so many times, the echoes have left an internal scar.

But my eyes don’t hold those answers. It’s as if my soul slipped free of them long ago, leaving nothing but a shell that doesn’t quite fit.

I blink, spilling tears I smear over my cheek. With a sigh, I look away, foraging through my dresser for something to sleep in.

The sound of heavy footsteps blasting up Stony Stem has me sucking a sharp breath, tugging my robe across my breasts moments before the door flies off its hinges and skids across the floor.

A whimper escapes me as Rhordyn pours into my room with eyes shaded black. He slams into me, corralling me against the wall, locking me between what feels like two unyielding sheets of ice.

I swallow thickly, all too aware of the tensed panes of his powerful body. Of the way his head’s dipped, nose grazing my neck, his cold breath an assault on my prickling flesh.

“You deny me,” he snarls, tone menacing.

Wild.

“I—”

“It wasn’t a question,” he snaps, and my spine locks.

His smell is a drug clogging my throat, stopping me from drawing a deep gulp of air lest I get high and pass out.

“I ... I forgot.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Two sharp points punctuate the thumping flesh of my neck and I gasp, mouth dropping open. The pressure increases, as if he’s about to break the surface and bite into me.

Spillme.

Something has me tipping my head to the side, like a flower exposing her brittle stem to a pair of clippers.

He makes a low, rumbling sound that stays trapped in the tomb of his chest.

My lids flutter closed.

His every breath pushes him closer, and I find myself timing my own just to lessen that slice of space between us, allowing me greedy sips of his body—equally as foreign to me as my own.

But where he’s hard, I’m soft like butter and so damn vulnerable. Right now, he could tear me to ribbons, and like the supplicating creature I’ve become in the shadow of his presence, I wouldn’t even fight.

Suddenly, almost punishingly, the sharp pressure abates, leaving nothing but the tender chill of his lips against my carotid. “Tell me the truth,” he murmurs, catching my breath.

The truth ...

“Now.”

“I—I was jealous.”

“And why were you jealous, Orlaith?”

The question skates over my fervid flesh like the smooth slide of a blade, dropping my thrashing heart into my stomach.

“Because in the gardens, when I first saw you ...”

I pause, knowing I shouldn’t say what I want to say. Knowing that’s crossing a line that should be left uncharted until I draw my last breath.

“Go on,” he commands, and the simple slash of it almost brings me to my knees. Probably would if I weren’t tethered to the way his lips move against my skin every time he speaks.

“I saw you smile at her ...”

His body locks. Though it only lasts a fraction of a second, I revel in the brief drop of his shield.

“Greedy girl,” he whispers, voice akin to the wind shaking my window panes in the dead of night. “You want them all to yourself?”

I shiver all the way to my toes.

Always.

“Yes.” The word is syrup slipping off my tongue, heated like the dull ache between my legs. One that has its own desperate heartbeat, screaming for him to pin me to this wall with a different part of his body—

Breath crumbles out of me.

“Well,” he rasps, then swallows. “I’m greedy, too.”

He whips back, forging a hollow chasm between us, luring long tendrils of my hair to chase his presence.

He storms toward my bedside table and snatches something off the surface. I don’t realize what it is until he rounds on the hearth and those dancing flames reflect in his platinum glare as he fires my needle.

Shadows frolic across his sculpted face, highlighting his foreboding expression, brows drawn so close they’re almost meeting in the middle.

I study him while my lungs battle their confounds.

It’s so strange to see him crouched in my room, firing my needle—not dancing around the act but involved.

This is what I’ve always wanted, for there to be no door between us. And the fact that he’s here, now?

It’s a bucket of icy water dumped atop the angry flame threatening to turn my heart to ash.

He waves the pin through the air, retrieves my half-filled goblet from my bedside table, and stalks toward me. I swallow, our gazes locked as he lifts my hand and drags it close.

I’ve forgotten how to breathe. How to move or function or even think.

My fist is unfurled, one stiff finger at a time, and he picks his target—my pinkie finger—stretching it out like he’s flattening the coiled petal of a pretty bloom.

I usually avoid the pinkie, only because it’s small, the skin so soft and delicate.

“That one hurts the most,” I whisper as he works his thumb up and down the base until the tip is red and aching.

“I know,” he murmurs, piercing the flesh.

The sharp, sobering sting makes me wince, and I watch a droplet of blood bulb to the surface. Rhordyn slips the needle between his teeth as the cherry tear blooms and blooms until it’s dribbling down the side, threatening to drip.

He dips my finger in the water, blushing it rosy pink, tainting it with my need to give to this man. With his strange compulsion to take.

Lids sweeping shut, I try to ignore the smell of blood distilling the air while a question bubbles in my chest again—desperate for freedom.

Tonight, I’ve lost the energy to keep it contained.

“Why do you need it?”

His tightening grip bunches my knuckles.

Silence stretches, finally shattered by the scrape of Rhordyn’s commanding voice. “Look at me.”

Slowly, I open my eyes, assaulted by a vision nothing short of punishing. He’s all hard angles and bitter resolve—a beautiful nightmare made flesh.

There’s death in those silver eyes.

“This, Orlaith. This right here is why we have the door.”

My pathetic heart drops so abruptly, my next words come out choked.

“No. I just want to know wh—”

“You’re not ready for that answer,” he bites out through tight lips and a stiff, almost unmoving jaw. “And for your own sake, I hope it stays that way.”

He drops my hand and spins, taking the goblet with him, leaving my arm hanging at my side and dripping water all over the ground. Like a cow who just got milked and has now been sent back to the field to regenerate her udder.

“Don’t forget again,” he growls, putting my needle on the tray and walking straight out the door, disappearing without a backward glance.

It’s a slap to the face.

“I can’t make any promises!” I yell. “I have a lot on my plate, you know!”

I hear him grunt, then nothing but heavy footfalls winding down Stony Stem. Once they fade, all I’m left with is a hollow silence dented by the rapid beat of my fragile heart.

Deflating, I stumble back, colliding with the wall ...

I gave in.

What’s more, I set the question free and got nothing but riddles and a verbal scalding in return. In fact, all I have to show for it is a sore finger and this lingering ache between my legs—one I try to ignore as I blow out my bedside candles and crawl into bed, robe and all, for what I hope will be a shadowless sleep.

It’s not.

I dream of giant creatures that bite into my skin, shake the life out of me, and send my blood splattering.

I dream of things that make my flesh their own.

Things that make me break.