To Bleed a Crystal Bloom by Sarah A. Parker
The crisp air hits my lungs, feeding me the sweet smell of impending rain. Not the sort that lashes the seas, but the sort that wets the earth for days and always leaves me feeling empty.
Approaching my Safety Line, I find a comfortable position beneath a large tree, its leafy branches heavy with nuts. The ancient trunk offers me something to lean against while I pluck through fallen acorns, waiting for Shay to get brave enough to detach from that lump of shadow hanging off a large, mossy boulder.
Sometimes he needs a little coaxing, especially at this time of day.
But I’m patient, filling the waiting moments by shucking helmets off acorns, peeling back their hard, outer shell until all I’m left with is the creamy center. Ground down, it’s one of the thirty-four ingredients required to make Exothryl, but it’s also the base for my homemade glue.
A perfect guise.
I have a small pile by the time Shay starts to advance, like a sooty leaf flicking about on the handsy wind. He’s tense today, not himself—jerking from one slice of shadow to the next.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
The forest is dead quiet. Even the birds seem to have lost their desire to sing ... a soundless void only severed by my uneven breaths.
Something’s not right.
Shay dashes into the same pool of shade I’m sitting in, and my heart forgets how to beat as he hovers, watching me, head tilted to the side.
His essence seems to probe.
It’s nothing forceful—just a cold pulse of incorporeal fingers pressing against my cheeks.
“Shay? ... Are you okay?”
The way his essence is uniting with my skin, it’s so ... personal. Like he’s checking me over in a manner his hands could never achieve without draining all the fluids my body needs to function.
That touch veers from my cheeks, trails across my left shoulder, down my arm. My lungs fill with stone as my gaze traces the specter of his touch until it lands around my wrist; around the cupla partially visible beneath the cuff of my shirt.
He makes a soft clicking sound that stiffens my spine before the sensation whips back, and I watch the tendrils of his form flit about—a hypnotic dance that looks anything but peaceful.
He knows I’m leaving him.
The realization is a boot to the chest.
I roll onto my knees and inch closer. “Shay—”
The shadows cloaking his face recede, revealing the starched face of his inner self—those small, beady eyes like tacks.
I pause.
Their regardpokes at me. Scrapes at me. Digs at me.
His milky lips peel back, exposing his maw. Again, that clicking sound spikes out of him, assaulting me in little airy bursts that chip at my bones.
He’s angry with me.
Guilt pools in my belly and weighs me down, threatening to derail all my good intentions ...
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, but he makes this acute hissing sound that slays my heart. “Shay, you don’t understand. I have to g—”
He flattens against my Safety Line, sending me tumbling back onto my ass.
“NO!”
The word shatters out of him like it was forced through a throat that wasn’t built to shape words.
My mouth pops open in silent shock as I look up at my friend, heart in my throat, eyes wider than they’ve ever felt before.
That sable gaze softens, a squeaking sound leaks out, and then he wilts ... folding into himself until he’s no longer hanging over me. His face vanishes behind that smoky veil, and I taste his shame in the air between us.
“Shay, it’s okay,” I say, lifting off the ground in increments. “I understa—”
He shrieks, darting through the trees.
I spin to see Baze charging across the vast grounds with storms in his eyes, and I panic, flinging the mouse in Shay’s general direction before sweeping my acorns into the empty jar and kicking the evidence of my shucking beneath a pile of leaves. I shoulder my bag and stand, muttering a long line of profanities as I stalk into the open with my stare stuck to the ground.
I know I can’t avoid him, but perhaps he’ll take note of my body language and let me pass without luring me into a conversation I don’t want to have.
“We need to talk, Orlaith.”
This day can go to hell.
“I have no interest,” I mutter, barging toward the castle.
“I rescued Tweddle Dick and Tweddle Dumb from your ... Tangle.”
My feet stop of their own accord, mimicking the motion of my heart. I spin, hands bunched into balls as I strike him with a venomous stare. “And?”
His eyes widen, a muscle in his jaw pops, and it’s hard to ignore the shock of his tired, disheveled appearance—like he’s wearing all my internal bitter on his outside.
His shirt is crumpled, hair a mess, pants stained ...
“You’re spiraling.”
“I’m fine.”
Arms crossed, he pins me with a scrutiny that digs all the way to the bone. “You’ve never been very good at lying, you know.”
“Unlike you.”
My words are arrows, and I can tell they find their mark by the way his attention spears to the rumbling sky.
He sighs, studying the turbulent clouds, and I can sense Shay watching from a puddle of shadow between two gnarled trees.
“Hovard just left a gift in your tower,” Baze drudges out, turning wary eyes on me again. “Something Cainon instructed him to make in your size.”
I frown. “Well ... what is it?”
“A gown,” he says, brow arching. “Fashioned from cobweb silk that’s stained Bahari blue.”
All the fight drains out of me as my shoulders drop ...
Shit.
His head cants to the side. “You look uncomfortable. Is it the gown or the color?”
Earthen eyes glimmer with scarcely veiled amusement that nibbles at my composure, nerves, and patience.
“The gown,” I hiss, and his low chuckle fills the void between us with all the humor of a laughing rock.
He dashes through my personal space with his well-oiled gait. “Lie,” he growls, breath hot on my ear before he lands his shoulder into my own and sends me stumbling.
By the time I’ve regained my composure, he’s gone.