To Bleed a Crystal Bloom by Sarah A. Parker

The dress has all the modesty of a deciduous tree in the fall.

I stare at the gift like all those long, deep blue tendrils dusted in gold are going to peel off the mannequin and strangle me. The bands are artfully placed to emphasize the female form and flounce her ... assets.

I had no idea this was the fashion of the South. If I had, I may have found a different way to secure those ships. Pirated them, or ... something.

Anything.

Hindsight has a cruel sense of humor.

Brushing a hand through the skirt, I wonder how I’m expected to move in this thing if everyone can see my undergarments every time I take a step. Or perhaps I’m not supposed to wear any, and this dress is intended to offer glimpses of something untouchable.

Something that belongs to another male.

Putting space between the garment and me, I stare at it with a renewed surge of disgust. One pull on any of the strips crisscrossing the front or back and the entire thing would flutter to the ground. Though that’s probably the point. For it to rip and fall in a careless heap before bodies join and—

“Stop,” I snap, the word battling a resounding crack of thunder. “Pull yourself together, Orlaith.”

I tie my hair into a heavy knot and unbutton my top. It falls to the ground, and I begin unbinding my breasts, tossing the length of stretchy material aside before pushing my pants and underwear down.

Standing in nothing but my masked skin, I unclasp the garment, a fraught sigh slipping out. The dress is featherlight, and I struggle with the concept that something representing so much weighs so very little.

I step into the waistband, fastening the clip at the small of my back, brows pinched as I try to solve the rest of it. It takes a few tries, but I finally find the right holes to slip my arms through, managing to fasten it between my shoulder blades without the help of a second pair of hands.

In a flutter of Bahari blue and gilded trimmings, I edge toward the mirror and meet my reflection.

My insides gutter, the strong line of my shoulders softening.

“Oh my ...”

Bands slice across my body like licks of navy paint, covering me yet ... not. You can still see the outline of my nipples, peaked from the pinch of cold, my under breasts entirely exposed.

The lines sweep and swirl, complimenting my shape, emphasizing the parts of me I’ve tried so hard to hide. And when I shift my leg or move about, little slivers of my bum are exposed.

Sex.This garment has painted me in sex.

I try to clear the lump in my throat, my cheeks pinched a shade of pink from the fire sizzling my veins. I’ve spent most of my life hiding from my reflection, but now I want to avoid it for an entirely different reason.

Shame.

Red-hot, burning shame, because this dress has made something abundantly clear ...

I’ve sold my body.

The distant sound of a horse whinnying travels through the open window, holding a distressed cadence that has me turning from the mirror and dashing toward the door in long, ass-revealing strides. I pull it open and step onto the balcony, assaulted by a blow of icy wind.

The clouds are heavy, blocking the light, making the forest look dark and haunted. There’s a charge in the air that smarts my skin in a way that has nothing to do with the cold ...

Movement snags my gaze, and I watch a spotted gray horse clamor through the front gate, lugging a cart down the packed-earth path. He’s lathered in sweat, frothing at the bit, but that’s not what has my eyes narrowing.

It’s the female lumped on the upper seat, barely clinging to the reins, her head flopping around so much it’s hard to see past the mess of her inky hair.

Perhaps she’s asleep?

They get halfway across the lawn before lightning mosaics the clouds. A second later, thunder crackles loud enough to rattle my bones, and the horse rears up, squeals to the sky, then crumbles—sending the cart tipping sideways.

The woman is tossed through the air, landing in a boneless heap on the manicured grass.

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t even scream.

I’m back inside, yanking my door open and bounding down Stony Stem in the very next instant.

There’s the sound of footfalls chasing me, Vanth and Kavan yelling for me to stop but doing nothing to penetrate my resolve.

I move like the wind, limbs churning, mind an axe. There are no hurdles for feet that defy the laws of gravity, and that’s what mine do.

Barely feeling as if they touch the ground.

I reach the bottom of my tower, hair slipping free of its band as I weave down a barrage of tunnels and stairwells until grass cushions my steps. The space between myself and the cart seems to evaporate in seconds, and I fall upon the female in a flutter of blue and unbridled hair.

With hands too steady to be mine, I roll the woman onto her back, and a sharp sound splits the air.

It takes me a moment to realize it came from me.

She’s petite, pretty, with big, brown eyes that are wide and wet and painfully familiar.

Mishka—the Medis from a neighboring village—but she doesn’t look the same as she did a few days ago at the Tribunal ...

Her skin is gray, all the color drained from her sunken cheeks. Her pupils are so dilated the black is almost consuming the brown, and they’re seeing but ... but not. There’s an acrid stench wafting off her that sticks to the back of my throat, and I glance down her body to seek the source.

A sturdy hand grips my chin and yanks, forcing my gaze skyward.

Pewter eyes snatch my breath.

“No,” Rhordyn growls through clenched teeth, dropping to his knees on the other side of Mishka and unhooking his jacket buttons. “Don’t look.”

Holding my stare, he drapes the jacket over Mishka’s midsection while I study every speckle in his smoky stare. Eyes that offer a blanket of comfort while also plying me with a sense of dread.

More footsteps encroach, crunching through what sounds like broken glass, pausing.

He breaks our eye contact to look past me. “Any liquid bane?”

“Smashed.”

Rhordyn swears so sharp I flinch.

“The horse, Baze.”

“On it.”

I look over my shoulder to see Baze step around a spilled leather satchel and walk toward the felled animal. The horse is trying to arch his head off the ground, allowing me a glimpse of shallow slash marks along his neck. Grisly wounds seeping a rank-smelling liquid that’s inky and thick and—

Something tore into him.

“Go, Orlaith.”

Rhordyn’s voice snags me, and my head swivels, stare landing on Mishka’s unseeing eyes ...

On her bleeding lips and restless chest.

“No,” I mutter, maneuvering her onto my lap. “She needs elevation and water. Her lips are cracked.”

I shift my attention to Kavan and Vanth, watching the scene unfold through wide eyes, spears hanging at their sides. “Make yourselves useful and go fetch a pitcher!”

Nobody moves, Mishka continues to battle for breath, and my insides twist into messier knots.

Frantic, I turn to Rhordyn. “Why aren’t you helping?” I hiss, smoothing Mishka’s hair back from her face.

She releases a sob that’s half whimper, then calls out for her mom.

Again.

My heart folds.

I cradle her head and sooth her fevered brow, just like Cook used to do when I was sick. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay ...”

A bolt of lightning highlights the carnage in a fierce, silver light.The first heavy droplets of icy rain begin to fall, and I lean forward, trying to shelter her from the worst of it.

Her pupils shrink, focusing. Her face crumbles, as if she’s just acknowledged something awful. “Help m-me ...”

I grip her flailing hand and squeeze, staring into wide, wild eyes. “I will. You’re safe now, I promise.”

Rhordyn leans so close his chilly lips skim my ear. “Her wound is from a Vruk.”

The words land like death blows, but I dash them off.

“Has anything vital been severed?”

“No.”

There’s a brief, gurgling squeal behind me, and I gasp, attention swinging to the horse now bleeding out through a slash in its throat—to Baze, crouched beside it with a bloody dagger hanging from his hand.

The animal is no longer breathing. Moving.

Making any sounds.

I blink, and a wet warmth slides down my cheeks.

“It hasn’t severed anything vital,” Rhordyn continues, his words a whispered assault on my ear. “But it will rot her. Slowly, in vicious, vile increments that will suckle her sanity and turn her rabid, until she finally drowns on her own composting lungs.”

I drag a shuddered breath, attention drifting back to the woman who seems to have lost that sheen of lucidity from her stare. “But she’s ... she’s ...”

Rhordyn shifts, and another bolt of lightning draws my attention to the dagger poised in his steady hand.

Our gazes clash.

“Look away,” he orders, and there’s an unapologetic savagery in his stare.

It bites my chest, snatching my ability to draw a full breath.

I remember Mishka standing before Rhordyn at the Tribunal. Remember her hands resting atop her lower stomach like a shield.

My tears flow freely.

Look away,he said.

But I’ve been looking away my entire life.

“No.”

“Look. Away.”

His words rattle with steely command, but I lift my chin and squeeze that cold, trembling hand. Looking down, I give Mishka all of me, leaving nothing but scraps for the man with the blade.

Her eyes are dancing, breaths distorted.

“Tell me about him,” I whisper, grabbing her other hand and resting them both atop her abdomen, trying to ignore the warm, putrid liquid now leaching through Rhordyn’s jacket. “Tell me about the man who gifted you his cupla.”

Rhordyn’s regard is a brand on my face.

I know what’s coming, but I refuse to look away. To hide behind a line that’s only fortified in my imagination. He wanted me to train—to learn to wield a sword and dodge a deadly blow—but he can’t shield me from everything.

He can’t shield me from this.

“V-Vale,” she rasps, cheeks swelling with the beginnings of a smile. “His eyes are like the s-sea. I knew I was his the m-moment I looked into them.”

My lower lip wobbles, so I tuck it between my teeth. “I love that ...”

A soft nod.

“I d-dreamt our baby has his eyes,” she whispers, each word landing a chisel to my chest.

I wonder if she knows. How much of her is painfully aware of what she’s lost.

“A little girl ...” her gaze shifts, landing somewhere faraway as her chest rattles with another inhale. “But we’ll see.”

My next breath slices me up, poisoning me with the residue of her scarcely veiled pain.

I hope she’s seeing that dream. That she’s blissfully unaware of how shredded that part of her body is. That she believes she’s holding her mother’s comforting hands, and not those of a stranger.

A cough has her buckling in my lap, perfuming the air with more of that putrid smell.

I hold her tighter.

“You’ll see,” I lie, blooming a smile so hollow it hurts. “You’ll see her soon.”

Mishka’s lips part, but then her body jerks and—

Something warm leaks onto my thighs as her eyes widen, then gutter, and I hear the stark hiss of a withdrawing blade.

My heart stumbles a beat.

I don’t want to look, but my eyes drift of their own accord, halting on the spill of blood pushing through a clean slice on the left side of her chest ...

“You—” I sever my sight of the wound that’s scoring me in a way that feels permanent. “You just—”

Rhordyn wipes his dagger on the grass. “Stopped her suffering,” he spits, as if the words were spikes in his tongue.

Our stares collide, and though he doesn’t reply, his cold, detached eyes say everything.

Not the first ...

Probably not the last.

My throat clogs, every breath feeling like a step in a ladder I don’t want to ascend.

Thisis what I’ve been hiding from; what Rhordyn’s been facing whenever he leaves the castle grounds.

No wonder he sits on that throne wearing dead eyes.

Another fork of lightning splits apart the shrieking silence, and the sky loosens its load, dropping a curtain of water between Rhordyn and I.

Neither of us blink.

He’s watching me, his scrutiny as heavy as my heart. But there’s something more there—like he’s reading every sharp breath, seeing past the skin he’s forced me to wear.

He’s checking for cracks, but I have none. All I have is blood on my hands and a honed resolve.

I have to go.

“Kavan, do you know where to find the morgue?” Rhordyn asks, voice monotone, stare unwavering.

I hear my guard step forward. “Yes, High Master. We’ve had a thorough tour of your castle ... more than once.”

I can’t help but feel that’s aimed at me.

“Take Mishka’s body and have her wrapped. Retrieve her cupla. Since her promised is from the Bahari capital, it’s now your responsibility to return it to him.”

My throat clogs.

Her promised ...

“Vanth, you’ll send a priority sprite so the man has prior warning.”

There’s a long pause, then, “And what about Orla—”

Whatever question Vanth had dies on his tongue the moment Rhordyn turns his head, glancing over his shoulder at the man.

Vanth drops his head in a servile gesture. “Of course, High Master.”

I swallow as Mishka’s body is lifted, leaving nothing but a bloody, putrid stamp I can smell and feel, but can’t bring myself to look at.

Cainon was right. I dug my roots in—hid from a hurting world just as wounded as I am. Rhordyn may have slipped a mask over my face, but I was the one who chose to blind myself to the carnage.

Every second I spend here is another life lost. One more dream that’ll never manifest ...

I have to go. Now.

“Baze,” Rhordyn bites out, gaze narrowed on me again. “Make sure they find their way.”

“Sir.”

More retreating steps, until all that’s left are me and Rhordyn, a felled horse, and this frigid tension I want to shatter.

“This is not your weight to bear, Orlaith.”

“You’ve lost the right to dictate what’s important to me. You’re not my High Master anymore.”

His eyes flash luminescent. “You have no idea how wrong that statement is, Milaje. And fleeing Ocruth is not going to soothe the guilt you nourish simply because you survived.”

The allegation is slung at my soul, and I flinch—spine stiffening, fingers curling.

“Get out,” I snarl.

Get out of my head.

Rhordyn’s upper lip peels back. “Never.”

The word is volleyed at me like a threat ...

By the way he’s posturing himself, I get the haunting sense that stepping onto that boat bobbing by the jetty is going to be a much bigger hurdle than I initially anticipated.

I should have left yesterday ...

Shit.

Perhaps I can still get to it. As long as my feet are touching that Bahari-bourne deck, Rhordyn can’t remove me without inciting some sort of war.

He’s overbearing, but he’s not stupid.

My pulse sounds like a war drum as I lift my chin, pushing my shoulders back. “I’ll be leaving now.”

“And what about your guards?” he asks, deadly calm. “You’re just going to sail off and leave them here?”

“They can hitch a ride on a trade ship.”

No love lost there.

“They’re your people now, Milaje. Your responsibility.” His gaze darts down to my cupla, back up. “You’re their future High Mistress, are you not?”

Asshole.

I leap to my feet and run.