Onyx Blood [True North series book 2/3]

I rolled to my back immediately, and braced myself for the pain to hit. It didn’t.

I glanced at my palms, and noticed they appeared unharmed, safe for a small gash where my pinky met my palm. I dug out the shard of wood that had pierced my skin. Thick, dark blood oozed out of the wound, and I stopped it from flowing immediately.

I looked back up at Thoridor’s beast, who had still been ripping apart Kinian attackers left and right while I gathered myself. He was covered in blood — Kinian blood, as well as his own. It was caked in his velvety fur, and made his manes stick together in clumps. He looked absolutely horrific — the picture of horror.

This huge, violent beast, with his several rows of pointed teeth, blood dripping from his jaw and down his neck. He didn’t frighten me though — I felt safe.

I felt safe as I raised my bow and fired my last few arrows at the Kinian soldiers who were still coming at us, as if there was a limitless supply of them. I felt safe as the blood dripped from his jaw and down my shoulders. I felt safe as he ripped the head off a particularly nasty-looking Kinian, and its blood sprayed my face. The horrors we were experiencing didn’t seem as bad, now that we were together.

Once my pounding headache had kind of subsided, I knew something needed to be done. Now. I could stop Thoridor’s beast from bleeding out, but as long as the Kinians kept coming at us, and we were this vulnerable, there was no way to guarantee our safety.

My mind flashed over to Aricor, who was likely dealing with the same kind of vengeance at the southern border, and King Darianth at the eastern one. And they didn’t have blood wielders with them.

I didn’t have any arrows left — no way to defend us from where I was standing. I needed to wield. I took a deep breath in, flaring my nostrils, and tried to drown the noise out of my mind. I needed quiet. I needed to focus.

I wrapped my arm around Thoridor’s beast’s front leg, and he bent down ever so slightly, to brush his blood-soaked mane against my head reassuringly. He had my back. I quietly called out to the power within me — whatever it was that was that made me capable of wielding.

My birth mother. My fingers instinctively wrapped around the little vial of blood that hung from my neck. She had wielded — I had seen it in the vision I’d had when I had opened the vial. Had she been from a world like this one? A world where blood wielding was normal, and opening gateways too.

The gateway — I had almost forgotten that part. Caiora had opened a gateway, and stepped through it. Where had it taken her? Could she be hiding somewhere?

The throbbing inside my head intensified, and so did the burning in my chest. I was grateful for Thor’s beast protecting me while I focussed on putting fleeting memories together. There was still something more — something I hadn’t quite figured out.

What was it? My mother, and her black blood. Black blood — the prophecy. ‘She with an unblemished heart and blood like the sky, with stars for eyes and feathers for hands.’ There was another clue there — I just couldn’t quite get to it.

I pressed both hands to the side of my head, as if trying to compress my racing mind. THINK, Serin. ‘Stars for eyes, and feathers for hands.’ Wings. What about the eyes?

I remembered reading something about wings and eyes. I inhaled sharply as I recalled where. The children’s book from the library in the Aquatic palace. ‘Their amber eyes and feathered wings’.

Eldrims. Eldrims had feathered wings, and amber eyes. Could they have black blood too?

And then it hit me. I finally pieced everything together, and the truth smacked into me so hard it made me lose my footing. I stumbled backward and fell into a puddle of blood and melted snow, but didn’t even bother me.

My mother’s blood had appeared red, until it had been exposed to fire. Then, it had turned black. Flames had revealed its truest guise — flames had burned her vessel. My mother had been an Eldrim.

My breathing quickened, making my chest heave with each labored breath. Thoridor’s beast whined uncomfortably, as it picked up on my distress. It pressed it’s wet nose agains my cheek, but I didn’t respond.

If my mother had been an Eldrim— I tried to count out my breaths to calm myself down. I remembered another phrase from the children’s book — one that hit me like a war hammer. ‘The Eldrim curse, a wicked vine, passed down through the maternal line.’

I looked at my hands, lifting them up in front of me. I vaguely moved them outward, and just like before, I caused all the Kinians in my immediate vicinity to fly backward. It couldn’t be, could it? At least Aeloria would have known… I thought back to my latest visit. One thing she had said stood out to me. ‘Sometimes, when we’re trapped, the only one who can truly set us free us, is ourselves.’ I had assumed she had meant Thoridor trapping me in Aquatic Ardanis, but what if—

I looked down at my hands — the palms I had just put into the glowing embers of the pyre. They were unharmed by the fire. ‘Fire doesn’t hurt witches,’ Thor had said once. I swallowed thickly as I scrambled to my feet. I pressed my forehead to Thoridor’s beast leg.

“I think I know what I am,” I whispered down our mind link, and stepped out from under his beast’s chest. I kept my hands raised to my sides, locking all attacking Kinians in place as I crossed the battlefield and walked toward the nearest pyre.

’Time to go free yourself, child.’ Aeloria’s words chanted through my brain again and again. “I love you,” I said to Thoridor, and stepped into the flames.

Thank you so much for reading Onyx Blood! Book 3 (Lost Coven) is out NOW!

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