Betrayer: (The Cursed Bloodstone Book 1)

Early morning light wanes through the open barn door. I left it ajar while I attend to my chores. Birds belting out a melody strum to where I sit, milking Jersa. The cow happily chomps on hay as I collect milk in a terracotta jar.

The door creaks as it opens wider, and Everly steps through. My breath catches at her disheveled hair, and her surcoat covered in dust, like she ran to this barn.

Her wide eyes meet mine, and my heart sinks. “It’s Kassandra. She’s really upset. Will you come and speak to her?”

“Of course.” I finish with Jersa and secure the barn door before following Everly.

As we walk through the town, we receive the same shunning as usual. We might as well not exist. To these people, we are nothing. No, we are less than nothing.

The moment we stop in front of the tiny, run-down cottage, I am struck by the red circle splattered in paint across the front of the house. The stain covers the entire expanse.

Red poppies scatter the grass, driving a dagger of fear into my heart. I try to not show it as I follow Everly into the cottage, but those damn flowers and what they mean for the Bloodstones will not leave my thoughts.

Red poppies mean death.

No!

I dig my nails into my palm, sinking pain into my skin. It doesn’t ease the waves of trepidation billowing around me. Everything in me wants to race back to the grass, pick up every poppy and throw them at the people who dared to put them there. No, everything in me wants to punish the people responsible.

My fingers burn with the urge. I clasp them together as I trail Everly into the room she shares with Kassandra.

Kassandra sits on the center of her mattress, her gaze locked on the far wall, her eyes void of emotion.

I sit next to her and try to think of any words she’d find comforting. Nothing comes to mind.

After a while of sitting in silence, Kassandra speaks. “I cannot wed Luc.”

“Oh, Kass,” Everly says.

Kassandra jerks her hand across her eyes and speaks in a voice riddled with pain. “For as long as I can remember, Luc is the only man I thought about. The only man I wanted. The only man I could see myself having children with.” She sniffs and stares down at her hands. “Our people will not let me have him.”

Everything in me wants to tell her to ignore them. Those red poppies keep me silent. Those flowers are a warning as deadly as if they left a cobra in her bed.

“They’re not my people,” Everly says bitterly.

“Oh, Evie.” Kassandra shakes her head. “Don’t speak that way.”

Everly tugs at the red circle on her surcoat. “If they were my people, I wouldn’t wear this. If they were my people, they wouldn’t turn away when I walk past. We are nothing to them, Kass.”

Kassandra sniffs again. “I wanted to be the change.”

“They will never change,” Everly says bitterly. “They’re incapable of change.”

“I was removed from my training,” I say, my voice pitched low as I reveal a truth I never speak of, “because I couldn’t heal with magic like the rest of the people in my tribe.”

Kassandra’s eyes widen. “You cannot heal with magic?”

I open and close my fingers as I recall everything that happened with Praxis. “No. I couldn’t. I was shunned, ridiculed, and removed like a dead limb from a thriving tree. Everyone around me had powerful gifts. I had none.” I take a deep breath. “People are the same everywhere. Not just here.”

Everly stares at the far wall as she speaks. “I would live alone in a vast wilderness if I could.”

“I think that would be a glorious existence,” I admit.

“You have a husband,” Everly says. “It may be difficult for you to just disappear.”

One day, I will disappear.

My throat tightens. The thought never made me so forlorn before.

Kassandra falls back against her mattress and sighs. “I want a husband. I want Luc.”

My stomach twists into a giant knot. If only I could give Kassandra what she wants.

Everly lies beside her sister. “We can be old spinsters together.” Her gaze moves to me. “The Kyanite can join us when she grows tired of Gabriel.”

“You think I’ll grow tired of him?” My thoughts shift to the other night. How he touched me and gave me such pleasure.

“He’s not much different than all the other men.”

Kassandra frowns. “Evie, that’s not true. Gabriel is the second best man I know.”

Everly rises enough to meet my gaze. “He has secrets, Sol. Has he told you?”

Kassandra snaps to sitting and glares at her sister. “Be silent, Everly.”

My attention jerks between them. “What secrets?”

Frustration tugs at Kassandra’s brow as she places her hand over her sister’s mouth. “He doesn’t have secrets.”

Everly pulls away her sister’s hand. “Do you even know what he did to your arm?”

“My arm?” I roll my right wrist over, staring down at that serpent mark.

“No, your binding tattoo.”

My breath hitches as I raise my arm and stare down at those brown lines, those swirls, those words I wouldn’t have understood if Alf didn’t tell me.

“What do you mean, Everly?”

A frown pinches at Kassandra’s mouth, but she doesn’t speak.

“This…” Everly brushes her fingertips along the engraving on my skin. “…is the ancient magical binding tattoo of the Bloodstone people.”

“Magical?” My throat turns dry. “But magic doesn’t work here,” I say, repeating what Kassandra told me.

A voice pierces my ears, a mocking voice—one that reminds me of what I did for Praxis.

I slam it away, not willing to give it a second thought. At least, not right now. Not when I cannot process everything at once.

“It won’t work,” Kassandra says with a frown. “So, I’m not sure why he chose that particular design.”

“He chose it?” I ask, needing to understand.

It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.

Kassandra nods.

“If it worked,” I ask slowly, “what would it do?”

“It would bind you to him,” Everly says. “Emotionally. Physically. You’d be incapable of ever looking at another man with lust. He’d feel the same way about you.”

Why would Gabriel pick such a design? When we first met, he loathed me, distrusted me, yet he was willing to do this?

Why?

Maybe he knew the magic wouldn’t work anyway, and he just liked the way this tattoo looks.

Praxis’ voice hums in my ears. Magic has returned to my people.

No. It’s not true.

It cannot be.

It takes everything in me to not roll my wrist over and stare at the hissing serpent.

I have been unwilling to test my magic for fear it is somehow tied to theirs. What if I healed someone else, and another child was born with the mark, and I inadvertently gave them back their gifts?

I would never forgive myself.

“What else?” I ask, desperately needing answers.

Kassandra shakes her head. “There’s nothing. Everly is just angry with Gabriel.”

“Why?”

Everly rises to sitting and clenches her fingers together. “He has so much potential, and he doesn’t use it.”

“With weaponry?” I ask as I think of the dagger he crafted for me.

Long, dark hair falls into Everly’s face as she shakes her head.

Kassandra bounds from the bed. “Who wants bread?” Before her sister objects, she grabs her hand and yanks her from the room.

I follow them and settle at the table where Kassandra brings her latest loaf of bread. She slices us thick pieces and settles in a chair opposite of where I sit.

She stares down at her bread for several breaths before finding her voice. “Sol, I want you to keep what happened here today a secret.”

My brow rises. “Why?”

“I want…” She wraps cloth around the loaf of bread and sighs. “I want to speak to Luc first.”

“I understand.”

Hesitation grips her voice as she continues. “That means you cannot tell anyone. Even Gabriel.”

What’s one more secret?

Even as I think the words, they fester inside me. I am already keeping so much from him. And this is hard because every fiber of my being wants to run to him and tell him everything. Then, he could punish the people responsible. Just like when he punished Deborah.

“I won’t speak until after you have told Luc,” I say after a moment.

Relief floods to her drawn features. “Thank you.”

As the conversation shifts to a dress Kassandra is sewing for a client, I allow Everly’s words to return.

Days ago, I knew Gabriel was keeping secrets from me. I didn’t realize how big they might be.

I stare down at my left wrist, gazing at those lines, those words.

Surely, he only picked the design for the way it looks. It is lovely, and Alf is very talented.

Surely, that is all.

Or maybe I just want it to be all.