Page 29 of Blood King, Part I (Crowns #4)
He pushed himself off the bed. This woman… He walked quickly to catch up with her as she made her way through the palace and outside. The dogs followed.
“What is this solution?” he pressed. Where were they going? What were they doing? He followed her through the gardens, where tall statues stood in place of topiaries, stacked stone breaking the barren landscape into artful tiers of carefully curated natural rock and marble sculptures.
Essandra moved fast for one so small, and he quickened his pace to keep up with her.
The heat of the sun beat down on them. He was about to push her for an answer, but his eyes caught on two figures standing near a coveted water fountain—a man and a woman.
He wasn’t sure if he’d seen them before.
Both had honey-colored hair, although they didn’t appear to be related, and they wore similarly styled clothing to others in Essandra’s coven. Clearly, they were waiting.
When Cyrus and Essandra reached them, she stopped abruptly and turned to him, drawing a thin knife and a palm-size copper bowl from the folds of her gown.
He didn’t object as she took his hand and didn’t flinch as she dragged the blade across his flesh.
The lines of her high cheekbones were sharp, as were her eyes, and she showed no hesitation in slicing open his hand.
But as she watched the blood trail from his palm and down his forearm to his elbow, she paused.
The angles of her face became a little less sharp.
Her lips parted slightly, and their eyes met.
Perhaps she didn’t enjoy cutting him as much as he thought she did.
But whatever she was thinking, she quickly pushed it off and focused back on her task. When she’d filled the bowl to her satisfaction, she turned and stepped between the honey-haired man and woman.
For a moment, he thought she might offer his blood to them and was on the verge of intervening, but Essandra only brought the bowl to her own lips and drank deeply.
The pull of power within him was immediate, but not startling.
He knew it now. The connection with the witch was different from the connection with anyone else.
He wasn’t pulled into her mind. It was like she had the ability to shut him out.
There was also a weight to the bond—something more than just a bridge—something that rooted them together. He wondered if she felt it too.
She certainly felt something as she closed her eyes, letting her head fall back. She lifted her hands as she spoke words that he didn’t understand into the air.
The eyes of the honey-haired woman beside her turned black, and the woman knelt to the ground. Pushing her fingers into the sand, she spoke the same words as Essandra. Their voices rose in unison.
The sand darkened.
Green shoots sprang up, and Cyrus took a step back. The woman rocked back and forth, continuing to breathe the words, but Cyrus’s eyes were on the sprouting greens—row upon row. It was a narrow strip of space, but a mature crop here could feed a small family for several days.
How were they doing this? He wouldn’t have believed it if he weren’t seeing it himself. In fact, he still wasn’t sure he believed it.
Essandra turned back to Cyrus. “If you don’t want food from the Shadowlands, you won’t need food from the Shadowlands,” she said. “This will take time, but it will be weeks, not months.”
Cyrus shook his head, still in disbelief. This was too good to be true. He glanced up, squinting against the harsh sun above them. Even if they could start crops in fields, one week in this heat would reduce a plant to nothing.
“How can you sustain it?” he asked. “Can you bring the rain?”
“The coven doesn’t possess a weather witch, but…
” She nodded to the man beside her, who reached out and put his hand on the fountain.
The marble split, and a trench ripped its way around the small plot, forking water through the greens.
“If there is a water source, Necross has the power to move earth and rock to provide irrigation.”
There were wells and ephemeral pools they could source from. His pulse thrummed faster at the thought that this might actually be a possibility. This was beyond anything he could have ever imagined.
“But you must get others to harvest,” she added, “because that is not a witch’s work.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I’ll get others to harvest,” he promised.
“And I’ll need more blood. A lot more.”
He nodded. “You’ll have it.” This witch was proving herself to be quite useful. He thought he almost saw a smile of her own, but it might have been his imagination.
She turned and started back to the palace, with the man and woman following behind her. Cyrus watched them go. Then his eyes found Kord, who stood by the far stone wall, watching.
Cyrus crossed the garden to meet him, grinning. “Did you see that?” he asked when he reached him.
His friend had a strange look on his face—not one of awe, as Cyrus had expected.
“What?” Cyrus asked.
Kord’s eyes were fixed on Cyrus’s bloodied arm, and his lips held a firm frown. “I don’t like it.”
“What do you mean? Did you not see what she just did?”
“Yeah, and I saw what she did against the nobles too. She’s using your power to augment hers.”
“She’s helping us.”
“Yeah, but why? What does she have to gain?” Kord cast a wary look back at the witch, just as she disappeared inside the palace. “Be careful of her, Cyrus.”