Page 8 of The Faebound Trials (Mates and Madness: The Phantom Prince and The Bloodweaver #1)

Atley offered me a container of water. I eyed it for a second. The fluid was visible in the glasslike container but it felt like a rough carton in my hands. I smelled it before drinking and it tasted normal.

“There are things that happened to those people living in the past, future or present because they lived through it already that haven’t happened yet to a bloodweaver who would later on thread through time.”

I nodded understanding the basic complexity of traveling in time.

“So right now for instance, born in the year 876 of Sei, I’m living the life of a bloodweaver who knows nothing about bloodweaving and hasn’t lived through the time when I traveled back in the year 134 of Sei. To me it was the future, to them it’s the past because I haven’t traveled back in time yet, I haven’t lived through it yet. To them it happened already because time follows the sacred linear path.”

Kell nodded at Atley.

“And unknown records in the past will be revealed in an occasion that proves it’s a bloodweaver who hasn’t lived it, but is living right now. Who caused some disturbances, or mysteries that can’t be explained.”

“But I have a question. Wouldn’t that make everything feel… set? Like our fates cannot be changed. Everything that was bound to happen will happen no matter what. Wouldn’t that feel like I’m not a real person? Like someone capable of changing my fate, my path?”

Kell was silent for a second as he offered me a seat near the broken stones.

“That is something we haven’t figured out. The line of time moves, breaks, and reconnects. Even The Order don’t have an answer because every little wrong thing that happened in the past was now being unfolded like a piece of torn paper, when a bloodweaver happens to travel through time in their present.”

My eyes fell on a mess of animal meat piled neatly at the sides. A drum of blood, and a few meters away a whole lot of organs safely stored in a transparent rectangular storage.

My face paled as I noticed how it was fresh and almost looked alive. Those weren’t animal meat.

“What was that for? Why do you keep it?”

“We salvaged the pieces of our fallen bloodweavers to give them a proper burial at every trial. We don’t know who’s who so we try to keep what we could find and gather it to honor them later. That’s the least we could do.”

I looked at the transparent storage that was thankfully meters away from the animal meat.

“Where’d you get that much animal meat?”

This time it wasn’t Kell who spoke.

“The Etarans dumped it to us, telling us to practice bloodweaving with animal meat. They thought we were lying when we told them that’s not how bloodweaving works. That we couldn’t use bloodweaving to other living beings. We could only weave ourselves.”

His inky black curls covered his eyebrows. I noticed the mole on his nose as he drank another sip of water.

“They thought we could use it on others too. That’s why they feared us and caged us in this sick game of trials.”

Then Kell added Etarans would send dead meat every week so we could use it for practice, it was a trap Etarans would say, if anyone could actually use it on dead meat it would mean the bloodweavers were lying. They stopped reasoning and cooked it instead. Tried to save the rest or bury the ones that has gotten bad.

The sun was coming down and I noticed the stars were brighter than they should, they hung against the skies in beaming patterns.

Gathered piles of wood ignited the fire.

They started cooking the meat. My mouth watered when the smell lingered in the air.

Two men cooked the entire fresh animal meat. While three girls handed out blankets to those who couldn’t move, the others distributed pails to those who were drenched with blood and were too weak to move.

I thanked the girl who gave me one. I realized I had dried blood on my arms too.

Then the rest passed around wooden sticks sharpened to one end. They started poking the meat to cook the inside as well. And the smell was heavenly. I hadn’t had meat. I only had processed bars distributed across Enara. And even that cost a fortune. And I didn’t know how it would taste but the smell was mouth-watering.

I was drooling and Atley laughed when he saw it. He pointed at me and laughed. I elbowed him, slightly embarrassed.

I blinked, realizing they had moved from another topic.

“If none of us would die from being unable to pull the threads, some of us would die from anemia. Some of us would reassemble our internal organs wrongly. Some of us would get stuck in a state, drained of blood and oxygen. Some would die from the traumatic pull of time. A bloodweaver’s power takes so much from its consumer and most of us wish we were just normal mortal kids.”

My heart sank when a girl said that. Her name was Emilia. Her strawberry blonde hair was down to her waist. Her face was shaped like a heart.

She looked too young to be here. Around two or three years older than Lera. And yet her eyes were marred with trauma.

“The Threader needs to control their own body parts and blood, and with every Threading, you lose blood in the process. You won’t bleed physically, but we use blood to pay the universe, the balance of time and its sacredness. An exchange, The Order would often say. Everything comes with a price.” A boy named Olir stopped to take a sip. And continued, “there’s a reason why only bloodweavers can thread through time, we pay with our blood as we weave our bodies in pieces through time. Every time we thread through time it consumes us. A drop of our blood, down to the remainder of our sanity. If we stop weaving, our bodies will be in pieces. That’s what time demands every single time we defy its laws. A life for a chance to defy the linear path of time.”

“If you have a choice. And autonomy over your life. Would you live the life of a bloodweaver?” Someone asked from the group. It was directed to Kell this time.

I looked at the fire, its embers were an angry shade of orange and black. The embers of the dying fire somehow resembled Kell’s expressions.

“Who would want to live a life of living physical hell? I can’t change time anyway because I’m bound to live whatever I haven’t in the past and the same goes to my present and my future.”

He was right. The second time I did it, it felt like I was burning from inside out, from flesh to bones, from the back of my head to every fiber of my being.

I hate it too.