Page 9 of The Faebound Trials (Mates and Madness: The Phantom Prince and The Bloodweaver #1)

Everyone went to sleep. Some stayed awake to be lookouts for the night. Ellis, the guy with the inky black curls said there might not be monsters around but trials come even at night for some.

And there was no specific time and place for trials. So, they needed people to be awake in case a giant ball of fire came crashing down a bunch of sleeping bloodweavers.

The bloodweavers here were not the entirety of everyone.

They had one rule they followed, when they stumbled upon a pack of bloodweavers it was natural they would gather for the night. Share some information.

Because there was always someone new. They didn’t have the exact numbers of bloodweavers undergoing trials.

They barely knew the ones they met tonight.

The ones in the same cluster of trials tend to stick together, and it was always by twos.

Like Kell and Ellis, they were in the same trials thrice during Kell’s first three months, and it was the fourth month for Ellis. And by rule they paired up.

Atley told me he lost his pair. And he told me that if we met two more times in our trials, we should pair. Bloodweavers survive more when they pair up.

They said the people in our trials were always random. And pairs didn’t always end in the same trials. They try to leave clues if they had been in a place to tell their pairs they were alive or not.

There was a pattern when bloodweavers meet thrice and it was proven that when they do, they would meet again.

I hugged myself tightly. The field was growing colder the deeper the night went.

I stared ahead at nothingness.

I did it a lot whenever I’d get really tired, and whenever I’d wish sleep would come to me instead.

Until somehow the darkness was playing tricks in my mind.

A figure was starting to form.

I could feel eyes watching me. And within it, there was hatred.

I flinched as I inched backward, that was when I felt Emilia stirred beside me, jolting me back to reality.

When I looked back, it was still there. The figure was watching me.

Fear sunk into my skin.

It wasn’t a figment of my imagination.

The more it stared at me, the more I could feel its hatred growing deeply. It wasn’t an animal, it stood tall amidst the shadows, almost two meters tall.

And I wasn’t the type to approach danger when I see it. I was the type to run away from it. I was never a curious kid.

And when my gut says something’s wrong, I don’t march towards it like a stupid fool.

I value my life even if one day I come to the point when I’d find out it has no meaning.

I’d rather try. I’d rather live.

“Help! Kell! Ellis! Sanders! Anyone! Help!”

My head snapped towards the voice. I saw a figure running in the dark. When he appeared right where there was light, I saw his clothes were tattered and burned.

He was limping, but it didn’t stop him from his pace.

I woke Kell up as he was closer to me. And I knew that he was telling the truth when he told me he grew up from Mistfall, when he woke up at a single nudge.

“What’s wrong?”

It was a boy, younger than Atley, running toward us. The side of his head was bleeding and when he came near, I saw his ears had been ripped off.

Everyone was suddenly awake.

Kell grabbed the boy to support him. Worry clouded his beautiful face. When my eyes fell on his side. I noticed the boy had lost an arm too.

He was getting paler every second.

Kala, who had been here for seven months, grabbed a piece of cloth to stop the bleeding.

“Sara. It’s Sara. Kell. Something happened.” He was badly hurt but it didn’t stop him from telling the news.

“Breathe, tell me slowly what happened.”

The boy coughed up blood.

“Sara slipped into the wrong timeline. I tried to go and get her. But when I was about to bloodweave. They attacked me. It’s something different. They had weapons. Powers they can suddenly use when a bloodweaver’s threading through time. It’s impossible.”

I saw the split-second glance Kell and Ellis shared when the boy finished his words. The silence stretched among the bloodweavers, thickening the already blooming tension.

“No one can interrupt a bloodweaver when they’re threading. What kind of weapon did they use on Sara?” Ellis asked. His calm demeanor was unmistakable but the eerie foreboding of an incoming storm was there.

“It was an item one of the bloodweaver retrieved. It was laced with power. Something that can break us. The fae, they could use it to hurt us.”

I knew too well the fae was using us. And it wouldn’t be a surprise if they were using the items we retrieved against us.

But how? And why?

I’d been here for more than a day but it was clear to me that they needed the bloodweavers to retrieve items from different timelines.

They needed us. Because they couldn’t weave. But why would they hurt Sara and Gale?

“We need to find Sara.”

Gale’s lips had turned purple. He swayed, his knees buckling. I could see the signs of looming faint.

“They would know. We each have assigned timelines. They would know the moment we attempt to deviate from our tasks.”

Everyone turned silent.

“But what if we have one who didn’t get an assigned timeline? Would the fae know? Would they find us?”

It was Atley who broke the silence.

And there was fire in his eyes as he looked at me.

Atley told me the trials made him sick. The bloodweavers were all gifted the power to travel in time. But not every bloodweaver wanted to use their gifts. Because they knew the consequences.

He told me that for him, his power was more of a curse than a gift. Bloodweaving took so much from him. Atley wished the fae had never known about the bloodweavers and our power.

Expressing his hatred that if he only knew the time the fae had learned about us, he would break the bonds that tie the bloodweavers from the fae’s hold against us.

His lips were trembling as he gravely whispered, he’d rip that timeline apart and erase it from existence.

That if only he knew a way to get there, he’d do it with his bare hands.

“They could hear us. They could see us. Stop.” I could hear the fear in Emilia’s voice.

I remember when the fae woman warned me before I came here. Thinking about it. Emilia was right, they could hear us. That was why they used a dome to conceal us for a minute.

But the way the fae covered us meant that they were viewing us directly from above.

That was it.

They were watching from above.

“Do you have something we could use to write on?”

They all looked at me. The silence remained. A boy handed us an old sheet.

I started writing.

I made sure no one could see it from above.

And then when I let them read it, I made sure that only us could read it.

They didn’t tell me anything. No timeline. No task. I can help.

They all looked at me. I suddenly got anxious from the attention but I straightened my back.

Then Kell took the sheet from me.

Then come with us. Ellis and I are not bound to timelines and tasks. We’ll do it. When I said run. We start.

“Wait, what?”

As in now?

“You read it right.”

The boys broke into a run.

I was stunned for a second, watching them run. Until Atley pushed me.

“We need you. Do it. Please.”

I blinked a few times. Everyone was watching me. With hope brimming in their eyes.

And when I glanced at Gale and the rest of the bloodweavers, their eyes were pleading me to do it. Some had burning faith in me as my eyes met theirs.

They believed I could do it.

How could they have so much faith in someone they barely knew?

I felt my stomach flip.

“I would do it. But why run?”

“When you run. You increase blood flow. And you would need lots of blood to weave. Now run as fast as you can. Run, Lowen.”

I shot into motion, running after the boys.

I didn’t look back. When you run you keep your head forward. You rip through the air. And that was what I did.

That’s why they were running when we got here? I thought it was because everyone was afraid to get hit by fire balls.

I could hear the rest of the bloodweavers cheering for us. I could hear Kell and Ellis’s names in their shouts, as well as mine.

My heart thundered with every beat. I couldn’t stop running.

Adrenaline pumping through my veins, as I followed after the speed of the two boys before me.

“Lowen, do it when you feel it.” Kell shouted.

Then my eyes widened when Ellis jumped almost four meters high.

Kell followed, leaping higher than Ellis.

They leapt through the air. And I was left with my mouth slightly agape as I watched bloodweaving unfold before me.

I was still running when I watched how they morphed into a ball of fire. And when they shot forward, a searing hot wind blew right after their trail.

The scorching heat surged through the air, oppressive and wild, almost grazing my skin as I felt the billow of a burning fire stealing the breath from my lungs.

Their flesh reassembling to form a sacred hold of a circle, orbiting through an invisible axis, blood forming rings around each of them.

Sure, it was bloody and seemed gory. And the scorching fire their bodies emitted was suffocating and thick.

But bloodweaving was closer to something divine and magnificent. Blood so hot they turned into a ball of fire, their flesh reshaping into a thick wall as they weaved through time.

A gushing sound ripped through the air, similar to an electric zap or a sonic boom bending time and space.

They vanished into thin air, successfully threading in time.

“Lowen, jump!” I heard the rest of the bloodweavers’ shout.

My throat was tight. And my breathing was shallow. An electric intensity rammed against my heart with each beat.

My body was hot as if I was on fire and my mind was starting to get muddled. But I remembered Atley’s words.

Those who lose their mind couldn’t weave back the threads. Losing your mind means losing your grasps on the threads.

I would never let this power maim me. Or shatter me.

I breathed in and snapped my eyes closed.

That was when I leapt.