Kingdom of Sea and Stone

A blinding flash of white came out of nowhere. For a moment, I was sure I had been struck by lightning. But there was no pain following the light. It was as if I had left the rainy fields and was inside New Castle. In Ceren’s study, specifically. He was hunched over his desk, his back to me, scribbling madly on a piece of paper. A half-drunk vial of blood sat next to him on the desk, and red stones, both polished and raw, filled a bowl nearby, the way the Varenian pearls had just weeks ago. His own arm was bleeding over a silver bowl, and with his free hand, Ceren picked up a stone, turning it over in his long white fingers before throwing it aside in frustration.

“Such a child,” I said, and then he turned, as if he’d heard me.

His gray eyes darted around the room searchingly. He looked so different than I remembered, and not just because his nose wasn’t broken and bleeding. His once deathly pale cheeks were pink, as were the full lips, which were so like his brother’s. Whatever the mountain had taken from him, my blood seemed to have given it all back and then some. He was beautiful, in his own way. And the fact that I could acknowledge it after all he’d done to me made my stomach churn.

“Ceren,” I said, and his pupils dilated instantly as he focused on me.

“You’re really there.”

I knew he couldn’t hurt me through the vision, but my heart still raced, even as I told myself not to be afraid. I could feel my body in the field, the rain pouring down my frozen limbs, but a part of me was there in that study that I had always hated.

A smug grin played on his lips. “Enjoying your time in Galeth, are you? You look like a drowned rat.”

“We have one of your guards,” I ground out, ignoring his jibe.

He waved a pale hand. “I have a hundred more.”

This was the Ceren I knew so well, the one to whom human life meant nothing. “Why did you follow us here?”

His eyes darted to the vial of blood unconsciously. My blood.

“Why do you still need my blood?” I blurted. “And why are we connected whenever you drink it?”

He shook his head but didn’t answer. He had a weakness, it seemed, but he wasn’t going to reveal it to me. I wasn’t surprised, of course, but I didn’t know when I would have another chance to ask, and he might let something slip in his arrogance.

“Where are my parents, Ceren?”

He cocked his head like a strange white bird. “They’re in New Castle. All your people are.”

“Why?” I growled in frustration, nearly taking myself out of the vision. Somewhere in the distance I could hear thunder, feel my entire body shaking with cold. “What do you want from them?”

He stared into the empty space before him for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure how to answer.

I was about to ask again when I felt a hand clamp around my arm. For one brief moment, Ceren’s gaze sharpened, and then the vision broke and I was standing in a field with Adriel, who was shaking me with a look of wild fear in her eyes.

“Nor! Wake up!”

I sputtered, pushing ropes of wet hair out of my face with my free hand. “I’m here.”

“What are you doing?” Her tone was sharp, but she pulled me toward her and threw her cloak around both of us as well as she could.

I shivered so hard I stumbled. “I don’t know. I was afraid of the storm, and I panicked.”

She half pulled, half carried me across the field until we reached her house. Inside, she sat me down in front of the fire and pulled my soaked shift off over my head before throwing a heavy blanket around me.

“Get warm,” she said. “I’m going to make you some tea. If it hadn’t been for Fox mewling at my door, I wouldn’t have even known you were missing. What possessed you to go out into a lightning storm? Surely a girl from the ocean knows better than that.”

She was talking to herself more than me, and my teeth were chattering far too hard for me to answer anyway. Foxglove appeared and began to roll on the floor in front of me, exposing the tufts of soft white fur on his belly and twisting his head at me as if to say, Did you forget about me, outsider?

I reached out with one chilled arm and scratched behind his ears, which set him to making that strange rumbling sound again. Perhaps he really did like me.

“Here,” Adriel said, squatting down beside me and handing me a steaming cup. “This will help warm and calm you. I didn’t realize you had such a fear of storms.”

“I don’t, normally.” My violent shivering had finally slowed to the occasional twitch. “I think it’s just that I was on my own. I’ve never lived by myself before.”

She gazed at me with a sad, pitying sort of smile. “You were hardly alone, Nor. I was right here.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I would have preferred that to finding you talking to yourself in a field.”

My cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry.”

“You weren’t talking to yourself, though. Were you?” Adriel pulled a stool over and sat down next to me with her own cup of tea. I was a little relieved to see she was drinking it, too.

She was studying me again in that unnerving way, and while it made me want to curl in on myself, I knew that if anyone might understand my link to Ceren, it was Adriel. Her interest in bloodstones and pearls had worried me at first, but of course she would be interested; they were linked to her heritage, too, via the bone trees. And she had taken me to the grove, a place that was clearly meaningful to her. Maybe it was time for me to be vulnerable, too.

I took a sip of the tea, which had a light berry flavor. “No, I wasn’t talking to myself.”

“Care to tell me about it?”

I told her about the visions and dreams, how twice I’d seen Ceren drinking my blood, which might help explain our link. “I spoke to him this time,” I added. “And he responded. He said he has the Varenians, but he wouldn’t tell me what he plans to do with them.”

She watched me intently, and I couldn’t fight the feeling that she was gathering up my thoughts like she would gather herbs, as if they were ingredients in some potion I couldn’t fathom.

“I understand your fascination with blood magic now,” she said when I’d finished.

I snorted. “I wouldn’t call it a fascination. It’s more of a necessary interest.”

“Fair enough.” She took my cup from me and rose to her feet, stretching. “As I said before, I know very little about blood magic. The bond that you and Ceren have... I can’t say I’ve never heard of anything like it, but I have no experience with it. And for now, it sounds like it might be useful.”