Silver Blood

I woke up the next morning with sunlight on my face and no pain in my body.

For a moment I lay still and simply enjoyed it. The room was warm. The blanket was soft. My arms looked like arms again, pale and thin but whole. Nara’s paste had done its work.

Then I remembered Orrin and the little purple flower, and the warmth drained out of the day.

A tray waited by the bed with hot porridge, honey, and a note in blocky handwriting.

Eat. I will be on the east balcony. Come if you wish. K.

I ate. Then I put on a clean dress and went to find him.

***

The east balcony hung out over the valley like a ship’s deck. Snow lay in clean white sheets across the slopes, and the morning sun turned every ridge to gold.

Kaelen stood at the stone rail, hands braced against it, in his shirtsleeves.

“You look better,” he said without turning.

“How do you always know when I am coming?”

“The bond.” He glanced at me. “Or perhaps you walk loudly.”

I stood beside him. The wind tugged at my hair. For a while neither of us spoke.

“I told you I came to Silverpine because of a rumor,” he said at last. “That was not the whole truth.”

I waited.

“I was nine years old the night Dark Moon fell.” He kept his eyes on the horizon. “My father had sent me north to learn from the priestesses. I was a visitor in their hall. I woke to screaming and smoke. A woman with silver eyes pulled me out of bed, pushed me through a window, and told me to run.”

My breath caught. “My mother?”

“I never learned her name. Only the color of her eyes.” He finally looked at me. “Yours are the same. I knew it before I knew anything else.”

“And you have spent twenty years looking.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because she saved my life, and I never thanked her.” He swallowed. “Because I wanted to know someone lived.”

I did not know what to say. So I reached out and laid my hand over his on the rail. His fingers turned and gripped mine.

“I should tell you something too,” I said. “I was angry in the carriage. I am still a little angry. Everyone around me keeps deciding what I should do and where I should go.”

“I know.”

“If I want to walk in the city alone, I will.”

“With guards,” he said.

“Without.”

“With one guard. At a distance.”

I narrowed my eyes. He did not flinch.

“Two guards,” I countered, “who stay out of sight.”

“One guard, out of sight.”

“Deal,” I said.

We looked at each other, and suddenly we were both laughing. It was the strangest feeling. Like finding a room in my own house that I never knew existed.

***

Nara was waiting in the long study, which smelled of herbs and old paper. She had cleared a table and laid out a small glass bottle with a few drops of dark red liquid.

“Tobias took this from the healer house,” she said. “A leftover sample of your blood from the last transfusion.”

She tilted the bottle toward the window. In the sunlight, the drops shimmered faintly silver.

“Moon blood,” Nara said. “The real thing. I have not seen it in twenty years.” She set a candle beside it.

“Watch.”

She let one drop fall onto a plain white dish and lit the wick. The blood curled and rose in a thin bright thread, reaching toward the flame like a living creature.

“It is alive,” I whispered.

“It is more than alive. “My concern is greater than I thought.” Nara’s mouth tightened. “Blood like this heals, yes. But it also gives.

Whoever receives it can borrow the strength, the speed, the senses of the giver. “A healer would use such blood to save a life. But someone with darker intentions could use it to steal another person’s strength.”

Kaelen’s voice went flat. “You are saying someone used Sera’s blood for more than medicine.”

“I am saying this sample behaves like blood that has been used before. That is all I can say from a single bottle.” Nara folded her arms. “I would need to see the person who received it. I would need to look at their eyes.”

My stomach turned over. “The person who received it was Lila.”

Nobody spoke.

“She is sick,” I said. “Or I thought she was. She collapsed at dinner. The healer said her blood was thin.”

“The healer is dead,” Kaelen said quietly.

“Perhaps she was fooled as well. Perhaps she is another victim.” Even as I said it, I felt how thin it sounded. “Someone could have been poisoning her too.”

“Perhaps,” Nara said. “Or perhaps not. I will not accuse a girl on a hunch. But Sera.” She leaned closer. “The night before you ran. You told me you saw something in the hallway.”

I hesitated. The memory rose up like a ghost. Lila’s long stride in the moonlight. Her chin high, her shoulders back. The hunger in her face.

“I saw her walk,” I said at last. “Quickly. Easily. Then she saw me and fell. I told myself I imagined it.”

“Did you?”

“I do not know.” The words scraped my throat. “I do not know what I believe. She has been my sister for ten years.”

“Not your sister,” Kaelen said, very gently. “Not by blood.”

“But by everything else.” I pressed my hands together. “Do you know what it is like to suspect the only person who was ever kind to you in that house?”

“Was she kind?” Nara asked.

I opened my mouth to say yes. Then I stopped.

I thought of whispered words and small, sweet smiles.

Of pastries Lila had never shared with me. Of a hand on my arm in the hall, light as a bird, and the soft voice saying, Poor Sera. You always look so tired.

It had never been kindness. It had been attention.

There is a difference.

“I do not know,” I said again, quieter.

Nara nodded slowly. “Then we watch, and we wait. We learn who gave the orders. A sick girl does not hire a healer, or steal his records, or leave a flower in a dead man’s hand. Someone else is pulling threads.”

“We must find that person,” Kaelen said.

“We must find that person,” I agreed.

***

The horn blew at noon.

I was in the small garden below the study, trying to shake the chill from my bones, when I heard the clatter of hooves and the bark of orders. By the time I reached the gate, guards had formed a ring across the road.

Beyond them stood a mud spattered carriage with a Silverpine crest on the door.

My mother climbed down first. She was weeping, her hair untidy, a basket of flowers pressed to her chest.

My father followed, gray and stooped, hat crushed in his hands. Cael came last, pale and silent, his arm held out like a rail.

And on his arm, wrapped in a white cloak with her golden curls loose, was Lila.

She looked smaller than I remembered. Her face was bloodless. She trembled with each step, as if the wind might blow her over, and a ripple of sympathy ran through the watching guards.

“Please,” Mother sobbed at the gate. “We only want to see our daughter.”

“Sera is not your daughter,” a guard said coldly.

“She is mine,” Mother said. “I raised her. I loved her.”

My throat closed.

Lila raised her head.

She scanned the walls of the citadel, floor by floor, window by window, until she found me standing behind the iron bars. She gave a small, sweet smile.

Something stirred in my chest. A tiny silver spark, awakened by that smile. My wolf lifted her head and growled low in my mind.

And across the courtyard, for one single heartbeat, Lila’s brown eyes flashed bright gold.

“Her eyes flashed gold, but beneath that colour, I caught something familiar. A faint silver glow. The same strange light I had seen in my own blood.”

Then she blinked, swayed against my brother’s arm, and the moment was gone.