Chapter 27
NARYA
We passed through several archways and dimly lit tunnels guarded by Bloodstone warriors. Although there were no courtiers or servants in this part of the palace, every step felt like it was being watched.
A flicker of movement caught the corner of my eye, pale against the blood-dark stone.
A white mouse darted from the shadows, its fur glinting faintly as it scurried along the wall.
It stopped halfway and turned its head towards me, its silver eyes silver, blinking once, before it disappeared through a crack in the wall.
Daigen’s hand closed around mine again, steady and warm. My crystal stirred at the contact. I leaned into his touch, grateful for the support. I felt like I was about to walk into something that might change my life forever.
The passage ended at a gate carved from a towering slab of black stone.
The surface pulled in the torchlight until veins of red light within it crawled outward like molten scars.
Two Bloodstone guards flanked the entrance, their eyes lowered in wordless deference to their king when Daigen approached and led me through.
The air changed as soon as we crossed the threshold.
It thickened, clinging to my skin like the place wanted to drag me in.
Then the world around me opened, and I stood inside a cavern so immense I could not see the ceiling.
Far above me, roots as thick as towers disappeared into the shadows and spiraled back down again to the enormous tree at their center.
This was no ordinary tree.
It was the Bloodstone Tree of Stars.
I could feel its magic pressing against my ribs.
It rose like a monolith at the heart of the cavern, black bark split with rivers of red light that pulsed slow and heavy.
Just like the Moonstone Tree, the leaves were crystals that hung low in an arch above the ground.
Some of them were gleaming deep red, catching the light in deadly glints; others were blackened, hollow where the aelith had been drained away.
The Bloodstone Tree was… dying.
At the base, thick black roots bled into the pools of light, drawing the magic hungrily back up into the tree. Daigen’s fingers tightened around mine. The ground illuminated beneath us with every step, rippling into crimson puddles that faded when I stopped walking.
Daigen led me forward carefully. Figures moved among the roots, their cloaks the colour of ash-silver starlight.
They bent to tend the glowing pools of water, their hands lingering in the light.
One woman stood at the base of the trunk, her hands folded in front of her, head turned upward as if she might bring the fading crystals back to life.
When she turned, the light caught her face, and I knew she was no ordinary caretaker.
Her eyes were pale and unfocused, reflecting the firelight like glass.
Fine lines webbed the corners, not from age but from sleepless years spent watching something she loved decay.
Thin gold markings latticed her bronze skin like roots underneath skin.
She had the look of someone who’d endured a lot in their life and could weigh every truth and lie in a single glance.
“Daigen.” Her voice was hoarse yet strong, her sharp gaze falling upon us like she’d already sensed our approach. Emerias stood near her, his face unusually grim as he looked up at the tree. “Another branch has fallen.”
The woman’s white eyes moved from Daigen to me. There was no colour in them.
“I knew you would come,” she said, the cavern carrying her voice to every root and shadow. “The Tree warned me.”
Something in the bark creaked, as if the tree itself agreed. A shiver slid down my spine.
“Lady Serai is the head healer,” Daigen said beside me. “My aunt.”
Daigen’s aunt? He’d never spoken of an aunt.
My pulse spiked as Lady Serai stepped closer, her eyes never leaving mine.
“You are late, Narya.”
She already knew my name. Had Daigen talked about me to her?
He stopped us within arm’s length of her and the Tree. Serai looked at me closely, and I forced myself to hold her gaze. She didn’t look old enough to be Daigen’s aunt. I felt suddenly nervous to be meeting her. Could she see me?
“I do not see, but I hear,” she said, as if reading my thoughts.
“I have tended this Tree longer than you’ve been alive, girl.
I feel it stir when storms are brewing, when lies are whispered in the court above.
And when a soul it’s been waiting for finally sets foot among its roots. I do not need my eyes for that.”
Daigen stayed quiet at my shoulder, but I felt his attention on me, the weight of his gaze as tangible as a hand at my back. Lady Serai turned to the trunk and laid a hand against one of the red molten veins on the trunk. The light inside it moved under her palm.
“You’ve heard the tale of the Three Trees?” she asked.
I nodded. “Every child has. Three Trees planted by the gods—one for each kingdom—watered with their tears and blood, their roots binding the world together. They say that’s where our magic comes from. From what the gods left behind.”
“Yes, but that is not all of it.” Her palm stayed on the trunk, red light blooming beneath her skin.
“Before the three, there was once a fourth tree. The first to grow and the first to fall. It rooted in the gods’ own realm.
But when the gods turned on each other, their war split the sky and the fourth Tree withered in the flames.
“The others felt its death. In grief or punishment—no one agrees—the gods bound them together, their roots entwined so that when one suffers, all must bleed. That is why they fade now. Every branch that darkens is another wound that cannot heal.”
She turned her sightless gaze upward. “But our Tree is not like the others. When the Sun Sister and Moon Brother defied their kin, our Tree drank in their rebellion. It remembers love and ruin both. Its leaves do not just hold fate. They hold memory. Pain. Choice. Things the False Gods tried to erase.”
Her palm still pressed to the Tree, the veins of light seemed to glow thicker and brighter.
“The moment you crossed the bridge, something in the Tree awakened. It has been waiting for you.”
Serai guided me to one of the lower branches, her bare feet light on the uneven ground. The nearer we came, the more the air seemed to close and hum around me, every breath tasting faintly of iron and salt. The hum grew louder, a vibration felt in my ribs.
“This branch died last winter.” She paused beneath a cluster of blackened crystal leaves.
Up close, they looked brittle enough to shatter under her breath, their edges rimed in a dull frost. “Its magic faded in a single night. We could not save it, nor the fates lost to it. The aelith withered too quickly.”
The sight clawed at something in me. It was like looking at a grave for a piece of the realm itself.
The leaves looked starved of light. There must have been at least one hundred of them on that branch alone.
One hundred fated bonds—lost forever. The aelith never to be awakened in the Basin. It made my eyes sting.
“The Tree will burn you if it does not want you,” she said, removing her hand. “If it does, you may lose more than your fate.”
Daigen shifted behind me. When I glanced over my shoulder, his eyes locked with mine. It was clear what was expected of me.
The Bloodstone Tree wanted to test me.
I raised my hand. The air went still; even the red light in the trunk seemed to pause, waiting.
The moment my fingers brushed the edges of a crystal leaf, the cold struck me first. Then the crystal’s black surface split open, and light bled through.
It shone red at first, then brightened into a single ray of starlight that burst through the centre.
The crystals rustled like the Tree was breathing again.
But every breath hurt, landing deep inside me.
A wave of magic burst through me, imploding in my chest like a shattering star. My knees buckled, and the cavern spun in streaks of red and silver light.
I saw the Sun Sister and Moon Brother falling through a sky split open with fire, their crowns dissolving into ash as the first Blood Moon rose above them. A blue moon followed—bleeding into the sea until the waves turned crimson.
My back burned. The scars glowed like constellations, shifting, alive. A hand reached through the blaze and touched them.
A portal tore open, spilling red light.
Daigen stepped through it, his hand gripping mine.
We were covered in blood and crowned in thorns.
And behind us, the world burned like the heart of a dying god.
I gasped, my vision blurring. The branch burned beneath my touch but it wasn’t with pain. It was with some kind of knowing, like it had seen me before, in another life, and was only now remembering my name.
Narya, it spoke inside me.
When my eyes cleared, Daigen was the only thing holding me upright. His dark face was unreadable, but his eyes searched mine with a fear that startled me. I’d never seen him afraid before. Angry, lustful, completely unhinged, yes, but never afraid.
“What did you see?”
“I saw… us,” I said, gasping.
His aunt’s eyes flicked between us, her expression unreadable. A faint, knowing smile ghosted the corner of her mouth, gone almost before I was sure it had been there. Then she nodded to Daigen.
“It must be done. The Tree is ready.”
What must be done? Ready for what?
Daigen steadied me, then he moved to stand beneath the skeletal branch.
He placed his palm flat against the bark, his fingers splayed like he meant to anchor himself to it.
The crimson veins brightened in response, the light swelling and pouring upward through the trunk towards the dead branch.
Liquid fire threaded into the remaining black crystals, chasing away the frost that held them.
I felt the draw of it in my own chest, a pull deep in my body.
The Tree was drinking from him. Draining his power.
Daigen’s jaw locked, his breathing turning harsh through his teeth.
The muscles in his arm clenched, the tendons standing out beneath his skin, and a faint tremor rippled through him.
Sweat caught the light along his temple, sliding down the sharp lines of his jaw.
A sense of alarm struck me and I moved to stop him.
His aunt’s hand caught my arm, but the sound of his ragged breathing broke through my hesitation. My fingers caught his wrist, meaning only to pull him back.
The instant our skin met, the world seemed to lurch. His markings flared silver, chasing away the red from his skin. The same light bled into mine, the pull between us thrumming like a pulse trying to tear free.
Then the pain hit me too, sharp and searing.
All of a sudden I was pushed back, away from Daigen.
The glow shattered between us, scattering into white sparks that hissed on the ground. I gasped, my palms throbbing, as the pain instantly vanished.
Above Daigen, a single leaf brightened to the same silver-white as the one I had touched. Then the light wavered. It flared too brightly and flickered like a flame about to be blown out by the wind.
Serai stepped forward sharply. “That’s enough.”
Daigen’s hand slipped from the bark, and he swayed, his face drained pale.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It needs more.”
He pressed his palm to the bark again, then the other one.
The muscles along his arms convulsed as the skin began to darken, turning as black as the crystals had been. The corruption bled into him, the black rot of the dead leaves seeping through him.
“You will drain yourself to nothing,” Serai warned. “You have restored many bonds. The aelith will live.”
“It’s not enough,” Daigen growled.
He healed the branch until all the crystals’ magic had been restored, the aelith flaring to life again.
But it came at a great cost. Two of the cloaked attendants were suddenly there, steadying Daigen before he collapsed.
They spoke in low, urgent tones as they lowered him to the ground.
He let them, but his eyes stayed on the branch, as if tormented by those around it he could not heal. The fates and bonds he could not save.
My heart cracked. The image of him kneeling before that monstrous beauty—the king who bled himself for the bonds of others—seared itself into me.
“Take her back,” Lady Serai said, gesturing to Emerias. “There is much to be done and I fear it shan’t be pleasant.”
A protest rose to my lips, but Emerias was already at my side, his hand on my shoulder. It was the court hall all over again.
“He’ll be fine,” he assured me. “He just needs rest.”
I stared at Daigen—at his body, drained on the floor, the healers chanting around him. Tears burned my eyes. I couldn’t just leave him. I didn’t know what was going on, but I couldn’t just leave him. Something told me that he needed me.
“He’ll recover,” Emerias said, firmer this time. “He always does.”
One of the healers passed him the small basket I’d carried in earlier, its contents now absurdly ordinary in the shadow of what I’d just seen. Had Daigen actually absorbed the Tree’s sickness into himself?
What if Emerias was wrong and he didn’t recover?
Emerias guided me to the stairs, his grip unyielding when I tried to glance back again. The last thing I saw was Daigen on the ground and the healers’ chanting around him, their voices rising with the Tree’s pulse. The black crystals no longer black. But what had that silver light been?
The sight lodged under my ribs while my crystal burned at my neck.
But the questions in my mind burned hotter, and as I was guided from the cavern, I knew I wasn’t going to wait for answers.
I thought of one person who could move through the shadows undetected, one person who might be able to help me, and I had to find her before the Tree decided whose fate to claim next.