BloodBound: Hunted by the Crowns Executioner

The first thing my mother ever taught me about magic was how to hide it. The second was what to do if hiding stopped being an option. I hadn't thought about that lesson in years. Not seriously, anyway. In Bellhaven, people didn't talk about magic unless they had to. The Gifted were something that existed beyond our little town—people with enough money to matter, enough power to be noticed, or enough stupidity to let strangers know what they could do. The rest of us were Unbound. At least, that's what I was supposed to be. I'd spent twenty-one years making sure nobody questioned it. It was easy enough. I worked at my family's farm. I sold eggs and preserves in town. I complained about the weather, argued with my younger cousins, and pretended that the strange things that happened around me were nothing more than coincidence. When the frost disappeared from our crops overnight, I said my father had covered them. When my mother's broken wrist healed in three days, she told everyone the healer in the next village had helped her. And when I was thirteen and accidentally made an entire dying apple tree bloom in the middle of winter, my mother cut every blossom from the branches before anyone could see. We got good at lying. We had to. Because in Averyn, being Bloodbound wasn't a secret you kept. It was a death sentence. Which was why, on the afternoon everything went wrong, I was very careful to keep my hands to myself. "Elara!" I turned toward the sound of my name. Tomas Whitlock was running across the farmyard, his boots kicking up little clouds of dust. His mother shouted after him. "Tomas! Don't you dare go in there!" He ignored her. I laughed. "You're going to get yourself killed." He grinned. "Then you'll have to tell my mom." "Absolutely not." The old grain shed stood at the edge of the property, leaning slightly to one side after years of storms. My father had been meaning to replace it for as long as I could remember. I'd told him it was going to fall on someone eventually. He'd told me I was dramatic. Apparently, he was right. The first crack sounded like a gunshot. Everyone stopped. I looked up. One of the main support beams had split down the center. "Tomas." The boy looked over his shoulder. "What?" "Move." The second crack was louder. The roof shifted. Someone screamed. Tomas froze. I didn't think. I ran. I reached him just as the first section of the roof began to collapse. I grabbed his arm. "Come on!" He stumbled. His boot caught beneath a fallen beam. "I can't!" "Yes, you can." "I can't!" I dropped to my knees and grabbed the wood. It didn't move. Above us, the entire roof groaned. "Tomas, look at me." His eyes were wide with terror. "Don't look up." "But—" "Look at me." He did. I pulled again. Nothing. The shadow of the falling roof swallowed us. And suddenly I was six years old again. My mother's hands around my wrists. Her terrified face. Her voice. Never where anyone can see. The beam above us snapped. I stopped thinking. I reached for the magic. It answered. Heat rushed through my chest. For one impossible moment, everything around me became painfully clear. The wood. The dust. Tomas's heartbeat. The living grass beneath my knees. The tiny insects moving through the soil. Every living thing felt connected by something I couldn't see but somehow understood. I pulled. Not with my hands. With everything else. A golden light burst beneath my skin. The falling roof stopped. Not completely. It changed. The debris bent away from us, splitting around the invisible barrier I'd created. A beam crashed inches from my shoulder. Another broke apart before it could touch Tomas. I could feel every piece of the structure pushing against the shield. My lungs burned. My heartbeat thundered. Tomas stared at me. "Elara..." "Run." He didn't move. "Run!" He scrambled free. I shoved the last piece of timber away and followed him. We stumbled into the sunlight. For several seconds, nobody moved. The entire farmyard was silent. I slowly looked down at my hands. The golden light was fading. Then I heard someone whisper behind me. "Bloodbound." My stomach dropped. Another voice answered. "She used magic." I looked around. There were too many people. Neighbors. Workers. Tomas's mother. My father. All of them staring at me. At my hands. At the remains of the shed. No one spoke. Then Tomas's mother pulled him against her chest. Someone took a step backward. Someone else crossed themselves. And from somewhere near the road came the words I had spent my entire life terrified of hearing. "Someone needs to tell the Crown." I ran. I didn't stop until I reached the farmhouse. My lungs burned as I shoved the door open. "Mom?" Nothing. I checked the kitchen. Empty. Living room. Empty. "Mom!" No answer. My father's boots weren't by the door either. A cold feeling settled in my stomach. They should have been here. My mother always came running when she heard shouting from the fields. Always. I moved farther into the house. The kitchen looked normal at first. Then I noticed the chair lying on its side. A cupboard door stood open. One of the drawers had been pulled halfway out. And there was a single dark red spot on the floor beside the table. Blood. I crouched. The instant my fingers came close to it, something inside me stirred. Not the same feeling as before. This was quieter. Deeper. Like a whisper traveling through water. I touched the blood. The world went still. Two words brushed against my mind. They know. Then the connection vanished. I jerked my hand away. The blood spot was gone. I stared at my fingertip. Nothing. No blood. No whisper. Just the faint pounding of my heart. "Mom?" Still nothing. I stood. My mother's voice came back to me from years ago. Not something she'd said once. Something she'd repeated so many times that I'd stopped listening. If you're ever afraid. If you ever think someone has found us. Don't ask questions. Don't wait for us. Go to the bedroom. Under the floorboard. Take everything. I had always thought she meant someday. Some distant, impossible someday. Apparently, someday had arrived. I ran upstairs. My bedroom was exactly as I'd left it. I dropped to my knees beside the bed and pulled the loose floorboard free. The small space beneath it was still there. So was the bundle. I stared at it. My mother had never let me open it. She'd only ever told me one thing about what was inside. "If you ever need it, you'll know." I reached in. There were old papers tied together with black string. A small leather pouch. A silver pendant I'd never seen before. A handful of photographs. And a sealed envelope bearing a crest I didn't recognize. I grabbed everything. The floorboards creaked downstairs. I froze. Someone had opened the front door. Slow footsteps moved through the house. One. Two. Three. My heart began beating so hard it hurt. I shoved the bundle beneath my shirt and stood. Maybe it was my father. Maybe my mother. Maybe someone from town. Maybe— A man's voice carried up the stairs. "Elara Arden." I stopped breathing. The voice was calm. Too calm. I knew that voice. Everyone in Averyn knew that voice. Stories about him had reached Bellhaven long before he ever had. The King's Hunter. The Crown's executioner. The man mothers warned their children about. Kael Draven. His footsteps stopped at the bottom of the stairs. "You're making this much harder than it needs to be." I backed toward the window. My fingers closed around the bundle beneath my shirt. Kael started up the stairs. Slowly. One step at a time. I looked at the window. Then at the door. Then at the man coming toward me. And for the first time in my life, I understood why my mother had spent twenty-one years teaching me how to disappear. Because the Crown hadn't found some Bloodbound girl in Bellhaven. It had found me.