Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6) Lan Chan (uplifting novels .TXT) 📖

“Why?”

“Why the blood or why my own blood?”

“Both.”

“There is great power in blood. I need it to bind the spell together. I’m using my blood because the alchemy is strongest when it’s my own.”

Without giving him time to consider, I nicked my finger and pressed the pad together to extract the drops. The potion didn’t look like anything to write home about at the moment. There were peaches and strawberries floating in it, as well as the scent of honey and the eye-opening acidity of the winterflower. Slivers of rainbow whale ambergris floated in the foaming bubbles.

Once I’d used some knit-bone balm to hold my cut in place, I closed my eyes and drew on the storm of alchemy inside me. My turbulent emotions made the pool erratic. It was crashing against invisible rocks, unsure where the evil was that it needed to attack. Taking a couple of calming breaths, I drew the magic outwards and saw the world light up in pink behind my closed lids. The Ley sight was a glistening shimmer of rose tones as I funnelled my magic into the cauldron and forced the essence of the ingredients to warp.

A dull ache began to throb behind my left eye. Truth be told, I shouldn’t have been performing this magic wholesale like this. I’d made the last batch bit by bit over weeks. The last time I’d performed magic this time-restricted, it had been because Lex needed me. Afterwards, I’d had to take a potion myself to keep me from falling over. None of that mattered anymore as I funnelled the alchemy into the cauldron and made it change the properties of some of the ingredients inside. Bit by bit, the dull, translucent liquid began to glow like amber.

I heard Noah hiss. My hands shook. The pain in my head gained traction, spreading to the right side and down my neck.

My stomach lurched. “Sophie...”

Gritting harder to the alchemy, I forced the rest of it into the cauldron. Something clattered to the ground behind me, but I wouldn’t allow myself to lose concentration. Stabbing pain now sliced into my gut. I took one last shuddering breath and pushed. The alchemy stuttered.

My eyes opened just in time to see the floor coming up to meet me.

“Sophie!” I heard Professor Suleiman shout.

The world righted itself as Noah scooped me up and sat me down on the chair. He pressed his palm to my forehead, his touch uncomfortably warm but not unpleasant. Professor Suleiman’s lined face appeared in front of me.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

I nodded, even though Noah’s arm was the only thing keeping me from face planting. “I think I overdid it a little.” He glanced at the full cauldron of shimmering elixir and frowned.

“I think you’d better just sit for the rest of the class.”

“Why did you push so hard?” Noah asked when we were alone again. He eased away as soon as I could sit up on my own.

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“You almost passed out.”

“I’ll be fine.”

His expression was grim. “That’s not what I asked.”

When the bell rang for the end of class, it was obvious I would be useless for Arcane Magic. It was just as well, because Agatha went into a rant about how everything that had happened the night before could have been avoided if we had taken the precautions she had suggested.

Sure, those precautions involved ritual sacrifice, but so what?

She was even less impressed when I turned up to our private tutorial still lightheaded. My pool of alchemy was bone dry. “Get out of my sight,” she said, dismissing me with such disgust that I felt a shiver run down my spine.

Buoyed by her annoyance, I was bouncing on the balls of my feet until Noah took a turn towards the Reserve instead of the infirmary.

“You’re going the wrong way,” I informed him.

He grabbed my arm when I veered off. “You’re dead on your feet. You can barely walk straight. You’ve run into two people already. There’s no way you’re working in the infirmary.”

Uncorking one of the vials of elixir that I’d been making him carry around, I swallowed it down. The fog cleared from my head immediately. The potion kick-started my system, and the first trickle of alchemic magic began to flow again.

His voice was rough with disbelief. “What the heck was that?”

“I’m fine. I’m going to work now.”

He shut up when we arrived to the groans of broken bodies. I could drain myself every day for a month and there wouldn’t be enough elixir to help all of them. As a result, I had to become ruthless. The para-human who was bleeding out too quickly to clot won over the Fae whose wing was half hanging off. The dwarf whose arm was almost completely severed at the elbow joint pounded down the elixir while the bull shifter with the fractured ribs looked on without relief.

In the heat of their distress, not one of them questioned what I was giving them or that it was even me who gave it to them. Not after that first para-human groaned with relief as the wound at his throat healed enough that it could be cleaned.

As evening closed in on us, I found myself in the small bathroom next to Doctor Thorne’s office. I was splashing water on my face, when I looked into the mirror. All of a sudden, black eyes that should have been green stared back at me. The groan of pained soldiers filtered through to me from just outside the door. It all became a little too much.

I let out a single sob before Noah knocked on the door. “You okay in there?”

Cupping water in my palms, I splashed my face again. “I’m fine,” I said when I opened the door. He grabbed the back of my shirt before I could start walking.

“It’s time to go home.”

“But–”

The look in his eye said that I could either walk out of the infirmary on my own two feet or I could be