Season of Sacrifice (Blood of Azure Book 1) Jonathan Michael (red novels .txt) 📖

her condescending advice. I refrain and instead grip the base of the trunk—no, my left fails to grip it. I have no left. I’ll never have a left again. I scowl and tighten my left into a fist and imagine swinging at Ellia.

“You’ll get over it.”

I scowl at her.

“Continue. Put your hand on the tree.”

I obey. Nothing happens. “Just an average girl with no knowledge of her talent.”

“Tigershit! Do it. Or lose your other hand too.”

My breath gets caught in my throat. She would do it. I have no doubt. I examine the trunk briefly before proceeding. I close my eyes and begin. I can feel my energy drain into the trunk. I can feel the wood deteriorating cell by cell. The trunk rots.

“Hold!” Ellia shouts. The right side of the tree is covered in black rot. A loud creak barks as it gets ready to collapse. Ellia, standing on my left, grips my nub and shoves it against the trunk.

“What are you—”

“Just focus.”

I assume Ellia stands by my side for physical support, readying herself to push the tree in the correct direction. But she’s somehow utilizing my talent to accomplish the task. A shadow creeps from Ellia’s fingertips—not my nub—slowly oozing into the tree.

“I knew it!” Astor calls out. “I felt it when you slapped me the last time. You’re not just a Sprhowt. You’re an Imp!”

An Imp? One of the Graft races. They’re real? Ellia has the Dihkai’s talents? Was that the same cool touch I felt when she slapped me? A fleeting taste of rot on my cheek.

Ellia turns around with the swiftness of a hummingbird, sword in hand, swinging it straight for Astor’s neck. Somehow Astor ducks in time and stumbles out of the way. Unfortunately for her, she’s heeled to the edge of the ravine. Ellia quickly adjusts and starts toward her.

Astor is trapped. She leaps behind the tree we’re trying to fell. Ellia, instead of chasing her, knocks me to the ground and swings at the trunk. Plagued with rot, it gives way. Astor reacts too slow. She staggers backward as the tree falls in the same direction.

She slips. Her hands scramble, but there’s nothing to grab onto. As if an external force tugs at her ankles, she disappears into the ravine as the tree cracks down right where her feet were just planted. She’s gone.

I clamber onto the fallen tree, hoping to see her holding on below. Ellia mutters something, but I fail to listen. There she is! She grips one of the branches. And it appears she’s looking for a way to climb down. Smart. Knowing Ellia will finish her off if she sees her, I refrain from getting her attention and pull away. I shake my head with disgust. It fools nobody.

“Ugh! That damn bitch. Just let go!” Ellia shouts down to her. “It’ll be easier than what you have waiting for you up here.” Just then, Ellia looks up at me and smiles. “It’s your turn. Since I had to help you with this engineering miracle we’re standing on, you get to finish her off. I need to see what your capable of. If you can’t do it, it’ll prove the Taoiseach was wrong about you. And it’ll give me the freedom to put you right by her side at the bottom of this ravine.”

I kneel and straddle the trunk. If I send Astor to her death, I save myself. It's simple, right? One life for another. I hesitate. Astor looks up to me. Not with anger, or fear. But with compassion. She understands what I must do, and she has already accepted her own death over mine. To be so full of empathy. What it must be like. The branch grows black beneath my hand and softens into rotten mulch. Astor falls freely, a serene expression on her face. I look away, unable to watch. Ellia, with a satisfied grin, relishes in seeing Astor fall to her watery grave.

I continue on, crossing the bridge in silence. I don’t look back to see if Ellia or Persia are following. I don’t care. Astor, although mostly annoying with her always caring attitude, was becoming a friend. She didn’t need to die. Just like her two mates back in Greenport. They didn’t need to die. How can one person be so caring and loving and another be so careless and heartless? With the two opposites on a long journey together, one was bound to triumph. It would have been a miracle if both survived to the Crimson Capital. And only the strong survive, right? Are loving and caring for the weak?

Ellia, mounted on Persia now, grabs me under the arm and hoists me onto Persia’s back. One-handed. Where does her strength come from? She has a toned and healthy frame, but no excessive bulging muscles. Does her physique even matter? Or does her strength come from within?

Persia dashes northward through the forest at a heavier pace now. No more pedestrians to slow our travels.

“When I was an infant, I was abandoned,” Ellia proclaims. “It wasn’t a simple abandonment, such as my father leaving me on the doorstep of a House of Seasons or my mother pawning me off onto a welcoming family because she was an irresponsible whore who had birthed too many bastard children in her lifetime. It’s true, but there was more to it. The House of Seasons rejected me, as did a couple that was unfertile and so desperate for a child of their own. I was a wretched infant in the eyes of society, a cursed soul according to the local Advocate, a newborn infant without love.”

I remain silent, uncertain of her confessions.

“My father—I know not who he was—wished to keep my existence a secret. Not because I was cursed, but because he had a family of his own and didn’t want a bastard