Ebonwilde

Crystal Smith

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9780358531814
• Print ISBN:
  9780063290815

Get ready to be swept away, seduced, and swindled in the wickedly vicious third and final installment in the Bloodleaf series that Laura Sebastian called “enchanting, visceral, and twisty.”

When Aurelia awakens from her magic-induced sleep, it is to the face of a rescuer she didn’t expect, in a body she doesn’t understand, and into a world she no longer recognizes.

Desperate to know what happened to Conrad, Zan, and Kellan after the events at Greythorne Manor, Aurelia follows the threads they left behind straight into the forest. Suddenly she finds herself caught in a web of magic, intrigue, passion, and betrayal that stretches across centuries and ultimately reveals that Aurelia is the final piece of a deadly apocalyptic plan that is only days away.

All Aurelia wants is to reclaim her life and reunite with those she loved and lost; but with the end of the world looming, she’s forced to unravel the dark secrets of the distant past before she can get that chance.

With the fate of mankind on her shoulders, Aurelia must venture into the heart of the Ebonwilde and face the darkest parts of the forest—and of herself.

Ebonwilde is the thrilling conclusion to the epic Bloodleaf series, which Laura Sebastian called “a phantasmagorical wonder” and Sara Holland described as an “eerie, immersive, and fascinating” read.

But as she uncovers a prophecy centuries in the making, will she be strong enough to save her world—or will she be its final undoing?

• Ancient Curse: A deadly prophecy that stretches across centuries, revealing Aurelia as the final piece in a world-ending plan.
• Enemies to Lovers: Waking to the face of an unexpected rescuer, Aurelia must decide if she can trust the one man she was taught to hate.
• Forbidden Love: Torn between a love she can't forget and a destiny she can't escape, Aurelia’s heart is as much at risk as her world.
• Reincarnated Souls: To save the future, Aurelia must unravel the dark secrets of her own past life and a love that has waited a millennium to be reborn.

Part I

The Midnight Strike

1

Now

AURELIA

10 DAYS TO MIDWINTER
1621

My teeth were at his throat.

I could taste salt on his skin; just a hint, from a thin sheen of sweat. Beneath it, blood pulsed through the artery in his neck. I could hear it singing to me, calling to me, begging me to set it free. To break that fragile barrier of skin and let the magic flow hot against my lips, like a kiss. And I wanted to.

Oh—how I wanted to.

“Aurelia.” The word was little more than a breathy exhalation, but it struck me oddly, like a discordant note from a mistuned string. I paused, poised on the brink of the killing strike, and remembered the name.

My name.

My eyes drifted down his neck, where a vial of blood hung from a cord, nestled against his chest. I knew it. Knew the sense of it, the smell of it.

My blood.

My clawlike grip on him went slack. I grabbed the vial and gave it a hard yank, until the cord snapped and came free. Then my eyes darted to the man who had been wearing it. Crimson velvet cape, white brocade overcoat, black lambskin gloves, dark brown eyes, and hair the color of ice.

Dominic Castillion.

The edges of my awareness suddenly sharpened. We were not alone here—wherever here was. Castillion and I were being watched by a circle of gathered people; some were dressed like statesmen, others like soldiers. All were wearing the Castillion livery. They were frozen, gaping at me, caught like insects in a spider’s web, too stunned or scared to move.

“Be calm,” Castillion said, though I wasn’t sure if he was addressing me or the audience.

“Where is Zan?” I croaked, my voice brittle from disuse, grabbing fistfuls of his cloak. “Where is he?”

One of the men in the circle moved forward, hand on his sword.

“No,” Castillion said. “Stay back. I’ve got this.” Castillion gently pulled my hands down from his cloak. “Aurelia,” he said slowly, “I know this is strange. I know you’re scared. I know you have a lot of questions. I will answer them all, I promise. But first, I need you to let my guards leave the garden. Let us take the injured to the infirmary, and then you and I can talk as long as we need. Can you do that? Please? I know you don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

He tilted his head to the side, and I followed the line of the gesture with my eyes, turning to see three men on the ground behind me, moaning. One was clutching an arm to his chest, one had a cut in his head that was seeping blood into his eye. The last was holding a hand to his neck, where blood was spilling between his fingers.

“I didn’t do that,” I said frantically, whirling around. “I couldn’t have done that.” I tried to wipe my hands on my gown, only to have them come away bloodier than before. “This isn’t right. It isn’t real.” But it was real, because there was my casket of luminous glass, lying open and askew on a funereal dais.

This was not the Assembly, where the sanctorium pews were populated with the remains of the mages Cael had killed upon his own emergence from that casket, but it wasn’t hard to overlay the image of those prostrate skeletons across this violence and recognize the similarities between them. It was a horror. A display of depravity. And it was mine.

I felt a hand on my arm. “Aurelia . . .”

“Get back!” I cried, shrinking from Castillion’s touch. “Get away from me!”

“But, wait—”

“Go!” I flung out my arm, but whether it was to attack or to scare him into retreat, even I didn’t know. But the magic, drawn from the soldiers’ unwilling blood, blasted like a gale-force wind, sending him flying into the scrambling group of watchers. When he was able to get back to his feet, his face finally registered a flicker of worry.

Then he nodded, turning to the man nearest to him. “Get them out,” he ordered. “Don’t let anyone see, and speak of this to no one. Understand me?”

When the watchers did not move, Castillion continued, “This is my responsibility. I’ll take care of her. We just need space, all right? As much as we can get.”

As the men and women filed out, I sank to my knees, despondent, bloody hands turned limply upward in my lap, the vial’s cord tangled in my fingers.

“Aurelia,” Castillion said, crouching beside me. “I’m going to see them out. I won’t be gone long. You’ll be safe here in the Night Garden until I return.”

In mere seconds, the greenhouse—for that was what the Night Garden was: an enormous, elaborate greenhouse—was empty of all life. Except for me, but I barely qualified.

They bolted the door behind them.

As a garden, it was an unusual one, with copses of birch and silver-green fir and trimmed with flowers that flourished at night. Gardenia and evening primrose spilled from hanging baskets, while five-inch-wide moonflower blossoms twined up iron pillars that branched into buttresses. White candles burned in the branches, held upright in place by hardened wax rivulets. Overhead, purple wisteria blossoms became a dreamy canopy, and on each side of the dais, great urns were overflowing with the shimmering leaves and tightly closed buds of frostlace flower that would bloom on Midwinter Night, soft white veins visible through the diaphanous amethyst-colored petals, like delicate, snowy spiderwebs.

Judging from the blossoms, Midwinter was only a few weeks away.

The centerpiece of the garden was a statue of white marble, at least twelve feet tall, depicting a man and a woman locked in an intense embrace, each with a halo of stars crowning their lovely foreheads. I might have thought the piece was relaying a moment of carnal passion, were it not for the knife hilt protruding from her back. This was not a representation of love, but rather its cruel extinguishment.

At their feet, the sculptor had chiseled a single white apple. A streak of castoff blood bisected the fruit, as if the stone had worn away in that spot to reveal its true color underneath. Above, a dome sparkled, the night sky black behind it.

How funny, I thought dully, that I had emerged from one glass prison only to be barricaded inside another.

My memories of going into the casket were strange—two different perspectives overlaid into one. One version of me lying down inside, the other standing over, watching. Taking something from around my neck and placing it under my other self’s hands. A ring. Zan’s ring.

Where was it now?

I stooped over the casket and scraped my fingertips over every inch of its interior, then moved to the marble floor, streaking through the sticky splotches of blood. I was still scrabbling around in that mess when I heard the bolt of the greenhouse door slide open and a single set of heavy footsteps come up the path toward me.

I glared at Castillion over my shoulder. “Where is it?” I croaked. “Where is my ring?”

“If you had a ring, I did not know of it,” he said. “Nor could one have been taken from you while you slept. The box was sealed when we removed it from the Assembly and remained so until the moment you came out of it. Here . . .”

He put out a hand as if to help me to my feet, but I flinched away from it with a snarl. “Stay back,” I warned, remembering the men I’d hurt, whose blood still coated the floor.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Castillion said quietly, as if reading my mind. “You were frightened. Confused. I harbor no judgment against you, Aurelia. Nor do any of the others who were here to see it.”

I gave a guttural scoff. “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you in front of your friends,” I said. “Because I wanted to. I wanted to kill you, like I killed your men.”

“My men aren’t dead,” he said. “Gravely injured, yes, but they’ll survive. And they’d do it again, every last one of them, without question.”

I ignored his hand and awkwardly got to my feet on my own, glaring at him the whole time. At our last encounter I’d made a pact with him: I’d save him from a watery grave if he’d join Zan to raise me from mine. But with Zan nowhere to be seen, it remained a point of curiosity why Castillion hadn’t just let me fester inside my coffin for the rest of eternity. He could have walked away. He should have walked away.

“Why?” I asked, finally.

“They trust me. And I told them that we can trust you.”

“But you can’t trust me,” I said. “Because if I find out that you’ve harmed Zan in any way . . .”

“I have not touched Valentin. In fact, I have invited him here on multiple occasions, including this one, and he has declined every one.” He cast a pitying glance at me and then added, “Your prince never came for you.”

2

Then

ZAN

MIDWINTER NIGHT, 1620

“My grandmother used to festoon the house in sage and rue to keep Midwinter spirits away—and here you are, spending the holiday in a tomb.”

Jessamine’s forceful voice sounded in the quiet dark of the crypt like a crack of a hammer against an anvil. Zan groaned and turned away from the throbbing light of her candle, his own having burned down to a nub hours ago. “Midwinter?” he asked, cringing.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t know what day it is,” she said dryly. “Lorelai and Delphinia prepared some bread and smoked ham for you, and I left a bale of hay in the stable for Madrona. It isn’t much, of course, but it’s something.” Bottles clinked at Jessamine’s feet, and she frowned down at them. “There won’t be any wine with the meal, however. Seems someone has cleaned out the Stella’s wine stores.”

“You said some were Aurelia’s bottles.” He lifted his arm to shield his eyes from both Jessamine’s candle and the withering glare it illuminated. “I think she’d want me to have them.”

“If by ‘have them’ you mean ‘have them broken over your idiot head,’ then yes. I do think she’d want you to have them.” She peered past where he sat at the base of Aurelia’s stone sarcophagus into the alcove concealing the rest of the long box. “By all the stars. Is this what you’ve been doing down here?”

The slab that concealed Aurelia’s mortal remains was plain—not like the detailed visages carved into the older caskets radiating the center vestibule. He couldn’t ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Map
• Contents
• 13 Years Ago
• Part I: The Midnight Strike
• Part II: The Enemy Dressed as Friend
• Part III: The Longest Night
• Part IV: The Journey’s End
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Books by Crystal Smith
• Back Ad
• Copyright
• About the Publisher