Kingdom of Sea and Stone (Crown of Coral and Pearl #2) - Mara Rutherford Page 0,54

New Castle wouldn’t yield enough stones for an entire army. “There must be more bloodstones in the flooded mine,” I said, more to myself than Adriel.

“And?” she asked.

A horrible thought struck me, sending chills over my entire body. “He doesn’t need the Varenians to dive for pearls anymore.” I sat down again as the room began to spin around me. “But he still needs the Varenians to dive.”

16

I couldn’t know for sure if Ceren had captured the Varenians to mine for him, but I also couldn’t think of another good reason for bringing them to New Castle. Adriel agreed that it was a likely explanation, so I was eager to share the theory with Talin, Zadie, and Sami. If Ceren really did need the Varenians to dive, he wouldn’t kill them, which bought us a little time. But I wouldn’t know anything for sure until we went to New Castle, and I had no idea if Talin was having any luck enlisting the Galethians’ help.

The old Nor would have already been on the road south, armed with a half-formulated plan and driven solely by the need to act. I thought of my time in New Castle, where I’d been alone and without allies, until I made the decision to trust Lady Melina, Ebb, and finally Talin. I wasn’t without allies now, and I was going to have to trust that we had the best odds of helping the Varenians together.

Adriel herself had become the most unlikely ally of all. Sensing my anxiety, she put me to work to keep my mind occupied. She concocted remedies and tinctures from herbs, wildflowers, mushrooms, berries, and other unidentifiable substances she kept in glass vials for the people who came by the cottage. At one point, she sent me out with a book filled with drawings and descriptions to fetch a special kind of mushroom for a tea. I managed to bring back several poisonous mushrooms along with the correct ones, and the berries I picked on a whim gave me a rash. Fortunately, Adriel had a cure for that, too.

“Have you found anything useful?” she asked the following morning, nodding to the book in my hands. I’d spent all last night reading it and was fairly certain I’d actually lost intelligence in the process.

“No,” I huffed, nearly tripping over a stone as we crossed a field. Adriel was gathering a rare herb that only bloomed one week each year. Lungflower, it was called, or godsbreath, a small, innocuous plant with tiny white buds as soft as down. I would never have noticed it if Adriel hadn’t pointed it out. She gathered the buds, leaving the stems to die and regrow again next year. The buds would be dried and used in tea to ease a sick patient’s congestion.

“Come now,” she said, taking my arm so I didn’t trip again. “You must have learned something.”

Our horses were grazing in the field nearby, and the sun was warm despite the crispness in the early autumn air, but I was too exasperated to appreciate it. “Every time I think I’m getting somewhere, the book tries to trick me.”

She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “What do you mean?”

“Take this, for example. ‘Bloodstone magic royals keep; bonds of death that run skin-deep.’ Does that mean that the bloodstone only works as long as it’s in contact with the wearer’s skin? Or does that mean that once the bloodstone is removed, the wearer dies?”

She shook her head, lips curled in an amused smile.

“I’m glad you find my frustration comical.” I flipped to another page. “And this. ‘Bloodstone wearers willing are; control is weakened from afar.’ That seems to mean Ceren can’t control his guards from far away, which would make sense, considering how easily the captured guard was taken. And it explains why he would have come to Varenia and Galeth himself. But I could be reading that completely wrong. I just don’t see why the entire thing has to be written in riddles. Aren’t books supposed to be helpful?”

Adriel placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Breathe, Nor.”

“Meanwhile,” I continued, “Ceren has an entire village of Varenians at his disposal, and a mine’s worth of bloodstones he could force them to extract.”

Her grip tightened. “We don’t know that yet.”

I tried to take a deep breath, but I felt like I was wearing a corset. We didn’t know anything, which was the problem. If Ceren could bring on the visions by drinking my blood, then