A Baron of Bonds (Conduit of Light #2)

7. Karus

Chapter 7

Karus

Sitting on Parvus’s back, the dim glow of my green light pulsed to my heartbeat. My orb of magic was steady, strong, and pounded eerily to the rhythm of the Blight’s roots around us.

The tunnel I had entered an hour ago was lined with these roots, and I understood then just how deep the parasitic growth ran. The Blight had been gone from the field of clover above, but its roots had never receded.

The Blightress rode ahead of me on Rauca. Both lumens did not seem to fear her or where we were, which helped calm my nerves. She did not speak again for some time, and I tried to hold back all of the questions I desperately held.

I knew I was on borrowed time.

“How much further? I can’t be away too long. They will be looking for me soon.”

The Blightress turned her head, her golden crown reflecting in my green light. “Do you mean the Baron? Is that who will look for you, Karus?”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

She tsked and sighed heavily in the stale air. “Have you forgotten his betrayal then?”

I inhaled deeply, attempting to steady myself. “How is it you know so much about my life?”

“How is it you know so little of mine?” She turned back to face the tunnel ahead which loomed well beyond my vision. “I have been listening, Little Sprout. You, however, have not.”

I clenched my jaw. “Why do you call me that? You used that same term when you helped me wake weeks ago. What does it mean?”

“Precisely what you think. I see you as a little sprout. Just awakened to the surface, not yet everything you have the potential to be. You bask in rays and soak in the rain, yet you do not know what you will become.”

My anger rose swiftly to the surface. I was growing tired of this charade as my guilt of Revich’s reaction to discovering me gone began to overtake my need for answers.

“And you do? You think that because you can speak to me in my mind and help me heal the lumens that you know me? That you understand my power? Yes, Revich will look for me. He will search to the ends of the isle for me and when I return to him, he will be angry with me and love me still. How dare you question him,” I warned. “You know nothing of us.”

“I know Barons,” she countered. “I know their power. I am intimately aware of their strength as the Barons of Felgren.”

She slid off Rauca’s back and patted her head, moving to her back legs to inspect their healing. “We are here, Karus.”

I glanced around, finding that where we’d traveled in the blighted tunnel looked no different than where we had been moving the last hour. Behind us was a dark path and before us was utter abyss. The constant pulsing of the roots along the dirt walls was beginning to drive me mad.

“What is it you wanted to show me? And what do you mean you know the strength of Barons?”

“You’ll rush my story, Little Sprout, with all these questions. A good story is told in many parts over much time.”

“Stop toying with me!” My voice sunk into the dirt walls, barely traveling through the tunnel. I jumped off Parvus’s back and seethed before her, done with her cryptic way of speaking.

Her head tilted. “Would you believe I never once stole a child when they showed their anger?” She grinned in cloying amusement, referring to the nursery rhymes parents told their children about the Blightress. “Since the days of old, my anger has been touted as something to fear, something to avoid, and yet,”—she gripped my arm firmly, her long black nails digging into my skin and pulling me closer to the walls of the tunnel—“anger has never been my downfall, Karus. Nor yours.”

I squinted in my pulsing light. Black blooms formed along the blighted roots. More and more of them budded and bloomed down the dirt-clotted walls, and the pulsing of my orb quickened along with my heartbeat.

I reached out to touch the soft petals. My conduit ring, given back to me by my love, seemed to glisten brighter in the darkness.

Each bloom was small, no bigger than the tips of my fingers, and each held a glowing blue center. They nestled together, hundreds of them now, clustered and growing from each of the Blight’s roots.

“I’ve never seen these before,” I whispered in the stillness.

The Blightress bent down to inhale the blooms’ scent. I smelled it too. A salty breeze mixed with decay overpowered my nose.

“As I said, you do not yet know what you will become, nor what your anger can do.” She reached out to brush the white streaks of hair that fell to frame my face—the color matching her own. “I know how you got these, Karus. I know what it takes to be strong when you have no other choice. And I know what power is held in anger. Let me teach you. Let me show you what you can become when you embrace what lives inside.”

She clicked her tongue and called the lumens to the dark shadows ahead of us. “Go on,” she called to them both, and before I could move to stop them, they jumped into the dark, disappearing immediately.

“Is that a portal?” I stated in shock, realizing now that the darkness ahead of us appeared misty, yet flat, as if it held a surface.

“It is. I cannot produce them as I once could, but I keep this one here so that I may return to Felgren from my home when I wish.”

I stepped closer, my curiosity reeling me forward. “Where is home for you?”

She moved beside me, silent, tall, and cold. “If you wish to know, you must follow your lumens and see.” She placed a delicate hand into the portal, swirling the black mist and laughing to herself. “Our bargain still stands. You may leave when you are ready and no harm will come to you or anyone you love.”

She took a step into the portal and I heard her last words before she left completely. “Curiosity is nothing to fear, Little Sprout.”