The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

Her breaths echoed in the cramped space. “Let me try again.”


“It may not be a good idea.” Though he would have probably chosen to do the same.

Her jaw was set. “I know. And sorry about dropping you on your back earlier.”

“I was fine.”

He made sure he had a hand around her ankle as she crawled forward. The moment she screamed again, he yanked her back. She trembled, her face ashen.

Now he knew why Atlantis was in no hurry. “The one-mile radius is a blood circle.”

“What is that?” For the first time there was fear in her voice.

“Advanced blood magic. It will kill you to venture out of the circle.”

She swallowed. “Then you had better go. Take the water, take—”

He interrupted her. “You forget that I could be the one who constructed the blood circle.”

She blinked. Not cynical enough, this girl. They knew nothing about each other, except that they had ended up in the same place at the same time, with one of them hurt—of course they could be mortal enemies.

“If that is the case,” he went on, “I can break it.”

Mortal enemies or not, she had provided crucial help for him. And he was not about to abandon her in her hour of need.

Perhaps he was not cynical enough either.

Hope flared in her eyes, but extinguished quickly. “Atlantis would have tried much harder if they knew that the blood circle wouldn’t be able to pen me in.”

“Maybe they do not know that I am here.”

He clambered back to where the blood circle must be and took out his pocketknife. With a bead of fresh blood in his palm, he thrust his hand at the unseen boundary. “Sanguis dicet. Sanguis docebit.”

Blood will tell. Blood will show.

No tingling or sensation of heat on his skin, which he would have expected to feel if he were the one responsible for the blood circle.

“Wait,” she said.

She extinguished the mage light. In the ensuing darkness, something glimmered faintly before his eyes, an almost transparent wall.

“Does that count as a reaction?” she asked.

He drew his hand back; the darkness became complete. He thrust his hand forward; again the wall appeared, a phosphorescent latticework. “I did not construct the blood circle, but it would seem I am related to the person who did.”

Blood magic had first developed to ascertain kinship. Any voluntarily given drop, no matter to what other purpose it had been put, could still attest to consanguinity.

“Does that mean you can still break the circle?” Her voice betrayed a vibration of excitement.

“No, I will not be able to. I might be able to weaken the circle, but that could simply mean you are killed a bit more slowly if you try to breach it.”

In the darkness there was only the sound of her rapid breaths. He called for light. A blue luminescence suffused the length of the tunnel. She sat with her wrists on her knees, her face shadowed.

“It is too early for despair,” he said. “We have hardly exhausted all the options.”

Her teeth sank into her lower lip. “You know more about blood magic than I do. What do you suggest?”

“First I want to see whether you are related to the person who set the blood circle. It would help if that person has no claim of kinship on you.”7

She extracted a drop of blood and sent it floating toward the blood circle. Whereas his blood had been immediately absorbed by blood circle, the tiny floating sphere of her blood bounced off like a pebble striking a tree trunk.

That he was related to the one who had set up the blood circle and she not at all raised uncomfortable questions. But he did not bother to ponder those questions—it was not as if he was unaware of the possibility that they had wished each other harm before the memory spells had taken away their pasts.

“By the privilege of kinship,” he said in Latin, and offered another drop of his own blood. “I ask that the blood circle harm not one who matters to me.”

It was standard language, yet it felt strangely true: the girl mattered to him.

“That should have reduced the potency of the blood circle somewhat. I can put you under a time freeze, which should further protect you. Is there anything you can do to boost your chances of survival? Any remedies that can counteract traumatic injuries brought on by the mage arts?”

She ran her fingers over the top of satchel, then her expression brightened. “I have panacea in here.”

His eyes widened—panacea was extraordinarily difficult to come by. “Take a triple dose.”

She extracted a vial, counted out three small granules, and swallowed them. “So now that you have weakened the blood circle, you put me under a time freeze, and shove me past?”

“I wish it were that simple. Should you survive, you would still be in critical condition. And I cannot bore through rock, so—”

A loud crack, like a boulder splitting in two. They looked up: the ceiling of the tunnel was fracturing. When she had unknowingly tried to cross the blood circle, she must have signaled her precise position.