Free The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) by Kevin Hoffman Page B

grass.
    I really need to learn how he does that , Cailix thought. She tried to move but found it too painful. She tried to talk but it was too hard to breathe through her broken ribs.
    "Shhh, just be quiet and hold still. I'll take care of you," Colin said, kneeling down next to her, propping her head up in his hand. "My pa's on the way and I told him to bring the doc just in case."
    I'm going to die , she thought. Her bones were broken and poking holes through important places inside her body. If she didn't do something she knew she would be dead in minutes.
    "Necklace," she gasped.
    Colin checked her neck, wiped away some blood and reached for the bloodstone, which had stopped glowing.
    "No…bottle."
    Colin pulled the glass bottle from around her neck. "What is it?" he asked.
    "Sigilord blood," Cailix managed to whisper through coughs and gurgling blood.
    Colin gasped and leaned back on his heels, stunned. "You kept that guy's blood?"  
    While she wasn't much for feeling emotions, she was great at reading them. She saw a mixture of disappointment and jealousy on Colin's face.
    "Pour it out," she said.
    Colin pulled the cork free and upended the bottle. Just a few drops of blood escaped.
    Cailix called to the blood. She felt its potency, the raw untamed power of the blood of a sigilord. If regular blood was intoxicating, there was nothing that could describe the euphoria of connecting with sigilord blood. It was like tasting the universe itself.
    Fueled by the unbridled power of Urus's blood, she channeled that power into healing. Somehow she knew that even with its potency, she wouldn't be able to heal all her wounds, so her mind sought out the life-threatening wounds and sealed those first. Then she set about reattaching and mending her broken bones.
    It only took a few minutes to exhaust the small supply of blood. She had consumed it much faster than she expected, wondering if healing took more power than destruction.
    "Are you okay?" Colin asked, stepping back as she rolled to her side.
    Before she could answer, the ground shook beneath them. It shuddered, then burst upward with a cracking roar like that of a thousand thunderstorms. The heaving earth surged then dropped, sending a rippling wave of churning grass and soil outward in all directions.
    The earth rumbled for nearly a full minute after that, only settling to a calm after tearing the plateau to shreds.  
    Shaking off clumps of loose earth and grass, Colin stood up then helped Cailix to her feet, his face filled with genuine concern for her.  
    "That earthquake," he said. "That was because you used Urus's blood, wasn't it?"
    "I don't know. Maybe," Cailix replied. She honestly had no idea what had happened, or why, but the timing of the rumbling earth could not have been a coincidence. The last time she had used Urus's blood, nearly half of Waldron had lost its rooftops.
    She managed to stand up on her own and locked her gaze with Colin's. It was then that she uttered the most difficult words she had ever spoken. "Thank you."  

Chapter Six

    Urus had lain awake in his cell most of the night, twisting and turning away the dark hours on the hard straw cot until at last the first few rays of pre-dawn's soft blue light cast faint shadows of the window bars against the cell's iron door.
    He sat up, rolling the iron chain over in his fingers as he contemplated what was about to happen. Unless some miracle intervened, he was going to be executed—killed for a crime he didn't know he had committed, enforced by people who weren't even from his universe.  
    What right do they have to say who can and cannot use magic? Urus thought, anger rising up within.
    Urus's journey had started with being culled, banished from his own people for not being a strong enough warrior. Now he was about to be executed for being too powerful. He simply could not win.
    The door to his cell swung inward. Luse stood on the other side, her infectious smile spread wide across her face. She