Blood Binds

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Book Blurb

Souls can be tied together through many things—birth, love, tragedy. Some bonds are as strong as the chains anchoring ships to the ocean floor in the heart of a storm. Others are as fragile as the rusted links holding a heart-shaped locket to someone’s neck. Both can be broken. A storm can snap the mightiest tether. A child can tug a necklace loose.

But there is one kind of bond that has never failed.
An unnatural bond.
Few know it exists.

It doesn’t just tie souls together—it molds them into one.
And to break it… is to lose a part of yourself.

Blood Binds Excerpt:

“Hello, I’m Yostin. What’s your name?”
A hand patted his shoulder gently. “He can’t understand you, son.”
Yostin glanced up at his father’s little smile, then returned his gaze to the boy huddled in the dark corner.
The child had his arms wrapped tightly around his legs, squeezing them to his chest. He looked much smaller and skinnier than the boy standing in the doorway of the little shed—even though he was in fact three years older. Dead eyes stared unblinkingly at the straw littered floor.
“Why can’t he understand?” Yostin inquired, big round eyes taking in as much as they could of the new friend his father had brought.
His father crouched down with him at the doorway, patting his back patiently. “Because he speaks a different language just like Gunth.”
“Oh.” Yostin thought for a minute. “But Gunth still talks to me. So why won’t that boy talk to me?”
The older man chuckled and glanced back at the ever-grim faced Gunth standing a few paces away from the shed, holding a bright flickering torch up high to combat the shadows of the night.
“Gunth had to learn how to talk to us. This boy will too, eventually,” the father said.
Yostin was quiet again, trying to pick which question to ask next. This was all so exciting!
He took a step closer to the boy, but his father tugged him back. “Be careful,” he warned.
“Why?”
He smiled again. “Because he might hurt you right now.”
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t know you—and he’s scared.”
“Why’s he scared?”
“Because he’s never been here before.”
The younger boy stared at the other child curiously. He hadn’t moved at all since they had come—not even to glance at them. He was so skinny… just like that dog that tried to steal food from the main house the other day.
“Can I feed him?”
His father raised an eyebrow. “Do you have food?”
Yostin suddenly darted his eyes to the ground. “Maybe…”
“Did you steal from the kitchen again?”
The child played with his sleeves wordlessly—a sure sign of guilt for him. His father chuckled. “Fine, you can give him your spoils.” He motioned to Gunth, and the man drew near to let the torch light up the shadowy room. The sudden brightness didn’t even make the other child wince.
Yostin’s father stood and whispered something in the other man’s ear.
Gunth nodded and turned to the child in the corner. As Gunth started to relay the commands in the child’s native tongue, the boy’s head slowly turned to stare unfocused at the speaker.
Gunth pointed at Yostin, saying more words in that unfamiliar language. The child slowly turned his head to look at Yostin as the man finished what he was saying.
His father gave him a soft push forward.
Yostin hesitated for a moment, then reached into his pocket and pulled out what had once been a beautifully ripe peach. After spending all day in the trousers of a four year old boy, it was bruised all over and one side had a browning gash in it. While Yostin would have happily eaten it himself, his father curled his lip at the sight of it.
Oblivious to this, Yostin walked to crouch in front of the child and held out the peach with all the friendliness of innocence. The child snatched the gift away without a word, juice squirting on Yostin’s face as the child viciously attacked the fruit.
Yostin watched him for a moment, then turned to his father with a grin. “He likes peaches!”
His father’s sigh of relief went unnoticed by his naive son.
Within a minute, the boy was sucking the last drops of juice from his fingers.
“Da, he ate the seed too! He’s gonna get sick!”
“He’ll be fine.”
The boy’s dark eyes were staring intently at Yostin as he licked his palm.
Now that he was closer, dirt and crusty reddish black stuff was clearly visible all over the older boy. He smelled like that wild dog as well as looked like him.
“Come on, back up now,” his father insisted as he pulled Yostin back towards the exit.
“Why’s he so dirty?”
“That’s what happens when you don’t get baths regularly.”
“Doesn’t his momma tell him off for being so smelly?”
“He doesn’t have a momma anymore.”
Yostin was dumbstruck. No momma? How does he not have a mom?
“Is that why he looks so sad?”
Gunth made a face behind the other man’s back, but quickly schooled himself before Yostin could decide what it meant.
“Yes,” his father answered. Then thoughtfully added, “But he will be happier once he’s friends with you.”
Yostin nodded with determination. “I’ll definitely be a good friend.”
His father smiled proudly. “Then let’s get him to the house.”
An hour or two later, Yostin was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the empty altar room. His mother had helped him bathe, made him wear a loose white gown, and had tied his dark hair back neatly. Then she told him to wait here until everything was ready.
His large green eyes scanned the room with impatience, flitting between each of the four silver bowls surrounding the solid stone altar. The space was big enough to hold thirty people, but rarely saw more than ten.
This wasn’t his first time seeing this room, but it was the first time that he was actually allowed in it. He decided that he didn’t like it very much.
Suddenly, a commotion could be heard from the other room. Yostin turned to stare at the closed door as his father’s stern voice reached his ears.
“Tell him that if he doesn’t behave I’ll go find where his mother was sold and I’ll rip off her head!”
As Gunth’s voice growled out the threat, Yostin could feel his heart start to pound against his chest. He lifted a little hand to press against it so that it wouldn’t run away.
There was silence for a moment, then the door swung open and eight people—his mother, father, paternal grandmother and grandfather, his aunt Soyla, a maid, Gunth, and that boy—all strolled inside.
The boy had obviously been bathed as well, because his pale skin was finally visible without all of the grime covering it. He was also dressed in a white gown, but his hair had been shaved off.
His head was hung low as Gunth pushed him at the front of the procession.
Yostin remained seated as they passed, looking up to find glaring black eyes staring down at him.
This new boy didn’t seem to like him very much… did he actually want to be friends?
“Cheshin,” his mother murmured his father’s name as she knelt by her son. “Are you sure this one is good enough for our little baby?”
Cheshin glanced back at her, but only answered her question by motioning Gunth to lift the frail looking boy up onto the altar.
The stone table was big enough for a grown man to lay on, so the tiny body of the boy took up less than a third of the space. He laid down without a word as Gunth stretched those thin arms and legs to reach the four leather straps bolted into the stone.
“Gunth,” Yostin turned to look at the man as he finished tightening the straps to the child’s wrists. “Can you ask what his name is?”
The man gave him a sideways glance before looking over to Cheshin.
Yostin’s father grabbed him under the arms and lifted him up on the table to sit at the other boy’s bound feet. “He doesn’t have a name,” he explained, patting Yostin on the back. He smiled and gestured at the boy. “You have to give him one.”
Yostin’s eyes widened. “How come he doesn’t have one?”
“Because he was waiting for you to give him one.”
The naive child thought about this for a moment. It must have been troublesome to go without a name for so long. Suddenly his stomach growled, and he remembered the peach he had given to the boy.
“I like peaches…,” he said slowly. He turned to Gunth once again. “What does he call a peach?”
The man blinked in surprise. His eyes darted over to Cheshin, who nodded.
“Ferskja,” he said gruffly, crossing his arms.
Yostin tilted his head. “Fersa?”
“Ferskja.”
“Fersya?”
Gunth knitted his brows, afraid to further correct the young child in his master’s presence. Finally, he nodded approval at the pronunciation.
Yostin gave a wide smile. “Then I name him Fersya!”
Fersya, lying with his back against the cold stone, stared up at Yostin expressionlessly as Gunth relayed the message. He remained silent.
Yostin’s grandfather approached with something wrapped in a white cloth. He held it in both hands as he presented it to Cheshin, like it was something delicate and breakable.
His mother gently placed one of the silver bowls next to him as he watched his father carefully unwrap a shining black blade—an obsidian ceremonial knife.
He clutched his mother’s dress as she tried to pull away, a whimper suddenly in his throat.
“Don’t be scared,” his father whispered, holding the blade in his right hand while softly stroking his son’s hair with his left. “You are helping him. He needs you to do this. You need to be brave.”
Fersya’s eyes were shut tightly as Gunth untied the front of his white gown with shaking fingers.
Yostin grabbed his chest again as his father inched the black blade towards him.
“Don’t worry. You must be strong. Trust me,” he murmured as he took his son’s arm.
He whimpered as Cheshin pushed the cold blade against his forearm. With a quick motion, he sliced cleanly through the silky smooth skin.
Yostin swayed at the site of his own blood, a scream locked in his foggy mind.
Without wasting a drop, Cheshin collected the blood streaming from the wound until the little silver bowl was half full. Then he motioned for the maid to come bandage him up.
Lips pale and body trembling, Yostin avoided looking at the red liquid. Instead, his eyes roved over his grandparents whispering a few steps away, his mother who was stroking his hair comfortingly, Gunth who was standing solemnly in the corner, and then finally they rested on the boy strapped to the table.
Fersya was staring up at him with a blank expression. Their eyes connected.
His gown had been completely untied all the way down the middle, so now his bare body could be seen through the gap. Dark purple and yellow splotches covered his pale skin; through the bruises, angry red lines criss crossed his chest. Yostin was too young to know that those lines were scabbed-over markings from multiple lashes of a whip.
He opened his mouth to ask him why he looked like that, but then remembered that he couldn’t understand him.
The maid finally finished wrapping cloth around the sunwart balm she had placed against Yostin’s aching wound. He cradled his arm as soon as she let go.
“It’s time now, son. You must perform the ceremony,” Cheshin announced as his chest swelled.
The blood bowl was pushed closer to both of the children, and Yostin was moved to sit in the space between the other child’s spread legs.
“I don’t think that I like this…,” he whimpered quietly. He was swaying unsteadily, and his mouth tasted of vomit.
The other boy was still staring unblinkingly up at him.
Cheshin patted him on the back. “There’s nothing to worry about. Don’t you want to save him? If you do this, he can live with us as your friend. Don’t you want to make him—Fersya—happy?”
Yostin nodded hesitantly, then followed his father’s directions. He dipped his right hand into the blood, then carefully crawled over the cold, hard stone to press it onto the boy’s chest—right above the heart.
His scabbed skin was warm, and Yostin could feel a heartbeat even more rapid than his own beneath his fingers.
“Good boy,” Cheshin crooned.
Next, he was guided into dipping both hands into the bowl. Drops of blood hitting his skin made the boy shudder as Yostin reached his arms across again. He pressed his hands to Fersya’s inner-upper arms—right hand to right arm, left hand to left arm. His father said that this covers the blood flow through the arms.
He dipped his hands into the bowl again and then pressed them to the boy’s upper-inner thighs—right to right, left to left. This covered the blood flow through the legs.
Finally, his father asked him to just dip his thumbs into the blood. After doing so, he was told to make a line with each thumb across Fersya’s neck. His right thumb started on the right, and the left on the left. He felt him swallow under his fingers, and he looked up to see that his eyes were closed now.
He drew the lines from his right to left and his left to right. The end result was two parallel lines that circled half the boy’s thin little neck.
The small bowl was pushed into his red-stained hands.
“You gotta make him drink now, baby,” his mother murmured, using the back of her hand to wipe the tears from his face—the tips of her fingers also dyed with his blood.
Yostin stared down into the bowl, silver still shining through the red smeared along the sides. There was barely a sip’s worth swirling at the bottom.
His father slid his hands under Fersya’s shaven head, raising it up for him so that Yostin could press the cold metal against his cracked lips. His eyes met Yostin’s again, cold and dark as the blade that had sliced his flesh. He pressed his lips tightly together, letting the blood pool between his mouth and the tilted bowl. A drop trickled down his chin.
Before more could be wasted, Cheshin pushed the bowl straight, then pinched the boy’s crooked, swollen nose. He smiled sweetly at Yostin; just as he smiled whenever he had to do the same thing to him to force him to take medicine.
After a period longer than Yostin had ever lasted holding his breath, the boy’s fists and toes began to clench and writhe.
Cheshin was ready to shove his thumb against the side of Fersya’s jaw as he opened to gasp for air.
Just as had been done to him dozens of times with medicines, Yostin poured the contents of the bowl into the other child’s mouth.
As the last drop fell, Cheshin adjusted to hold his mouth closed, and then he tilted his chin to his chest. The boy was gagging or coughing—Yostin couldn’t tell.
His mother quickly lifted him from the stone and into her tight embrace.
“Oh my little boy! I’m so excited for you! Your first blood bonding!”
But Yostin wasn’t smiling. He was staring at Fersya, who had turned his face to the side and was coughing violently as Gunth began untying him from the table.
Cheshin was wiping his fingers on a red cloth that the maid had just passed to him.
After a few moments, the boy’s breathing returned to relatively normal. Finally free, he continued to lay there, on his side now, his partially-clothed back to everyone but Gunth—who was standing an arm’s reach away with one of the restraints still in his hand.
Fersya was whispering something that sounded wrong to Yostin’s ears. Either too quiet or too fast, the sounds seemed jumbled.
Gunth was avoiding the eyes that Yostin knew were slicing into him. His jaw was clenched.
The boy was shaking, but he slowly sat up on the table using his trembling arms to support himself—still speaking those jumbled things, still staring at Gunth.
His words grew louder as Gunth continued to look away; his rasping, thin voice striving harder to make himself heard.
Cheshin opened his mouth, but, before he could say anything, Gunth’s deep, commanding shout echoed throughout the chamber. He struck the boy with the back of his hand, the small frame of the child crumpling under his blow.
A squeal escaped Yostin’s lips, and Cheshin rushed to grab Gunth before he could deliver another hit on the dazed boy.
With wild eyes, Gunth growled out something else to the child as Cheshin pushed him away.
“Control yourself,” he commanded, tone even despite Gunth’s outburst.
Almost immediately, the other man did as he was bidden and closed his mouth.
In the silence that followed, a chilling chuckle emerged from the boy still laying on the ritual stone. His giggles slowly grew to gasping laughter that had him gripping his sides and kicking his legs. His grinning teeth were still dripping with blood.
Yostin’s mother clutched his face to her breast, but still failed to shield the manic child from her son’s view.