31
Even more than truth, a Sylvan values freedom above all other things.
—E XCHARIAS, S YLVAN POET
C ASSIA STUMBLED ON THE UNEVEN GROUND, THE steady glow from the Solis Gemma lighting her way. The passage was rough and uneven, blasted from the earth in desperate haste. Exposed roots jutted from the walls, and soil slid down, filling the air with choking dust. Large roots made the way narrower, snagging her wings and yanking her off balance. After a while, her knees and palms were scraped raw. As her cuts bled freely, some of the roots twitched toward her, until she was dodging and rolling to avoid them, her wings a disadvantage in the narrow space. The blood trees did not seem to know if she was friend or enemy. One root snagged her, its root hairs grasping her feathers with the strength of determined fingers. With a fierce yank, she ripped free, gasping in pain as feathers were torn from her body in a spray of gold.
She was a mass of aches by the time the passage came to an end. She had the sense she had stepped into a large open space, though the glow from the ring only showed a few feet around her. The scents of herbs and old blood mixed with the tang of soil. She took a step forward, looking down as something crunched beneath her boot. A pile of vines and sticks. No. It was a scucca with twiglike arms laid carefully by its sides. She moved her hand to search the area by the light of the ring. More scucca bodies. Dead? There were no signs of injuries, no cut branches or torn leaves. Not dead. Never alive. Yet.
This had to be the place where Selkolla made her scuccas.
Cassia found her breath locked in her chest. As she took an instinctive step back, a green glow flared, so bright she raised her arm to shield her eyes. Selkolla stood tall among her creations, framed by roots that hung down from above like columns.
“Where’s Zeru?” Cassia demanded, her voice hoarse from the choking dirt.
Selkolla picked her way between the bodies, her gray eyes aglow as she came closer. “Welcome to my birthing chamber.”
“Your what?” Cassia took another step back.
“The birthplace of my children,” Selkolla said, confirming Cassia’s belief that the witch’s mind was far beyond reason. “Does it matter that they don’t come from my own body?”
Cassia choked on bile. “This place is grotesque. A place where spirits are forced into prisons of sticks and vines. Where is Zeru?”
Selkolla tsked. “Honesty is no virtue when it comes with the bite of contempt.” She put a hand to her heart. “Do you have no care for the feelings of a fellow Sylvan?”
Cassia made a sound in her throat, anger building in her chest at the way the Seer toyed with her. “I don’t care what you are. Where is he?”
Selkolla waved a hand, and the green light extended farther into the cavernous space. About twenty feet away, a glow came from a cage made of violet bands of light. The bars pulsed as if in time to a heartbeat, emitting a rhythmic hum. Zeru’s figure lay on his side, a dark wing half-covering him.
Cassia took a step closer to the cage, reaching for him. A crackle of energy leaped out, flowing into her outstretched fingers and up her arm, flinging her back as her veins filled with fire. She cried out as she hit the wall behind her, her wings taking the brunt of the collision. Pain zinged through her shoulders and up her neck, blending with the ache in her head. She fought to her feet and blinked to clear the dizziness.
Her eyes snapped to Zeru as if tethered to him. He hadn’t moved, not even at her cry of pain. Seeing him limp and lifeless hit her like a blow, a gut punch of grief that reverberated through her body. She had lost so much. Her home. A future with her family. Her place in the world. She couldn’t imagine losing him, too. Surely Noctua would not take his spirit when she needed him most.
“Zeru.” A hoarse plea that scraped her throat. Please. Don’t leave me.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Selkolla’s face split into a wide smile, as if this were a performance she enjoyed.
A fiery ball of hatred ignited in Cassia’s gut. Power built in the ring, making it flare like a bonfire fed with fresh, dry kindling. As the power built, Cassia saw red filaments appear in the air. Lines of red light that led from Selkolla to each one of the scucca bodies. She sucked in a breath, confused. Could those be the bonds that connected the Seer to her creations?
Selkolla’s silvery eyes shone knowingly. “Your ring will not hurt me, daughter of the Sylvan king.”
Cassia choked out a pained laugh. “Maybe not. But your ‘children’ like to stay close to you, don’t they? I’d like to know what the Solis Gemma does to them.” There had to be a reason Selkolla was so anxious to make Cassia into one of her thralls. “I’ll make sure the blast is large enough to catch every single one.”
Selkolla’s smile gained a hard edge. “The moment you do that, Zeru dies.”
Despite the threat, the horrible tightness in Cassia’s chest eased. That meant Zeru was alive.
She glared at the cage, longing to smash the bars that kept him from her. “Is he injured?”
“Sleeping,” Selkolla said with indifference.
“That’s no natural sleep.” Cassia watched the barely perceptible movement of his chest. “He’s under your spell.”
“And you are under his,” the Seer replied. “Even banishment has not deterred you, it seems. I knew you would come for him.”
Despite the pain of that reminder, Cassia refused to spare a single regret for her father now, not when Zeru’s life hung by a delicate thread. Zeru, who saw her true nature. Who had tried to get her to accept it, even if it meant losing his opportunity to retrieve the ring and redeem himself. He had seen their connection when she’d still been denying it, offering himself to her in little ways, finding her when she was lost, helping her remember—even though he’d known he might lose her. Her heart contracted as she thought of the way he’d looked at her in the woods, in the stream, when they’d kissed. The way he’d gripped her in his arms in the Cryptlands, as if he wanted to hold on to her forever. The way he’d risked himself by coming into her home, the fortress of his enemies. How he’d trusted her enough to try her risky plans. How he’d helped her protect her people. How he’d risked himself to save Enora.
But what she was feeling was more than gratitude. She felt right with him. She was… herself with him in a way that was freeing. She wanted him, and she wanted to be with him. She knew it now more than she ever had before, as an ache in her chest and in her throat and behind her eyes. The urgent need to protect him was like a living thing inside her demanding action.
“I always find him.” Cassia willed him to hear her words, to wake, to smile at the reminder of what he’d said to her as a child. “How did you know he meant something to me?”
“The moment before I drove the blade into your heart,” Selkolla said, “you called for him with what should have been your last breath.”
Cassia bit her tongue until she tasted copper. She hadn’t realized she’d managed to say Zeru’s name aloud. That revealing slip might cost him his life. “What’s the point of this, Selkolla? You told us you can’t take the ring by force. Do you think I’m just going to give it to you?”
Selkolla smiled. “I don’t want it anymore. I’ve come to realize the ring’s sun magic isn’t compatible with my own. It’s you I need.”
Cassia swallowed. “You already failed to make me into one of your so-called children. I resisted your orders even when I didn’t know who I was. What makes you think you can control me now?”
Selkolla looked down at her from her great height, but it was her expression that conveyed her belief that Cassia should feel small. “You give yourself too much credit. It was the Solis Gemma I underestimated. If the spell had gone as planned, you would have been what you were meant to be, a being of the forest, accepting your lot without question. But the ring chose to protect you. Its power gave you wings, and turned you into the thing you are now. Something the world has never yet seen. A Sylvan Zerian.”
Selkolla meant to cut with her words, but instead, Cassia felt a rush of strength remembering the ring had truly bonded with her. It had found her worthy. It had kept her mind and spirit intact.
There was more to it, though, that Selkolla was denying. Even if the ring protected Cassia, she had still known herself enough to defy the order to kill her father or harm any of the Huntsmen, despite Selkolla taking her memory.
“The ring may have protected me,” she said, her chin lifting, “but I was the one who defied you.”
Selkolla’s tone carried the bite of a north wind. “Defy me now and Zeru dies.”
Cassia closed her eyes. She was cornered and Selkolla knew it. She could not risk Zeru. “What do you want?”
“A simple bargain,” the Seer said. “I will allow your Dracu to live if you bring my scuccas back to life in truth.”
Cassia let out a long breath. Selkolla wanted the impossible.
“Once you fulfill your side of the bargain, you will be given every consideration. The best chamber in Scarhamm. The queen’s apartments in the Cryptlands. All of Welkincaster.”
Each of these options appeared like a dream in Cassia’s mind, full of color and detail. The final image was of herself and Zeru embracing in front of the castle on a cloud. As if that was all she cared about. The Seer was so wrong about her.
“You’re planning to take everything, then?” she asked, marveling at the Seer’s ambition. “Scarhamm, the Cryptlands, even the clouds?”
Selkolla dipped her chin. “Never again will I trust the world to be kind to my moss children simply because they are gentle. I will eliminate every possible threat and make the world safe.”
“Safe,” Cassia said, her fists tightening, “and under your control?”
“Precisely.” She gestured down to Zeru. “But I would let him live as a guardian of Welkincaster. He would not be free to leave, but he would be yours.”
Cassia stared down at Zeru’s still form. If she agreed, he would be safe. Safe and trapped while the world died around them. Because Selkolla saw no value in the living unless they were controlled by her.
“We would be a formidable pair, you and I,” Selkolla went on. As she spoke, tendrils of persuasion stole into Cassia’s mind like seeking fingers. The perfect full moon promising peace and harmony if she would only surrender her will. Selkolla’s magic inviting her to obey, like the moon pulling the tides. “You have the magic of the woods. You have the power of the Solis Gemma. And I have the knowledge of the Ancients and the potential to regain my former status. You could help me, and I would reward you.”
A part of Cassia wanted to harken to that inner whisper, to give in rather than face the messiness of her own choices, her own mistakes. A small part. She would rather die than live as a creature without free will. She pushed at the seeking fingers, imagining a mental barrier as strong as the walls of Scarhamm.
“Would you let my father and sisters live?”
She saw the answer in Selkolla’s eyes.
“Why do you persist with this misplaced loyalty to your father?” the witch asked in a tone of genuine curiosity. “You’ve spent your life striving to be the ideal daughter, hurting yourself in your efforts, trying and failing to gain his love. And he banished you for not wanting to take revenge as he would. When will you admit your devotion is foolish?”
Cassia waited for the expected sense of shame at the blunt listing of her failures. Instead, she felt a kind of relieved acceptance. Nothing she had ever done had made her father love her. So she was free to stop trying.
“If I’ve loved foolishly,” she said, “at least I was able to love.” Her father, she realized, could never feel as strongly as she did. About anyone. Even her mother’s disappearance had barely seemed to affect him. Another thought she’d kept hidden from herself for too long.
“What does love bring but pain?” Selkolla scoffed. “I loved my moss folk and lost them. I have suffered longer than you can imagine. My new children have not replaced them in my heart.” Her voice tightened with pain. “They don’t… they can’t love me back.”
“And yet you want to remake them,” Cassia pointed out.
“Because you will make them whole again,” Selkolla said. “Let me show you what he took from me.”
In her mind, Cassia saw groups of wood folk, creatures that looked like they came from the forest, with bark-like skin and greenish-gray eyes. They played in the sunlight, cavorting among the trees, raising their small faces to the sun. A series of memories came in rapid succession, and feelings came with it. There were moss folk in a twilit glade, dancing arm in arm with Sylvans, raising their hands to catch tiny moon sprites on their fingers, opening their mouths to laugh with a sound like rustling leaves. And the trees loved them. Cassia felt that. She felt the warmth of joy, the affection Selkolla had for these gentle beings, the way they made her feel young again after far too many eons in this world. For a second, Cassia wondered if Selkolla could be an Ancient herself, but the images changed, snagging her attention. The moss folk had grown shy, peeking out from behind the trunks of trees, less willing to come into the sunlight as the forest changed, as a darkness spread over it. Some of the trees were red now. Blood trees. Finally, there were images of the blood trees preying on moss folk, dragging them down with hungry roots.
“No!” Cassia didn’t realize she had cried out until the images abruptly stopped. “No. No. My father ordered the trees not to harm any Sylvan.” She wished she could believe those mental images were a lie. “That includes all forest-dwellers. His edict should have protected your moss children.”
“Hungry spirits and thrall magic require blood, and he chose the blood of the weakest folk in the forest. He sacrificed them for the spell to work. Ask him yourself.”
Cassia bent her head. She believed Selkolla. She couldn’t even bring herself to point out that the witch was using thrall magic as well. Her father was… a monster. He was the strongest creature of the forest, stronger in might and magic than any in Thirstwood or the Cryptlands. Stronger, certainly, than any Sylvan. But there was a different kind of strength. A strength of spirit. Of conviction. And there, she had strength, too. She was the one with the will to wield the artifact of the Ancients. She had bent, she had tried to be something she wasn’t to please her father, but she hadn’t broken. She hadn’t become his Deathringer. She hadn’t become like him. Now, finally, she was glad of it.
Loathing made her heart thrum unevenly, her breath coming in short bursts. Her hand trembled, the ring filling with power. For a few moments, her anger was directed not at Selkolla, not at the scuccas, but at the king of Scarhamm. Her mental walls buckled, her emotions too wild to control. The seeking fingers in her mind gained purchase, sliding into her thoughts, riffling through her memories like thieves.
“Get out of my head, witch!” Cassia shouted, turning her attention back to resisting.
Selkolla laughed. “Call me ‘witch,’ then. You are not the first.”
Cassia shook her head to clear it. “It won’t work. The spirits of your moss children are in the Netherwhere. The spirits you’ve summoned are not them. They won’t ever be like the ones you lost.”
Selkolla’s eyes hardened. “I vowed that I would bring them back to life. A vow to Noctua. I have no choice.” The shadow of her long-fingered hand fell over Zeru, and a crackling filled the air. “Do you need to watch him die? Decide now, daughter of the Sylvan king.”
“You can’t hurt him,” Cassia said, putting herself between them. “By your own vow. He’s still a subject of the Dracu queen.”
Selkolla gave her a pitying look. “When Zeru became a guardian of Welkincaster, he became a Zerian. His loyalty was divided, and divided again when he allowed himself to love a Sylvan. Not just any Sylvan but the Deathringer. One of the greatest enemies to the Dracu. That makes his loyalty to his queen uncertain. Uncertain enough that I should be able to kill him. Shall I test my theory?” The ball of sparks grew in her palm.
Cassia sucked in a breath. There was no time for second guessing. She had to trust each decision as it came. “No. Wait. I’ll… I’ll try. I agree to your terms. I accept your bargain, Selkolla.” As the sparks on the witch’s fingers died, she could breathe again. She looked at the bodies of the scuccas, uncertain what Selkolla expected her to do.
As green lights floated in the room, she understood. “Are those the spirits you’ve summoned?” Her voice sounded thin, the knowledge that Zeru’s life depended on her success making her stomach clench with dread.
“I need only merge these spirits with these bodies, and then you can begin your work,” Selkolla said, her voice confident now. “Await my instructions.”
As the witch chanted, the green lights spread out in the massive room, illuminating it. The cavern was much larger than she’d thought. So many bodies. There had to be hundreds. Thousands? Selkolla must have been planning this for years upon years. It was unthinkable. And each scucca had a thread of light attaching it to the Seer. When Cassia concentrated, she could see them.
Suddenly, the sticks began to move, some of the vines twisting into the air. Cassia swallowed, her stomach heaving at the thought of what she had to do. This was the only way to save Zeru. But at what cost? Would these scuccas be even stronger because of her? Harder to defeat?
Then, the scucca body next to her sent a questioning thought into her mind. Alive? it asked.
Cassia stared down at it, shocked. She could sense its mind the same way she had learned to sense the thoughts of the trees. In her time in the woods after Selkolla took her memory, she had spent whole days listening. These moss children, ill-made as they were, were of the forest. They were more like plants than people, perhaps. She opened her mind to them, safe for the moment from Selkolla, who was distracted by the spell she continued to chant, sending more spirits into more of the constructed bodies.
The messages from the scuccas rushed in on Cassia so fast that she put her hands over her ears as if she could block them out like sound. But the images and thoughts kept coming, piling on one another.
They were not all the same. Some spirits were friendly, gentle. Some were spirits of the dead that had lived long and did not want to return to the living world. Others were spirits that were never meant for the living world. Dark spirits of the Netherwhere with dark thoughts, their forms as changeable as smoke, not quite contained by the scucca bodies. These spirits longed to cause havoc among the living. They yearned for it and would follow whoever was most brutal to achieve it. Cassia tried to sort out the different types, to shake off the chill of horror that such malevolent spirits had been pulled into this world. She tried to focus, to sort through it all, and come up with a plan. But their thoughts overwhelmed her.
Whatever their origin, none of them deserved to be shackled to Selkolla. To anyone.
“Now,” Selkolla said harshly. “Body and spirit are one. Give them life, and I will reward you.”
Cassia was only half listening, attuned as she was to the spirits. Some of them were moss folk. She focused on their memories as a guide. Closing her eyes, she used the images and her will to shape, shape, grow. The same skills she’d used on Welkincaster, imagining life and health back into the plants. She imagined these moss folk as they once were, beings of the forest.
Selkolla’s gasp made her open her eyes. “It’s working,” the Seer said, her voice hoarse with emotion. “I knew it.”
Cassia watched as the ring’s light, a gentle flow of energy, worked on the scuccas, raising them to their feet, their stick arms becoming rounder, more like people than constructions. Their eyes shone with intelligence instead of blankness. Selkolla seemed to be barely paying attention to her now. She was too drunk on the joy of seeing her children again.
Cassia continued, feeding life and health into each of them, both the true moss folk and the scuccas filled with dark spirits, pulling from her own energy to keep the flow steady, so much that her own body started to feel the effects. Her mouth became parched. Her lips cracked with dryness. Her pulse, which had been racing, started to slow.
“Enough,” Selkolla barked, somehow aware of how much magic Cassia could bear to use. “Enough for now.”
Cassia stumbled as she stopped the flow of magic, righting herself with effort. The Seer was riveted by the moss children. Cassia wasn’t sure if these creatures were true moss folk, or if she’d made them look similar enough to fool the Seer. But she could read through her bond with the forest that their hearts were pure, their spirits gentle, their thoughts full of gratitude for being given life. They recognized Selkolla. They loved her, and she reveled in it. A genuine smile transformed her face as she embraced them one by one. She was beautiful, Cassia realized, her mind dazed with exhaustion.
With that, she turned to face the cage that held Zeru. Tentatively, she moved closer, her eyes roving over him with the attentiveness of longing, etching every detail into her mind. His lean face, the hollows beneath his cheekbones, his sharply made nose, his dark lashes lying against his cheeks like sable fans. She wished she could see his eyes one last time. Selkolla had sworn not to harm him. No matter what happened to her, he would be safe. What she planned to try next might cost her her life, but he would be safe.
“Thank you, Zeru,” she said, her voice nearly inaudible with the tears that were choking her. “For helping me see who I really am, even as I fought it. Fought you. Thank you for… everything. I wish…” She shook her head, the pain in her chest too sharp to continue.
His eyelashes fluttered, and for a moment she thought he might open his eyes. But the lashes settled back against his cheeks, and his breathing steadied once more. Her lips trembled, but she forced herself to take a breath and do what she’d decided to do.
Gutel had explained that the Solis Gemma gave life, but a surfeit of life force would kill. If she pushed the energy of the Solis Gemma into the bonds between the Seer and her creatures, would they break?
She had given Selkolla’s creatures as much life and energy as she could, trying her best to give them awareness. She had restored the few moss folk spirits, making their bodies into moss folk again—or as best as she was able. She had kept her part of the bargain.
Now, she had to be true to herself. Growth was not only a physical thing, but went soul-deep. You couldn’t grow unless you had the freedom to do so. She had to free the spirits. You can choose , she said, speaking to all the creatures in her mind. Your spirit can stay or leave. If you want to return from where you came, go!
With that, she used the rest of her energy, all the magic she could summon from the ring, pulling it as harshly as she had when trying to please her father, when trying to be the Deathringer he expected. But now she did it to help rather than harm. She concentrated on the red filaments of light running between Selkolla and the spirits in the cavern. The Solis Gemma hummed, light crackling as it spread, the color changing to a warmer yellow, then orange.
The filaments that kept the scuccas bound to Selkolla wavered and pulsed. “Be free!” she cried.
As the filaments snapped, a tumult of rustling rose all around the cavern. Some of spirits left the bodies immediately, visible as green lights floating into the walls and out of sight, leaving their empty bodies in woody heaps. Other creatures moved with confused steps, walking in circles as if they didn’t know what to do with this freedom. The dozen or so moss folk looked around with wide, solemn eyes, their hands grasping at Selkolla’s robes as they murmured in their leaf-rustle voices.
Selkolla’s hands went to her chest as if she felt the bonds snapping as a physical thing. When she caught her breath, her silvery eyes were pale with fury. “What have you done?”