Chapter 28 The Tree and the Runes #2
I racked my brain, trying to recall anything substantial about the Norns and the runes, but my mind kept circling back to the image of the runes carved beneath the grand oak’s bark, my fingernails blackened from peeling it.
And to the drawing I had seen in the tunnels, in that all-too-familiar office.
“The tree,” I said quietly, something clicking into place.
I had read a text about a tree, but I hadn’t connected it until now.
“There’s a tree in Norse mythology called Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life. At its base lies the Well of Urd, the well of Fate.” I sat up straighter, the memory sharpening. “And as far as the runes go, they were the gateway into the Norns’ tapestry of Fate.”
The Meister eyed me curiously, his gaze urging me to continue. I swallowed hard, recalling the next part of what I had read. I didn’t like where my train of thought was leading.
“There’s a story of Odin and how he acquired his power. It is said he hung himself on Yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights in order to gain knowledge of the Otherworlds and to understand the runes—to know the future and to possibly influence it.”
“So, the Norse mythos did believe in predetermination, but they also believed there was a way around it,” Aspen added. “Otherwise, Odin would have never sacrificed himself for that power.”
“Yes, it seems so,” I replied, but my voice was flat. I was no longer in the Circle, discussing an academic topic of predestination.
My mind drifted to the image of Julian’s limp body.
Like Odin, he had hung himself from the tree, pointing me toward a message. Toward that symbol of the demiurge—the lion with the serpent’s body. But what if the act of hanging itself was another clue?
It was as if he were reaching across time and space to tell me: I died because of a sacrifice—one that I didn’t make. A sacrifice to a false God.
But what if it wasn’t just his sacrifice?
The elements—the Meister’s words echoed back to me: I’ve been waiting for all the right elements.
Of course.
I had pinned it the second he walked into my shop.
His pentagonal cane. The crystal I brought out with five-fold symmetry.
The night of Julian’s death—maybe it wasn’t just his sacrifice.
Maybe it was meant to be all five of them.
My stomach twisted, nausea climbing up.
“I’m sorry, I’m feeling unwell. I’ll have to excuse myself,” I said, standing too quickly.
Nina looked up at me with a furrowed brow, her mouth open mid-sentence. I had lost track of the conversation.
“Do you need any help?” Sequoia offered.
“No, I’m fine. I think I just need to lie down. If you’ll excuse me,” I said.
Horror lodged itself in my throat—raw, acidic, choking out anything else.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t think beyond the sharp, metallic taste of it.
But if that hadn’t come first—if terror hadn’t sunk its claws into me—I think the anger would have swallowed me alive.
It pulsed just beneath the surface, waiting for the moment fear loosened its grip.
I jumped out of my seat, feeling the urge to wretch.
The Meister gave me a curious look, as though suspecting I had made some realization. But in the next moment, he nodded, releasing me from the Circle. “Of course,” the Meister said. “We are about to conclude. Rest, Ms. Blackburne.”
*
“Are you okay?” It was Aspen at my door no more than twenty minutes later.
His brows were knit so tightly I could have balanced a Skorn card between them.
It made me suspect he actually cared. In his hand, he nervously twirled a pen made of spun and twisted glass, the delicate craftwork fragile in his tense grip.
No doubt, it was the pen. I opened the door further to let him in.
“I’m fine. Something at Circle just made me need to step away,” I said, not wanting to share the full truth but finding it hard to evade now.
“You can tell me what you’re thinking,” Aspen said carefully, setting the pen on my desk. I crossed the room and pocketed it before he could change his mind. “Even if you’re distrustful, I still trust you, Dahlia. I didn’t even ask why you needed this.”
I studied him for a long moment. He’d shown me his workshop. He’d given me the pen. He’d done other things, too—offered pieces of himself I hadn’t asked for but had taken all the same. The truth was, I’d already lost the battle of holding back from him. And God, I needed a friend.
Maybe—just this once—honesty wouldn’t be a mistake.
“The tree in the sitting room. It was the one Julian hung himself from,” I said.
Aspen’s gaze was steely, but he nodded. “The tree itself is covered in runes. That’s what I was noticing the night you came into the sitting room and found me by it.
A piece of the bark had peeled off, and I realized there were runes all over it. ”
“That’s strange,” Aspen said, but his expression didn’t match.
I knew it was dangerous to tell him what I was thinking, but there was something in the back of my mind that wanted to let him in.
I had felt so alone these past two months—or years, really—that part of me relished his company, despite how dangerous it was.
My dagger was in my bag, just under my pillow.
I knew what I was about to reveal was risky, so I made my way to my bed and sat down, feeling for the hilt.
“When I was recalling the story of Odin in Circle tonight, something clicked. Julian hung himself to leave a message. He had died as a sacrifice—one that wasn’t his to make.
Sequoia told me that the night he died, you all were performing some kind of ceremony, and that you took a potion.
Do you think it was meant to kill one of you, or all of you? ”
Aspen’s lips became a flat line. He came around my bed and sat next to me, and I gripped the hilt of the knife even harder, feeling my knuckles turn white. He was quiet for a long moment, and I felt beads of perspiration forming on my neck.
“Not all of us,” he said finally.
I let the words sink in.
“But one of you,” I pressed.
“Yes, one of us was supposed to die,” Aspen said. He ran his hand through his hair, his nervous tell. “But it wasn’t supposed to be Julian.”
I waited for him to say more, but when he didn’t, my pulse quickened as I let out the only word I could muster. “Why?” It was a simple question, but it dropped to the bottom of my stomach like an anchor.
“Damn it, Dahlia. I could be killed for telling you this,” he said, turning to me, his eyes as sharp as the dagger I was gripping. He was torn—he wanted to let me in, but there was a primal fear in his eyes that was holding him back.
But then he finally unraveled.
“The Meister, he’s much more powerful than you can imagine.
He has us perform an elemental ceremony into soul flight once a year.
It requires a lot of magick—it’s the riskiest thing we do, right after the Spring Symposium.
There’s a chapter on it in The Book of Skorn.
Khorvyn had written that if the ceremony works—when all the elements, fire, water, air, and earth are united—the practitioners would be able to tap into the material form of the Shattered Mother and access her purest form of power.
Khorvyn claimed to have achieved it himself.
” Aspen paused, looking away at something out the window.
“The Meister has been doing the ceremony for years. But every time it ends with the same outcome: a student sacrifice. The weakest among us don’t survive the ceremony. ”
“If he’s been doing it for so long, it must not be working. Why does the Meister keep trying?”
Aspen looked back at me, scanning his eyes around my room.
“Look at this place, Dahlia. It’s crumbling.
The class size has been shrinking every year.
The House has been dwindling in magick for years.
He says he wants to save it, restore it back to the way it was when the Founding Five were here.
But I suspect he wants to supersede the Al-Ahmar on the Council.
With that kind of magick, he’d be the most powerful Advisor in history. ”
I searched his eyes, but all I saw was desperation and pain—all of it.
“He’s been sacrificing a student every year for it,” I said.
That explained the string of missing students that Gabriel found.
Maybe my father came to Foresyth as a detective first to investigate and was convinced into staying as a student.
Just like the Meister had intended for me.
Or maybe he just came here for the education, like I wished I could have.
“They don’t always die. Sometimes they go missing, or go insane,” Aspen said. “But that night, something went wrong. Julian wasn’t supposed to die. I suspected someone must have intervened, either Leone or Nina. Julian wasn’t the weakest of us; he was the strongest.”
I let the words settle over me before I spoke. “And the person who was supposed to die . . . it was Sequoia, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said with a hollowness that uneased me.
“She’s always struggled . . . channeling her magick.
That’s why I’m so harsh with her. Because here at Foresyth, academics are a life-or-death matter, and we’re bound to this place because of our parents’ debts.
I’ve strived to be her mentor, her protector, but some women seem to have a death wish, no matter what I do.
” His eyes locked onto mine and I detected a glimmer of a smirk before his face returned to stone.
“I suspect that’s why she attempted soul flight on her own that night we found her in the tub. She wants to prove herself—wants to make sure she’ll live through the next ceremony,” he continued.
“The next ceremony?” I asked.
But when Aspen didn’t answer, I said: “That’s why you and Sequoia were fighting about Julian. You suspected he sacrificed himself for her?”
God, what if he had sacrificed himself to save all of them.
“No, that’s not why we’ve been fighting.”
“Then why?”
“I don’t agree with the ceremony, or the intent of it.
I think there are other ways to restore the magick of the House without sacrificing its students.
Even if it meant my father would disown me, cut me off from his fortune, I wanted Koi and I to leave that night.
But she begged me to stay, to prove herself.
Julian even sided with her despite the fact he’d been vocal about his disapproval of the Meister’s methods.
But now I understand why. He stacked the cards that night, metaphorically speaking, and forced the outcome.
He knew Sequoia would be safe, that he was the one that was going to die. ” His words drifted.
He reached into his pocket and uncrumpled a piece of paper, the words written in burgundy ink.
My eyes widened. “What’s this?”
“He left me this that night,” Aspen began, his voice low. “It was written in a scrawl, like he knew he was dying as he wrote it. It said, Tuta sit, sed ne illi obstes. Let her be safe, but do not hinder her.”
“Her?” I asked, a coldness prickling along my skin.
Aspen’s gaze softened. “He knew you’d come.”
I tried to process everything Aspen was saying, to untangle the puzzle Julian had laid out. Julian had somehow known I’d come here. He’d addressed me specifically in his journal, weaving a trail for me to follow, one he must have known would draw me in like a moth to a flame.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I finally asked, my voice quiet.
Aspen’s expression softened. “When you first arrived here, I just wanted to make sure you were the person Julian had written about. That’s why I took such an interest in you, asked you so many questions.
But when you started suspecting me, I decided to do what Julian said, to let you figure out what happened on your own.
I was still suspicious of the others, I couldn’t rule out that something had gone awry, and I tried to help you.
But it only pushed you further away.” He hesitated, then reached for my hand.
“But now . . . I know it’s selfish, and I know others could get hurt, but I almost lost Sequoia last year, and I don’t want to lose you, too.
Say the word, and I’ll take you and Sequoia away from here.
” He raised my hand to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss against my knuckles.
My traitorous heart fluttered before I could argue with reason.
“But you and Sequoia—” I said, unable to hide the confusion in my voice. He was with her, and yet he was here, confessing his feelings to me. “I’d only be . . . interfering.”
Aspen let out a soft breath, warm against the place he’d kissed. “Koi and I . . . we’re like a tree wrapped in poison ivy—we consume each other. We’ve known each other since childhood; it’s hard to untangle that kind of bond. In this world and the next, we are bound.”
“She mentioned something similar,” I said.
“But our hearts are open. Koi falls in love with anyone, to be honest. I’m a bit more selective,” he added, and a flush crept up my cheeks. His words hung between us, blazing like embers, leaving me with only stone and ash—and the truth. Isn’t that what I’d come here for?
“Julian still needs me. This place and the students need me.” I drew a deep breath, words spilling from the depths I rarely touched.
“Before Foresyth, I felt like I was living in other people’s stories, reading too many books, reading too many people who didn’t care to even know me, the true me.
This is the first time I feel like I have my own story, a purpose. ” I sighed deeply.
Even if Julian had written the story before he died, I was determined to rewrite it, to make it my own.
Part of me wanted to run away with him and Sequoia, or in the least, have him stand by my side as I unraveled the mystery Julian had left behind. But I couldn’t afford to put any other student in danger, not when Julian had entrusted this to me.
Most importantly, I needed to start trusting myself.
“You need to protect Sequoia. I can take care of myself, I promise. And if I can’t do it alone, I’ll come find you,” I said.
He hesitated for a moment but then nodded, and the glint in his eyes nearly brought tears to my own. I softened, leaning closer to him, the dagger beneath my pillow forgotten. Aspen leaned forward as if to kiss me, but paused, his face just a breath from mine.
Finally, he pulled away, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. A proud smile broke on his lips. “Go then,” he said quietly. “Go finish your story.”