Chapter 35 Strength
I awoke to the sound of my own name.
“Dahlia!” someone was shouting, but the weight of sleep pinned me down, pressing on my bones and skin. Distantly, I thought how nice it would be to curl up on my side. But the tugging on my lips pulled me from my torpor.
“For Gods’ sake, Dahlia, wake up!” It was a man’s voice.
The floor was shaking, or maybe it was just me.
My lids lifted, and I saw Aspen’s eyes, swirling gold within green, like a snake encircling moss.
He was wiping my lips, looking upset. “Thank Gods. I almost thought your lipstick routine hadn’t worked on you. ”
“She saved me,” I muttered, but the words were tangled in my throat.
My mouth felt dry as I reached for it. The jelly of poison was gone, wiped clean.
Where had the cotton gone? I turned to the side and realized I’d spat it out—or maybe someone had pulled it from my mouth.
My senses returned like a fog clearing. Across the room, I saw the Meister restrained with Leone’s tie, just as planned.
Leone, however, was slumped in his chair, a swollen eye marking his struggle.
“He wouldn’t hand over the Book,” Aspen explained with a shrug, pointing to the open Book lying beside Leone’s unconscious form. I almost smiled at the brute force of it.
“Sequoia’s vomiting, and I can’t find Nina anywhere.” Aspen’s eyes darted around. “You were right about her—she poisoned the cups.”
“What do you all think you’re doing?” the Meister snarled, his eyes glowing green, full of hatred. Recognition pierced me like an arrow. He had just been in my dream.
I rose, despite my shaking knees, frantically reaching for the Book. I needed to pull my words together, get him to confess for the switchbox recording.
“You were there,” I spat but my words slurred. “You were there when my father . . .”
The Meister’s eyes sparkled as he rose, the knot of the tie coming undone and falling by his hands. “You children—you thought you could possibly restrain me?” He raised his hand into the air, twisting his fingers into a claw.
Aspen crashed down to his knees beside me, pulling at the imaginary fingers around his neck.
“The cards—” he choked out, faltering. I dropped to catch him. His eyes were bulging, his bronzed skin turning a nauseating shade of red. Panic rose to a fever pitch as Aspen contorted in my arms.
My eyes cut to the Meister. One hand was still outstretched in the shape of a claw, and in the other he was holding a golden Skorn card. An image of a sword shimmered as realization dawned on me—the Meister was doing this. I needed to get the card out of his hand as quickly as possible.
“I can manipulate the very air around your throat. This kind of power is only a fraction of what the Shattered Mother will offer me once I’ve completed the elemental sacrifice,” the Meister exclaimed, curling his fingers.
I didn’t have time to think. I only had time to act. I charged across the room.
My legs stuck to the floor like sap, but I pushed through my grogginess, aiming with my shoulder.
In the next breath, I felt my shoulder shattering as it made contact with the Meister.
The card dropped out of his hand, and Aspen spurted into a coughing fit.
It was relief enough that I could ignore the blast of pain radiating down my arm.
I used my good hand to swipe a dagger from my belt, bringing it up to the Meister’s face. I shifted my weight to firmly pin him to the floor, but his laugh rumbled through his chest, pushing me off.
“You are such a fool, girl. Your friends are dying tonight, and there’s nothing you can do,” he said, grasping onto my weight and tumbling me over. My dagger clattered next to us, and we both reached for it. He was faster and had it on my neck in the next heartbeat.
“You can’t kill me—” I said, panic biting my chest. “You need me,” I spat.
“You’re right that I need you alive,” he said, his scar across his eye glinting in the firelight. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you.”
The Meister drove the dagger toward me, but I used my hands to brace his arm. His face was contorted into a mask of revulsion, lips parted with saliva gathering in the crease of his lips. The floor started to vibrate. Or was it my hands shaking against his?
A resonant creak of wood sounded across the room. I spared only a fraction of a second to see Sequoia behind the great oak tree. She was . . . pushing it down?
“Dahlia, you have to move!” she yelled.
“I’m preoccupied,” I tried to say, but it only came out as a guttural scream.
I fought to gain distance from the Meister, pressing the dagger further up in the air.
His face contorted from anger to frustration, foam crusting his lips.
His eyes were shining a liquid lime green as he drove the dagger down, now only a breath away from my throat.
The bark splintered in bursts—sharp, cracking noises like brittle bones snapping one by one. The air was thick with the low, reverberating moan of strained fibers tearing apart.
Before I could register the tree falling, a glint of metal flew across the room, and my fingers burst into pain. Aspen. He had kicked the knife out of the Meister’s hand, but the force had echoed down my hand.
“Move!” he bellowed.
I scrambled for purchase, throwing all of my weight into forcing the Meister onto his back. Aspen swept me off of him, and we fell backwards, our landing softened by the chaise behind us.
The House shuddered. The roots strained against the earth with a final, reluctant pop, followed by the long whoosh of displaced air as the canopy collapsed.
I felt Aspen’s fingers covering my head, protecting me from the stray branches as they fell.
They broke around us with brittle snaps, tangling and twisting like desperate hands grasping at nothing.
The impact was a dull, thunderous thud that echoed through my chest. The floor rumbled, rattling through bones and chests, before the sweep of silence rushed in. It was as if the House itself had exhaled.
The Meister was lodged right under the tree’s trunk, a branch spearing his elbow. He let out a howl of pain.
I untwined myself from Aspen, rising to my feet. He was breathing heavily and covered in leaves, but otherwise unharmed.
“Sequoia,” I said, my eyes darting to the opposite of the room.
She lay unconscious beside the uprooted tree, a gilded card in her hand, her face angelic and calm as if in slumber.
I squinted my eyes to make out the image of a flower-crowned woman, next to a tall, roaring lion. The card of Strength.
My God, she had pushed the tree herself.
“I’ll take care of her,” Aspen said, and lifted his chin with a grimace toward where the Book lay.
The Meister moaned in pain, trying to free himself, but he was pinned under the jagged bark. My whole body was pulsing in pain, but I forced myself to walk over to him and stare into those vicious green eyes.
“Is this not how you conduct the ceremony?” I spat over him.
He groaned, his arm spurting blood. “You might want to get that taken care of,” I said and turned to the hearth where the Book lay.
My job wasn’t done yet.
I forced my fingers to curl and pick up the Book, its weight unnaturally heavy, as if it carried the burden of every soul it had corrupted.
Power shuddered through me, starting at my fingertips and spreading like a spider’s web through my arms and chest, threading into my very core.
For a moment, my pain subsided. The sensation was cold and invasive yet intoxicating.
I could feel it pulling at me, drawing me into its orbit.
I closed my eyes, centering myself, willing the world to fall away. The room dimmed, the noises dulled. All that remained was the Book, its voice a whisper in my ear, low and intimate.
“Dahlia Blackburne, your Bonder blood calls to us. Why don’t you open our pages?” it purred, the words coiling around me like smoke. “We have so much to teach you.”
The sound wasn’t just in my ears—it was in my skin, my bones, resonating with the same eerie pulse I’d felt since entering this House. My fingers slid to its edges, brushing the cold, obsidian surface. They itched to open it, to peel back the veil and dive into its secrets.
The temptation was almost unbearable.
But I didn’t move. My grip tightened instead, the reality of what I held sinking in.
This was no ordinary tome. Solid carbon, compacted over years into stone, it was a relic of power and ruin.
How many haunted hands had held its spine, known its true horror, and been destroyed by it? How many lives had it claimed?
It would not take mine.
“No,” I said, my voice hoarse but resolute. “I don’t need to learn from you.”
Without hesitation, I hurled the Book into the fireplace. It landed with a heavy thud, an unnatural sound that echoed in the silence. The flames engulfed it, licking hungrily at its edges, and for a fleeting moment, I thought it would burn.
Then came the click.
The obsidian shifted, expanding with a mechanical elegance that defied nature. A shield unfurled around its pages, protecting them, deflecting the fire.
A low laugh echoed behind me, cutting through the crackling of the fireplace. The sound was bone-chilling, a mockery of mirth. It didn’t match the Meister’s twisted, monstrous face, but I didn’t need to turn to know it was him.
“Stupid child,” he gurgled weakly, his voice curdled thick with blood and hatred. “You cannot burn the Book. It is protected from the elements. Its power is eternal.”
“Perhaps not with fire,” I said, my voice steady despite the storm inside me. I reached into my pocket and drew out the black pebble, cold and sharp against my palm. “But I can with acid.”
The Meister’s laughter ceased. His silence was all the confirmation I needed.