Chapter Thirty-Nine. Rory
Rory
Rory’s hands shook as he dug frantically through the leaf litter.
Most of the things he used for autumn transitions were nowhere to be found.
The heather had long stopped flowering. The apples were too wizened and crow-pecked to be of use.
The plants he grew in the garden were withered, snow-frozen things, more gone than not.
Some were done away with by the cold snap, some simply gone this late in autumn.
There were hardly any leaves left for Daye’s hair, and whatever Rory could find was damp and browned with frost. The relentless rain of the last few days had knocked most of the foliage to the ground, and the snow took care of whatever was left.
Rory picked armfuls of soggy, half-rotten leaves, mud and icy slush soaking through his trousers. He could barely feel the cold.
He should have guessed that things would be different when the experiment ran this long.
He should have had things ready. He should have been prepared.
Should have covered the plants or moved them to the shed.
Should have had the things he’d need on hand.
But summer was so blissful, so endless, that it was all too easy to believe it was done.
That the experiments, the withering, the constant countdown toward each transition—that they were all behind them.
That this time he’d found the right combination, the right balance.
That the searching was over. Or that, at the very least, he’d have more time. That he’d know well in advance before—
It failed. He failed. It almost— Daye almost—
Rory braced his hands against the muck, breathing hard.
He could still feel the brittleness of Daye’s hair between his fingers, a phantom touch.
Like passing his hands through a thicket of twigs or a strand of dried grass.
Could still see the two teeth, chipped and gray, that rested on the pillow beside her.
The way pieces of her skin simply crumpled and fell, leaving dry, ragged gaps behind.
She looked … She looked like she did three years ago, when Wynne didn’t come back in time; like she did that last day in their room, just before her chest stopped moving.
And he didn’t know what would happen if she stopped breathing again.
He’d changed so many things over the last two years, strayed so far from the Blodeuwedd’s textbook structure, that he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that if it got that far, he could still—
Kneeling in the mud, Rory sobbed. And then he wiped his eyes, leaving muddy streaks on his cheeks, and went back to searching for acorns in the leaf litter.
Daye didn’t have any time to lose.