Chapter Forty-Four
Austin
No, you don’t get to hurt her. You don’t get to remove her. You don’t get to destroy anyone else.
Austin breeched the top of the rubble. Fighting through the thorns and the sticky leaves that tried to rip his flesh off, he stumbled forward.
Sabine fell first, taking him with her till he had her pinned.
She thrashed, back and forth, howling like a banshee.
Austin grunted. Bearing the brunt of her thrashing limbs, he searched for a way out of this. A way he got his girl back.
My flower.
Austin stared down at the blood-covered woman thrashing in his arms and could only recall them in bed.
Sharing little kisses, the feel of her head on his chest…
the sound of her light breathing when she finally fell asleep.
He replayed how her eyes lit up when she was excited.
The deep well of sadness that slowly leeched away from her features.
Day by day, because she grew to understand herself. To love being alive!
Grew to love him.
Austin croaked, “Please.” Sabine bared her teeth at him. She scratched at any inch of him she could get. Vines lashed out at his back, but they couldn’t touch him. “She doesn’t want you to hurt me.”
“I do not care what she wants!” Sabine seethed. Her heels dug into him, and he felt the bite of thorns she’d wrapped around herself. They sank their teeth into the back of his thighs and up his back.
“This isn’t your body anymore,” he yelled.
“She’s the thief! You and your masters are the poison in my veins!” Sabine threw her head back and forth.
“I know,” Austin gasped. “I know, and I’m sorry.”
Sabine stilled, her eyes welling with bloody tears. Her hands froze by his face. Fingers curled, as if stopped seconds before clawing his eyes out.
Austin’s throat trembled, guilt spilling out of his mouth.
“I’m sorry. We didn’t know you could regenerate.
We didn’t know you were a grove witch. We didn’t know you had a tree, or why those clerics hunted you down.
We thought you were dead. And it’s all my fault.
Lord Rosemont didn’t want me to be lonely anymore.
And that’s not fair to you. You didn’t ask to be gutted and rearranged.
We tried to keep everything as it was, but some things were so damaged.
If we knew you were able to heal yourself… we would have never reanimated you.”
Sabine softened. Only a hair, but he could feel it. Her eyes wavered as they searched his face. “Lonely?”
“Very,” he whispered. His thumbs stroked the inside of the wrists he had ahold of.
Soothing circles that applied enough pressure to ease her shoulder’s tension.
“I lived in a house full of people in love and asked when was it my turn? I believed was not worthy of love because of my failure to protect them. That I was destined to be lonely and hollow for all of eternity. Maybe it would be better if I was, because I never fell in love, I could never betray their trust or fail them. Fail to protect them.”
Sabine’s lower lip trembled as her feet fell flat beside his knees. “You failed to protect them?”
Austin nodded, slowly putting her hands back against the ground.
“I did, and I thought being lonely was my punishment. But it’s not.
It’s just pain that I was living in. I never let myself heal from it.
Just like any other wound, it needs to heal but I let it fester.
” Austin slipped his hands from her grip to her face.
The face of his Hyacinth, all dirty and covered in muck.
Underneath the ghost and the bloody tears was his flower.
She was waiting for him, he could tell. She just needed him to do what he did best.
And this time, when he played the decoy, it wasn’t in hope that someone would come to their rescue.
Smith with the matches that used to be in Austin’s pocket was already on his way to the tree.
The second they saw the tear in the shield, Austin knew what they needed to do.
He sent Smith to burn the tree. Austin would stop Sabine.
It was his duty to keep her from hurting anyone else.
But more importantly, he would keep her from getting hurt.
“I let it nearly ruin me. I let it consume me till I was dangerous to myself, because I thought there was no need for me around. I worried if my stitches were pulled, there would be no use to put me back together again…then I met her.” He choked on his own tongue as the emotions welled up so quickly to the surface, he feared he would drown in them.
Sabine glanced away, her lower lip trembling until he redirected her gaze back to his face. Hyacinth was in there. He could feel it in the way Sabine melted into his palm. Hoarsely, he whispered, “You’ve been in love before.”
She nodded stiffly as more tears spilled from her eyes. “They took him from me. I only had him for a blink of time. And yet, the moment I was without him it was like they stole an eternity from me.”
Austin licked his lips, nodding slowly. “Is that why you’re a grove witch? Here in King’s Fall?”
“I was here before the city,” she croaked, voice drifting as her gaze wandered down his chest. “I tried to make it my tomb after the dragon attacked…but someone woke me.”
Austin brushed the tears from her cheeks. All the vines in the street steadily went limp. The dryad that she’d made from an Enforcer crumbled into pieces after barely crawling out from underneath the house. His focus, however, was on the dead woman who trembled in his palms.
Austin smelled the smoke. His head snapped up out of pure shock, but her crackling laugh brought him back.
She wheezed, like her lungs were failing.
A little, black puff of air escaped her as she spoke, “I felt your friend light the fire…it took him a few matches. Then the Lord Commander dumped oil on my branches. I’ve been burning for some time now. ”
Austin stared down at her. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” she laughed harder, coughing as smoke rose from the back of her throat. “You are not. But that is alright. You talk like him. And I like that at least the last person I spoke to is just like him. For I’ve spent an eternity wishing I could talk to my hunter just one more time.”
She coughed so hard it rattled her whole frame. Austin climbed to his feet, pulling her up and into his chest. Cradling her bridal style in his arms, he hugged her tight. “I really talk like him?”
“You were never scared of me. And you have this kindness in your heart that no one deserves,” she wheezed, flopping her head against his chest. Her gaze lingered far away, but her fingers stayed curled around his shirt.
“Before the flames go out, can you walk me back into the trees? I want to feel my forest one last time.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. Petting her hair, he turned away from the city and bound toward the woods.
Flying over busted streets, dying trees, and plants reaching out with one last weak plea toward their grove witch, he bound into the forest. She reached a shaky hand out to the trees as he slowed to a stop.
Branches drooped down to touch her palm.
The trees said their goodbye as the sunlight broke over the horizon of King’s Fall.
He felt the golden rays kiss his back. An array of reds, oranges, and pinks glinted off Sabine, making her a fire lily in his arms. Smoke poured out of her ears and mouth.
It filled the canopy of trees for a long time.
Then just as the plumes of silver died out, he felt Sabine go limp in his arms.
Austin walked a little further, untangling the branches from her wrist. Hyacinth said that she could heal under her tree, so he headed toward the house.
The sound of people approaching stopped him in his tracks.
He guarded Hyacinth close to his chest until he saw the Lord Commander and Smith emerging from the dewy trees.
Smith coughed up another puff of smoke. “Tree’s dead.”
“Yeah,” Austin nodded at the limp Hyacinth in his arms as proof, “I noticed.”
“Either of you two want to explain what the fuck just happened? And how is it that Smith was able to light the bleeding tree on fire when I couldn’t even approach it for the last few days?
” Aravis jabbed his thumb claw over his shoulder.
Austin would have loved to say the Lord Commander looked even the littlest bit relieved, but his face was pinched up in the middle.
A bone stuck out of his hair and he was missing a few feathers, plus there was the soot stain across his cheeks.
Though, I think I win. In terms of who had it roughest, Austin was the one with thorns embedded in his skin, scratch marks, and holding the dead body of his true love in his arms. Yeah, I win.
“Hyacinth became a grove witch.” Austin hoisted his flower up a smidgen, as if proving his point.
“When she struck a contract with the necromancer’s willow in the yard of Rosemont Manor, the tree that Sabine struck her deal with weakened.
” Smith continued with hands propped up on his waist. He also was covered in soot and blood, but showed no signs of a fight thankfully.
“You couldn’t touch the tree before because Sabine had full control of it.
The terrible storms, the locusts, the blood, all of that was her. ”
“But when Hyacinth put down roots, she ripped up the old ones. She said she thought Sabine was gone but I realized that Sabine wasn’t gone because the tree was still there. Sabine was so distracted fighting you and me that she didn’t even think to protect it.”
“It’s her soulstone,” Sebastian Rosemont’s voice echoed over all the trees.
All three of the men in the woods froze and lurched out of the way as Sebastian strode forward.
Dahlia Rosemont on his arm, the pair strolling through the trees.
“Grove witches are much like Lich’s in this aspect.
Their power is cataclysmic, but without their soulstone, they are nothing but smoke.
By destroying her tree, you allowed her spirit to finally move on. ”
Austin stared at the pair as they stopped at the center of the circle.
Sebastian turned to Austin. With a gloved hand to Austin’s bicep, he spoke a single phrase, “Good work, my boy” and Austin’s heart soared.
Then he focused the beak of his mask upon Aravis.
“We’ll be taking our leave of the city, Lord Commander.
My beloved and I fixed the fence, so to speak, and I disintegrated all the dryads running amuck. ”
“And what of Sabine?” Aravis grumbled, nodding to the dead woman in Austin’s arms.
“Sabine’s dead,” Dahlia shrugged, giving Aravis a cheeky smirk. “You put down that Smith and Austin killed her before she could cause more damage. Crediting yourself, of course, for figuring out she was that unknown serial killer that plagued King’s Fall for so long.”
Aravis scowled, arms crossed over his chest. “If I ever see her inside King’s Fall again, I will have her rendered into divine dust. You hear me, Sebastian? I’m done. No more eldritch abominations, no more horror gods, and No! More! Undead bullshit from you! Or I swear to the dragons above…”
He trailed off as Sebastian clamped a hand on the large man’s broad shoulder.
Sebastian hummed, “It’s been a long night, Aravis.
That’s quite enough grandstanding. I shall expect you over for official introductions and dinner soon.
How’s next Friday? I’ll set it up with Serias and Hazel. They’re far more agreeable than you.”
“Oh! Oh, ask Hazel to make that zucchini bread again. I want her recipe!” Dahlia piped up before taking Sebastian’s arm once more. The Lord and Lady Rosemont lead the procession back to the manor, leaving the bristling but defeated Lord Commander in the trees behind them.
Austin felt a little guilty about leaving Aravis with another mess to clean up.
However, as he set Hyacinth at the base of the willow, watching her sink slowly beneath its roots, he found he couldn’t find the energy to care.
All he had the energy for was curling up at the base of the tree and waiting for his true love to come back out once more.
He folded his arms over his chest, crossed his legs, and sank back against the thick bark of the willow.
Sleep took him soon after. Rocked gently into the abyss by the feeling that he’d done what he was made for…protecting the people he loved.