Chapter 9 Kai
IT WAS NOT QUITE DAWN when they slipped out of the estate, Asphodel guiding Kai, Clover, and Luce through the dark, quiet gardens.
The remnants of the night’s festivities were still there, tables laden with barely eaten food, ribbons that danced half-heartedly in the breeze, overturned goblets and crushed flower crowns and extinguished candlewicks slumbering in fat drippings of wax.
There was something foul in the air, Kai thought. As if these carcasses of a feast half-forgotten had been festering for days on end instead of a mere few hours.
They reached the garden gate that led off the estate grounds only to find it already open to the woods beyond.
Clover’s hand shot out to stop Asphodel in her tracks, holding the witch back as a cry escaped her lips.
Luce’s own hand shot to her mouth in horror.
It took a moment for Kai to register what they were seeing, and when he did, he wondered for a second if this was a nightmare he had yet to wake from.
Lying in front of the gate were two witches—lovers, perhaps, who’d stayed behind after everyone else left the party—their bodies writhing as they were strangled by coils of rotten leaves and thorn-covered vines that slithered and tightened around them as if the earth sought to swallow them whole.
And hovering over them, eyes entirely black, were a group of hellwraiths.
There were a dozen of them, young and old, faces Kai recognized as recently ascended hellwraiths, and some he’d never seen before.
They formed a circle around the witches’ bodies, levitating a few inches from the ground, their faces blank and expressions trancelike, their hands moving in odd motions as if they were controlling the deadly, earthly coils around the witches.
“Asphodel, I swear if you leave with—”
The voice behind them gasped, cutting itself short. Oleander stood with a lantern in hand, shivering in her nightgown, having clearly followed them from the house. Her eyes were wide with horror as she beheld the scene.
Her voice must have broken the hellwraiths out of their trance.
In a swift, inhuman motion, a dozen faces turned in their direction, a dozen pairs of fathomless eyes staring blankly at them.
Kai stood frozen in place. There was something not right about this, something oddly familiar about the way he could not move.
He watched as Clover stepped forward, emanating a brilliant light, the same way he looked when “purging” newly ascended hellwraiths of their would-be demonic influence.
The hellwraiths fell as one to the ground, and Clover managed to wrest control of the coiling vines, tearing through them with magic until the two suffocating witches were freed and, likely healed by Clover, gulping air into their lungs.
In the ensuing quiet, as the light extinguished, the hellwraiths looked around them with eyes that were clear and a confusion that skewed toward horror as they realized where they were and what had happened.
“You will answer for this,” Oleander told the hellwraiths in a shaky yet authoritative voice. “Every single one of you will pay for what has happened here.”
“This isn’t what it looks like,” said one of the hellwraiths, an older witch with graying hair. Incredulous tears gathered in her eyes as she gaped at the two would-be victims—crying now in each other’s arms, with Asphodel trying to soothe them. “I swear we meant no harm.”
“We have no idea how we even got here,” spoke another, looking equally confused.
“Because you’re all possessed!” Oleander cried out. “This is the netherdemons working through you. First they poison our woods, now they’re trying to kill us, too. I won’t tolerate another one of you near my coven. A black moon is coming. You will all be exorcized then.”
Gasps and cries echoed. Asphodel gaped at her sister, uttering a low, “But exorcism is as good as a death sentence.”
Oleander squared her shoulders. “We do what we must to protect our coven.”
“We used to be part of your coven before you cast us aside.” The older witch’s voice wobbled. “We have loved ones still in your midst. You cannot mean to—”
“That was before you tried to kill two of our own. You are no one to us now.”
“Oleander,” Asphodel said softly, turning pleading eyes to her twin.
“Can’t you see this isn’t their fault? They’re not themselves, but we can help them instead of—of sentencing them.
Cornelius has a plan to lead us all to salvation.
It’s why I must leave. And once we heal the rotting woods, the netherdemons will return to the underworld and the hellwraiths will be saved. ”
Oleander didn’t look convinced, her eyes pinning Clover with a hard stare. “I don’t trust him.”
“I do.” Asphodel gathered her twin’s hands in hers. “Trust in me, if nothing else.”
Clover watched this exchange with quiet anticipation, like the director of a play waiting to see the scene he’d envisioned play out exactly the way he meant it to.
This was all his doing, Kai suspected. The vines coiling around those two witches.
The hellwraiths summoned to the estate in the middle of the night, their apparent possession.
Netherdemons did not exist. But a Tidecaller with the power to manipulate the earth and to Glamour whoever he wanted—with magic that went beyond even that, and a penchant for theatrics…
As Oleander agreed to let the hellwraiths go free—too easy, too pliant—Clover caught Kai’s eye, and it was all Kai needed to confirm his suspicions.
Clover had manipulated all of this. As if he’d known Oleander wouldn’t have let her twin leave without this final push, this last performance where Clover got to be the hero, cementing his role as the only one capable of stopping the very real rot and the entirely fabricated netherdemons.
“It had to be done,” Clover whispered to Kai as they set off toward the door at last, the first light of dawn guiding their way. Asphodel and Luce walked a few paces away, out of earshot.
“Those two witches nearly died,” Kai pointed out. “And who’s to say Oleander won’t decide to go after the hellwraiths once we’re gone? Their deaths will be on your hands, just like—”
But the names that had been on his lips vanished from memory. Clover hadn’t killed anyone, had he?
Baz’s words echoed in his ears. I think you were right not to trust Clover.
Except… why was that again? Misremembered thoughts swam in Kai’s mind once more.
Of all the disjointed pieces of dreamlike memory he couldn’t make sense of, only two things had always remained clear to him: his feelings for Baz and his distrust of Clover.
If this inexplicable instinct was all he had to go on, surely he had to trust it. And yet.
Kai shook away his confusion, angry at his own inability to know what was real. “All I’m saying is you’d better know what you’re doing.”
Clover gave him a sly smile. “I have all the powers of the moon at my fingertips, Kai, including that of Seers. I always know what I’m doing.”
It was meant to be comforting, most likely. But all it did was set Kai more on edge than ever before.
“How are we meant to open the door?” Luce asked once they reached the caves. “If it required blood in our world, then here…”
“It requires a bone, yes,” Clover said. He drew closer to Asphodel, stroked her face like the tender lover he was pretending to be. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course,” she breathed, eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. “I told you before, how I can feel the way our souls are connected. This song between us.” She looked at Kai and Luce. “Between all of us.”
“Yes.” Clover kissed her hand. “We all have a part to play in what comes next. And your part, dear Asphodel, is larger than you realize.”
The words set off alarm bells in Kai’s mind. He tried to catch Luce’s gaze, but she was focused on the door, brows scrunched up in thought.
“This will be just as we discussed,” Clover said in that lover’s voice, low and soft.
Asphodel lay down on a flat surface created by some of the basalt columns, arms at her side and face tilted toward Clover.
Like she was a sacrifice on the altar of a dark god.
“It will hurt,” Clover continued, “and you will feel like you’re dying. But do not be afraid. I’ve got you.”
Kai took a step forward as a dagger flashed in Clover’s hand. “What are you—”
The dagger sliced into Asphodel’s dress, tearing a large cut on her side.
On her exposed rib cage was a spiral scar like the one Clover and Luce had on their wrists, marking her as her world’s key.
Asphodel met Kai’s eye. “It’s all right, Nightmare Weaver.
If my rib bone is needed, then I trust no one more than I do Cornelius to see it done.
” She looked at Clover lovingly. “My healer prince.”
Clover stroked her hair, then sliced the dagger along her skin.
Luce turned her face away, squeezing her eyes shut with a low swear as Asphodel screamed.
Kai couldn’t turn from the horror. He was transfixed by it, by the utter trust the witch was putting in Clover.
More than anything, he wanted to believe that this would work—that Clover would break off one of her ribs and heal her as quickly as it happened.
Kai might not like the guy, but there was no denying his power.
And Clover came through. He did exactly what he had said he’d do.
He held the blood-slick rib tightly in one hand while the other cupped Asphodel’s cheek as he murmured comforting words to her.
Before their eyes, Asphodel’s rib regrew, then her skin patched itself up, and all the color returned to her face.
It was as if none of this had ever happened.
Except for the bone in Clover’s hand—which he then fitted into the groove on the door.
The door opened.
Kai and Luce were almost through it, called to it like magnets by the pull of that damn song, when Kai looked back to Clover and Asphodel expectantly.
Asphodel was sitting up, still a little faint and frail, but alive, at least. Her feet dangled from the basalt columns, barely touching the ground.
She braced herself on Clover’s arm, trying to stand, but Clover kept her there, pressing a kiss to her temple.
“You did well,” he said in a low voice, though still loud enough for Kai to hear.
Suddenly Kai doubled over, feeling that conduit between him and Clover open. Luce, too, was bent at the waist, her hand shooting out to grab Kai’s arm as all the power knocked out of them like a gut punch.
“What’s happening?” she breathed.
The shimmering threads linking them both to Clover crackled like live wires as they normally did, yet this was worse than any other time Clover had fed on their power. But as much as it was affecting Kai and Luce, it was nothing compared to what he was doing to Asphodel.
The witch screamed as all the bones in her body snapped, bending and rearranging at odd angles. For a second Kai thought it might be the Sculptress’s doing, that Asphodel was somehow being reshaped the way witchlings were said to be when they were buried.
But by the look in Clover’s eyes, the intensity with which he was focused on Asphodel, it was clear this was his doing.
“You were right, dear Asphodel,” Clover said with a tremor in his voice, a slight note of pity or regret.
“I will lead our worlds to salvation. But for that, I need to make myself into someone stronger than all the gods. Your physical bone was enough to open the door, but you still have a piece of the power I need. A piece of the Sculptress.”
“I don’t understand!” Asphodel cried.
“The Tides’ blood, the Sculptress’s bone, the Forger’s heart, the Celestials’ soul. I must gather all these pieces into one vessel. Into me. Only then will I be able to heal these worlds.”
Clover shimmered in ethereal light that poured into him from Kai and Luce, as if they were powering him up, making him strong enough to do what he did next: he lay a hand on Asphodel’s cheek, holding her head as her body spasmed uncontrollably.
He shut his eyes, his throat bobbing with emotion.
When he opened them again, they were hard. Resolute. “Forgive me.”
Asphodel went limp as he snapped her neck.
The crack resonated like thunder. A weighted silence followed, before a whoosh of power erupted from Asphodel.
Kai shielded his eyes as a maelstrom of dirt and vines and leaves enveloped both Asphodel and Clover.
When it dissipated, there was nothing left of Asphodel’s body but the clothes she had worn.
As if she’d disintegrated into earth and greenery—the power of the Wychwood itself, which clung to Clover in swirling tendrils, until at last it seeped into him fully.
He had imbibed Asphodel. All her power. Everything that she was.
When Clover turned to Kai and Luce, his eyes flashed in an unnatural way. As if he really was a demon.
A god in the making.
The shimmering bonds between them fell away, leaving Kai and Luce panting, holding on to each other for strength.
“What did you do?” Luce asked in a tremulous voice.
Clover merely righted his clothes, brushing dirt from his sleeves. “What I must.”