Chapter 11 Romie #2
Romie gave a harsh laugh. “It’s the truth, though, isn’t it?
We have the chance to do some good here, because yes, I believe we’re here for a reason, that there’s some semblance of truth to Clover’s story and that we were chosen to see it through.
We heard the call of gods, Em. If we abandon this idea now and just go home, it would mean everything we went through, everyone we lost, was for nothing.
Would you be able to live with that? ’Cause I couldn’t. ”
Emory averted her gaze, seeming to fight back tears.
Romie felt bad, but she didn’t take any of it back, her conviction unshakable.
She’d always been the type of person who got bored chasing after dreams and goals, abandoning them whenever things got tough.
This was the first time she wanted to see something to the very end despite all the complications, all the things she’d lost to get here. She couldn’t give up now.
At last Emory gave a heaving sigh, and Romie knew she’d won her over. “Fine,” she said, “but if they burn us at the stake for this, I’ll never forgive you.”
Romie threw her arm over Emory’s shoulder, unable to hide her smile as she dragged her out of the herbarium. “Come on. Let’s start by finding this damn door. No point arguing over something that might not even be there.”
They were steps away from the garden gate when a voice echoed behind them.
“Where are you going?”
Aspen stood there with her arms crossed.
“We’re not prisoners here, are we?” Romie asked with a raised brow. “Not now that the ascension’s done, anyway.”
“It’s not safe to go into the woods on your own.”
“So come with us.”
A pause. “Where?”
“The waterfall where you found us. We want to make sure we didn’t miss anything last time.”
Aspen threw a look behind her as if debating whether it was worth displeasing her mother. Finally she crossed the garden gate ahead of them. They followed.
The woods seemed normal to Romie as they walked through them. But the deeper they went, the more obvious it became that something was wrong. An eerie stillness. A stench in the air. A state of decay that was unnatural for autumn.
Even the waterfall was all wrong, seeming completely dried up.
There was, of course, no door there. Just like last time they checked.
The rot was worse here, the ravine nearly black with sludge.
Aspen’s face blanched at the sight. Then Romie noticed what she was staring at: a dead deer, its hide decomposing, flies swarming over its shedding antlers.
Romie covered her mouth. “Tides, that’s horrifying.
” Her gaze drifted to Emory, who wasn’t looking at the carcass, but rather at the decaying leaves beneath her feet, her fingers splayed out in front of her as if she were running them through water.
Romie swore she saw a ripple of silver beneath her skin.
A trick of the light, there and gone in a flash.
Unease gathered in her stomach. “Em, you okay?”
Emory looked at her with an odd expression. “Don’t you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“It’s like there’s an electric current running under my feet, and the air feels…
charged. Alive with power.” Again she ran a hand through the air in front of her, mesmerized by whatever invisible force she was sensing.
Her breathing picked up, chest heaving as if she were running.
She pulled her hand back and looked at Romie with something like fear. “Don’t you feel it?”
“I can’t say I do.”
“It’s the ley line,” Aspen said matter-of-factly, frowning slightly at Emory. “It runs right through here.”
“Ley line?” echoed Romie and Emory.
“Paths of energy that run beneath the earth. Invisible to the naked eye, but we witches can feel them. Especially here in the Wychwood, where they’re most concentrated. There’s a certain vibration to them that we don’t feel before ascending. But once we do… we can feel how everything is connected.”
It was Romie’s turn to frown at Emory, wondering how in the Tides’ name she could feel these lines of energy. Another perk of being a Tidecaller, Romie supposed.
“Is there a way to use the ley line’s power?” Emory asked Aspen with an eagerness Romie did not like. “Maybe this is how we find our door.”
Aspen hesitated. “Standing on a ley line can heighten one’s magical abilities, but its power cannot be used in the way you’re thinking. It isn’t something you can harness or control. It is simply… felt.”
Romie noticed the way Emory’s shoulders sagged at that. A thought crossed her mind. “If this is where magic is strongest, it might explain why this is where we appeared. Which means the door has to be here. We can’t possibly have appeared out of thin air.”
“This door of yours,” Aspen said with curiosity, “you believe it will bring you to other worlds, yes? Like in that story of yours. Song of the Drowned Gods.”
They gaped at her.
“How did you know that?” Emory asked.
Aspen bit her lip, realizing she’d said too much. “I… I heard you discussing it.” At their insistent looks, she added, “When I was scrying.” She let out a relenting sigh. “My scrying power is different from other witches’. I can see through people’s eyes, feel what they feel, hear what they say.”
Romie raised a brow. “So you spied on us.”
“I only did it once or twice, I swear. Can you blame me for wanting to know more?”
The violation would have infuriated Romie had she and Emory not been also poking around the Amberyls without their knowing—in dreams, in memories. She caught Emory’s eye and knew she was thinking the same thing.
“What exactly did you hear us talking about?” Romie asked.
“Only that book. And how you believe yourselves to be like its characters. I couldn’t quite piece together the story, though. Will you tell it to me?”
And so Romie did. By the end of it, Aspen was frowning, and Romie couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“So you’re seeking these doors to go to this sea of ash,” Aspen said at last.
“Yes.”
“And you believe I might be this witch of the woods who must go along with you to find these other… heroes?”
“Possibly, yes. Have you ever heard it, the call of other worlds? This song that pulls on your soul?”
The Sculptress, perhaps, calling her forward. Just like the Tides calling Romie to the sea of ash.
Aspen’s eyes brightened, and it was all the answer Romie needed. But that spark was there and gone in a flash, replaced with that stoicism again. “My mother would never let me leave. My place is here, in the Wychwood.”
Disappointment followed Romie like a shadow as they made their way back to Amberyl House. She was too consumed in her thoughts to notice the rot seemed to have expanded to the foot of the garden gate until Emory pointed it out.
Aspen quickly ushered them onto the grounds, evidently perturbed at the sight of the spreading decay.
Her gaze caught on a shaded alcove of the garden, where Bryony sat in a bed of flowers.
The hem of her cream dress was blackened with dirt, but she still managed to look flawless, with pale green ribbons in her hair and a smile on her lips.
Unaware she had an audience, Bryony blew on dandelion puffs and seemed mesmerized by the cloud of spores that danced around her. She closed her eyes and shoved a handful of dark berries in her mouth, the juices staining her lips red.
Romie’s heart stuttered as she noticed what looked like nightshade growing all around Bryony. But Aspen stopped her before a warning could form on her tongue.
“We never pull a witch from her scrying,” Aspen said in a low, clipped tone.
“But those berries are poisonous! Nightshade is deadly—”
“Those bushes are black nightshade, not the deadly variety. See? The berries form in clusters.”
Romie relaxed, knowing very well that deadly belladonna produced single berries. Still, as Bryony convulsed before their eyes, it was hard not to intervene. The young witch’s eyes flew open, as cloudy white as the dandelion fluff that suddenly froze around her, remaining suspended in the air.
Bryony was scrying.
A small smile touched Aspen’s lips. “She’s done it.”
“Why the berries?” Romie asked.
“They’re her tether. When scrying, a witch’s essence needs to be firmly tethered to the physical world through at least one of the five senses. Taste, it appears, in Bryony’s case. We do this to remind our bodies that we are here, while our essence, our sixth sense, wanders the astral plane.”
“What happens if you pull a witch from scrying?” Emory asked.
“You would sever their essence from its tether, leaving room for—”
Aspen stopped midsentence as a girly giggle suddenly bubbled from her throat, sounding so unlike Aspen that Romie recoiled.
The look on Aspen’s face was equally as confusing: gone was that stoicism, replaced with a doe-eyed wonder as she glanced dazedly around the garden.
She sighted Bryony’s scrying form amid the cloud of dandelion puffs and tilted her head to the side, uttering a single sound.
“Oh.”
Aspen blinked, seemingly coming back to herself—just as the dandelion puffs around Bryony fell in one great motion to the earth at her feet. Bryony’s eyes found her sister’s, void of their previous milky appearance that showed she was scrying.
A smile split Bryony’s face, the red berry juices still staining her lips. “Aspen, I found it! My scrying power—it’s just like yours!”
Aspen stormed over to her sister, looking very much like their mother as she gripped Bryony’s arms. “You have to keep this secret. This is not natural, Bryony. And after what happened at your ascension…”
Bryony seemed caught off guard by the sternness in her sister’s voice, the fear in her words. “But it’s just like what you can do.”
“No, it’s not. I can’t take possession of others.”
Romie met Emory’s gaze as it all clicked into place. What they’d just witnessed…
Bryony had taken over Aspen’s body.
A rustling sound had the four of them spinning around to see the two boy witches who’d called Bryony a hellwraith at last night’s festivities. They were staring at her now like she’d grown horns and fangs. One of them pointed a trembling finger at her. “You really are a hellwraith!”
“We’re telling our mother,” the other spat.
“Please,” Aspen said, pulling Bryony close. “This is all a misunderstanding—”
“Being Amberyls doesn’t make you exempt from rules. A hellwraith must be purged.”
Emory suddenly stepped toward them. “You’re going to keep quiet about this. Whatever you think you saw here, you didn’t. Got it?”
Before Romie knew what was happening, the boys nodded, their eyes oddly glazed as they turned on their heels and left.
And then it hit her.
Emory had Glamoured them.