Chapter Twenty-Two Shea #2
Oliver Lysander is a creature of the Gravewood, plying her with promises he never meant to keep. He’s never been anything but what he is. It was never a secret. It was always right in front of her face. And she ignored it at every turn.
“What about the cure?” The question comes out brittle. Small. “What about my mom?”
“What do you think?” he asks, and this is all the answer she needs.
She needs space. She needs air. She needs to be anywhere but here, a thousand miles away from the only thing that mattered, staring up at the devil who lured her from her doorstep. She feels as lost as any missing person, consumed by the forest. Devoured by its dark.
She fumbles out into the hall, tripping down the stairs and into the living room, where the fire has burned itself down to nothing. Asher launches to his feet the moment he sees her.
“Hey.” He ducks into her line of sight, swallowing up her exit. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Was it all a lie?” The question punches out of her, wild and hoarse.
He scowls, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she snaps, shoving at his chest. When he doesn’t budge, she shoves him again, pushing at the wall of him until he yields a step beneath her trembling hands. “You fed me this big, tragic story about everything you went through. For me. For us . Was it a lie? Did you make it up?”
His gaze lifts to to the stairs. Lys stands against the railing, cold as a serpent.
“You fucking brat,” he bites out. “What did you say to her?”
If Lys responds, she doesn’t hear it. She pushes past Asher and whips open the door, slamming it shut behind her just as Poppy calls her name.
She’s enveloped in a chilly quiet, the cold seeping into her socks.
Propelled by her anger, she stalks down the stairs and out into the dark, hurrying along the overgrown pavers before anyone can follow.
It’s stopped raining, at least. The night is black as pitch, the gaps between the treetops sugared in starlight.
Her flashlight bounces off the trunks of the trees, disappearing into the infinite spaces between.
She walks without aim, pressing forward at a clip.
She doesn’t stop until there’s a stitch in her side. Until the tears begin to fall.
She’s standing just outside an old turkey barn, the roof caved in.
Matted doveweed froths out from the open door in a leafy spew.
Collecting her senses, she casts the flashlight across her surroundings.
Darkness leers back at her from every direction, no discernible landmarks in sight.
She’s lost and unarmed, the cold sinking into her bones, and all she’s managed to do in storming out of the cabin is prove, once again, how helpless she is.
“So stupid,” she hisses.
She wanders several aimless yards in the dark before frustration wins out.
Loosing a wordless shriek, she kicks at the ground.
Her big toe hits a rock and she shrieks again, toppling onto her backside as the stone goes skittering between the trees.
Knees bent, she buries her head in her hands. Her heart pounds hard enough to hurt.
“I want to go home,” she cries into the dark.
But home isn’t there anymore. What she wants is her mother in the garden, culling weeds. Her father in the workshop, sanding wood. Hemlock belly up in a sunspot and the windows thrown wide, everything quiet and peaceful and still.
She’d resented it then. She’d begged the woods to take her.
And the Gravewood delivered.
She doesn’t know how long she sits there before the stone comes skittering back. It rolls across the wet press of leaves, coming to an impossible stop between her heels. For several seconds, she stares down at it, confused. Slowly, her confusion gives way to fear.
She’s not alone. She lurches to her feet, dragging the flashlight along the contorted faces of the trees. There, pinned in the broad yellow beam, is the woman from the gas station. She regards Shea through a too-keen stare, her head tipped to one side.
“You shouldn’t cry over him. He’s an awful boy.”
Shea knows this game by now. She understands the rules. “I’ll scream.”
“There’s no need to do that,” says the woman, drawing nearer. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here with a message.”
Suspicion swarms into her chest. “A message from who?”
“From Paris Keeling, of course.” The woman’s teeth are fanged sharp, ivory glinting in the moonlight.
“I’m not interested,” says Shea.
“Are you sure?” Crooking an arm around the thin trunk of a tree, she swings herself out of sight. She appears on the other side, eyes glittering. “He’s heard a rumor that your poor, sweet mother isn’t feeling her best. That you’ve come all this way in search of a cure.”
Shea stills. “There is no cure.”
“Is that what Oliver told you?”
“Well, no,” admits Shea. “But it was heavily implied.”
The woman tsk s. “Oliver can be very tricky when it suits him. He tells all sorts of lies to get his way.”
“And Paris doesn’t?”
“Paris Keeling is a businessman. He makes decisions with his head. Oliver makes decisions with his heart. It’s his fatal flaw. Surely, you see it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be out here all alone, crying in your socks.”
“I wasn’t crying,” says Shea.
“But you’re alone,” notes the woman. “It isn’t good to be friendless in a place like this. The dark might gobble you up.”
Shea stands her ground, her toes numb with cold. “You can tell Paris I’m not interested.”
The woman peers down at her, untroubled.
“That’s a shame. He’s very interested in you.
And he has connections. All sorts of them.
He’s not like Oliver, scraping and scavenging for every scrap.
He’s a kingmaker. A dealbroker. A man , not a boy.
He can get you what you need with the snap of his fingers.
But if you’re sure …” She turns to go, slipping out from the circular beam of the light.
“Wait,” calls Shea.
The woman reappears, her mouth curving into a bloodred smile. “Yes?”
“Is there really a cure?”
“There is,” says the woman. “And they don’t want us to have it. There’s not enough food. Not enough supplies. It’s better, if some of us die. Easier, if some of us survive on blood. Simpler, if we devour one another. But Paris—Paris can get anything. For you, he would.”
“Why me?”
“You’re everything to him. The linchpin in all he holds dear.”
Shea’s blood pumps a little faster. “What do I have to do?”
“Come to the revel,” says the woman. “Alone. You and Paris can—”
There’s a sickening squelch and the woman coughs—a short, shallow hack that paints her chin with blood.
Stunned, Shea follows her gaze down to her abdomen.
Five onyx tips protrude from her torso in arcuated points.
They disappear with a sound that turns Shea’s stomach.
The woman drops to her knees with a wet burble.
Behind her stands Lys. Bruises burgeon across his skin in shades of violet, fracturing along his jaw. His veins are thunderhead dark, thin lines of desiccation deepening to a swollen pitch. He is as inhuman as he was the night on the bridge, his body corded beyond recognition.
Between them, the struggle runs out of the woman. Her eyes go hazy, pupils ashen.
Feebly, she whispers, “From the fount of the forest comes the—comes the—”
She topples to the ground with a thud. She doesn’t move again. For several seconds afterward, there is only this—Shea and Lys standing face-to-face, the wind clicking through the branches. The forest gleams with starlight, diamond fractals dripping from the pines.
Even Lys is glazed in it, the fluted ridges of his horns gone onyx with rainwater. He holds her in the black bullion of his stare, severe and unblinking. He has never looked more beautiful to her than in this singular moment. And she loves him. She loves him .
She doesn’t know how to make herself stop.
Even now, when she knows it’s poisoning them both.
Scenting the air, he takes a single step toward her. There is no recognition in his face—no sharp smile, no knowing leer. She’s cornered, nowhere to run.
“Lys,” she whispers. “Lys, it’s me.”
He moves in closer, moving like a wolf, locking in on his prey.
“My mom loves to garden,” she blurts out, unthinking.
“Loved. Will love again. She kept the yard full of perennials. Purple astilbe likes full sun, although sometimes in a heat wave she’d sit out there with an umbrella, just in case it got too hot.
Spiked speedwell likes well-drained soil, and it has to be cut back every year or you won’t get blooms.”
Lys’s head quirks oddly, canting to the side.
“Coral bells like partial shade.” Her back collides into the wide trunk of a tree.
She takes a swallow of air and keeps going, unable to do anything but watch Lys approach.
“They tend to heave out of the ground in the wintertime, so you need to mulch after the first freeze. I missed it this year, and I’m worried they’ll uproot while I’m away. ”
He sways into her, a clawed hand braced against the flat of her stomach. The bloodied tips of five sharp talons snag in her shirt. She shuts her eyes.
“Then there’s bleeding hearts,” she whispers. “They’re my favorite. They grow in the shade, kind of like you. My mom keeps them next to the red columbine, because they match, and because they both attract hummingbirds.”
His hand closes around the hem of her shirt. Fingers—human—scrape the bare skin of her belly. Slowly— slowly —his forehead lowers to hers. His breath shreds the air between them.
“What are you doing?”
Relief blooms, sunshine bright, inside her chest. “I don’t know any baseball facts.”
A distinctly Lys smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. He sways, unsteady.
“Lys?”
She pulls away just in time to see his eyes roll back. He collapses into her, boneless. He’s heavier than her by a large margin. They go down together, hitting the cold, wet ground.
“Lys?” She shoves at him, to no avail. “Oliver.”
Something heavy crashes through the trees up ahead. She rolls as best she can, scrabbling for the flashlight just as Asher emerges. He takes in the scene before him—the body on the ground and Lys’s head tipped back, his hair matted with rainwater.
“Help me,” she cries. “Help me get him up. I can’t—he’s too heavy.”
“Okay. It’s okay. I’ve got him.” Asher hauls Lys onto his feet, pulling an arm over his shoulder to prop him up. His head drops forward, eyelids fluttering.
“Get his other side,” orders Asher.
Shea rushes to obey, wedging herself under his shoulder like a crutch.
The stars as their audience, they make their way back to the cabin.
Shea slips in the mud as she goes, struggling under Lys’s weight.
She feels small and weak and angry, her heart in her stomach, the woman’s words beating like a drum in the hollow of her chest: Come to the revel. Alone.