Chapter Twenty-Eight Shea
The church sits on the opposite side of a narrow river, over a segmented bridge with the pavement gone efflorescent and down a thin side street set with squat residentials devoured in pokeweed.
Only the house of worship stands intact.
It rises out from behind a wall of leafy dog fennel, two towering palms flanking the entrance like sentinels.
Inside, the sanctuary is carpeted in a hush. A fountain sits behind the pews, dark with varnish. Inside the lower basin is a pool of standing water, the surface sponged in fairy moss. The cathedral’s sole source of light pours in from overhead, moonlight raining down through a hole in the roof.
Just before the altar stands a boy. He’s discarded his jacket, and his forearms are violet with blood.
His head is bowed, eyes downturned. In his talon-sharp claws, he clutches a book.
He looks almost like himself this way. Quiet.
Contemplative—the way he looked the first night she came upon him at Mercy Ridge, crimson pooling in her palm.
“Lys,” she calls.
His head darts up at the sound of his name. Blood paints his throat in Rot-dark spatters, thick as oil. The book slips out of his hand, toppling to his feet. Moonlight limns the curve of his horns. He reminds her of the Minotaur, shut away in the labyrinth of his own mind.
Waiting to give chase.
The wrongness of it all strikes her cold.
“I wouldn’t approach him if I were you.” In the dark of the sanctuary, Paris Keeling rises from a pew. He tugs Camellia up after him, hauling her onto her feet. Next to Shea, Poppy gasps.
“Ellie?”
Camellia’s eyes lift, horrified. Her voice is fractured, full of teeth. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I came to find you,” says Poppy. “We all did.”
Camellia looks as furious as Shea has ever seen her. “I didn’t ask you to do that. I don’t want you here , Poppy. You should have stayed in Little Hill.”
Poppy flinches back as if she’s been struck.
“Easy now,” says Paris soothingly. “There’s no need to lash out. Your friends have been worried about you, that’s all.” He smiles over at them, unfazed. “You’ll have to be patient with Camellia. She, like Oliver, is undergoing a bit of a personal reckoning.”
“A reckoning,” echoes Shea. “You destroyed him.”
“On the contrary,” counters Paris. “I had very little to do with his deconstruction. It was all you. And—might I add—you did it beautifully. All Oliver’s life, I have worked to nudge him into greatness—to trigger the snap in him, so that he’d realize his full potential.
I did terrible things. Necessary things.
Nothing worked. Nothing took. Not until you.
You gave him something worth unmaking himself for, and look at him now. ”
In the little chancel, Lys hardly seems aware of them.
His attention is focused on a warped milk crate someone has set atop the altar.
It’s piled high with books, the bright covers and paperboard corners boasting dancing bears and humanoid trains and floppy rabbits.
Children’s books. Dozens of them. He lifts one of them from the pile.
It’s a thin book of poems, leather bound, the pages dog-eared.
“He was born with the forest beating in his blood,” says Paris.
“I have always seen him for what he is. A messiah. His mother didn’t agree.
From the start, she dampened his flame. She filled his head with stories.
She fabricated for him a soul, taught him how to play at boyhood. And in doing so, she made him weak.”
Without a word, Lys rips a page from the book. A poem flutters to the floor. A second follows. A third. Papers flutter every which way, until finally the book is empty. Tossed aside, it lands spine-up atop its innards.
“You’ve done my family a great service,” says Paris. “I’d like to repay you for what you’ve done to preserve the Keeling name.”
Shea’s eyes blur with tears. “Stop saying it like I did you a favor.”
“Oh, but you have. I meant what I said before. You’re not worthy of my son. But you could be.”
She breaks her gaze from Lys, surprised. Paris’s smile is patient as he gestures toward the fountain, its finials packed with leafy cascades. “We have our very own fount of holy water. It was brought here from a spring-fed stream, deep in the heart of the forest. All you have to do is take a sip.”
“What happens if I say no?”
“I let you walk away, and my debt to you is cleared.”
The quiet stings. Lys stands predator still, listening to every word.
Paris watches her wrestle with her indecision, his smile unwavering. “I feel it’s paramount to remind you that Oliver called you here, not I. It was quite a thing to behold. One ring of the bell, and you appeared. He has you very well trained.”
“What are you saying?”
“Only that I might be willing to let you leave, but I’m not sure I can say the same for him.”
He drew her out. He brought her here. And she fell for it, thinking it meant there was something of him remaining.
When she peers back at the altar, Lys is smiling over at her, his canines sharp, his chin dark with blood.
Here, at last, is the wolf he wished for when he was small.
There is nothing human left in his stare.
Tell me how to fix this , he begged her.
There’s no fixing any of this. The damage is done.
“The decision is yours,” says Paris. “Die in the street, or live like a queen.”
The back of her neck prickles with a sudden awareness. The air shifts, pressure changing, and a shadow breaks free of the rest.
“You forgot the third option,” she says.
Paris’s eyes glimmer. “And what’s that?”
“You can go to hell.”
There’s a whistle, sharp. The unmistakable thwack of a missile finding its mark.
Paris staggers back, black widening in a circle over his heart.
From his chest protrudes a thin wooden stake.
White oak, whittled by hand. For a moment, he wavers where he stands, staring down at his body like he can’t quite understand what he’s seeing.
And then, with a silent cry, he drops to his knees.
From out of the dark steps Asher. The crossbow hangs slack at his side.
“We had a deal,” gasps out Paris. “We had a deal .”
“We did,” agrees Asher. “You broke it. You promised me—you swore —that you would keep my sister safe if I did what you told me to do.”
“And I did. Look at her. She’s stronger than ever—”
“You killed her,” says Asher, silencing him. “I did everything you asked, and you killed her.”
His quiet anger reverberates through the dark cathedral. The very air seems to shudder with it. He doesn’t spare a glance toward Camellia. She hovers in the dark of a shallow niche, her eyes wide and flat. Poppy starts for her, but Shea catches her by the wrist, shaking her head.
Wedging himself between them, Asher crouches down in front of the kneeling Paris. “All that work. All that planning. Everything you did—it was for nothing. The Keeling legacy will die with you.”
“You’re already too late,” gasps Paris. “You can’t stop what’s coming, you—”
Paris’s head lolls back the instant Asher pries the stake loose.
His eyes go flat, his chest still. Rising to his feet, Asher casts the weapon aside.
It clatters onto the floor, rolling noisily along the aisle before coming to a stop at the toe of Lys’s boot.
Lys leans down and picks it up, turning it over for inspection.
“A thank-you would be nice,” gripes Asher.
Lys is silent, pressing a finger to the stake’s bloodied point.
“I’d also accept an apology from Parker,” adds Asher, rounding on her. “I mean, what the hell were you thinking—”
“Asher,” says Poppy, “let it go.”
“Why?” His gaze lands on Lys and lingers, assessing. “What’s wrong with him?”
No one answers. The sanctuary is gripped in a graveyard hush. Slowly, Lys drags his eyes to Shea’s. She feels like a little girl again, staring up at the forest. Wishing for it. She sees it in him, plain as day—the same dendroid grip. The same eldritch pulse.
There is nothing left of Lys behind his eyes.
He makes his careful way down the aisle, moving like a predator. Silent. Sure. Asher is the only one who doesn’t step aside at his approach. He plants himself in the center aisle like a wall, obstructing Lys’s exit.
“What the hell is your problem?”
Lys stares dead ahead, cold and intractable.
“Snap out of it,” he orders. “It’s over.”
“Asher,” whispers Poppy.
“Did you hear me?” Asher cuffs Lys’s collar, drawing his gaze. “Pull it together, asshole.”
“Asher, stop,” says Poppy. “It’s no use.”
Asher ignores her. “I know you hear me.”
Lys checks him hard, his strength unnatural, sending Asher flying into the nearest pew. Camellia rushes forward with a cry, skidding to a stop as Lys brushes past her.
He doesn’t spare another look in Shea’s direction. Not once. Not even a glance. He heads, instead, for the wide double doors that lead out into the night. The first pale glimmers of dawn shine through the stained glass, turning the sanctuary murky with light. She feels like she’s drowning in it.
She rounds on Asher the moment Lys is gone. He’s busy pulling himself from the pew, his hands clutched protectively over his ribs.
“What the hell was that?” His gaze cuts to hers. “You didn’t want to weigh in?”
The confusion in his eyes breaks the dam. Shea charges, slamming a fist into his chest, knocking him back against the pew with less force than Lys had managed but with double the fury. Asher does what he can to shield himself as she rains blow after blow against his ribs.
“This is your fault,” she cries. “You’re a traitor. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you. We trusted you. He trusted you.”
“I won’t apologize,” says Asher, catching her wrists against his chest. “I had it under control.”
“Yeah?” She tears herself out from his grasp. “Does this feel like control to you? Is this a victory?”
His jaw tightens. “I handled it.”
“No. I don’t accept that. You should have told me what was happening. We could have figured it out together. That was what we promised.”
“That promise was broken the second you set foot in the Gravewood.”
And there it is. His anger has claws. It snatches the breath clean from her lungs.
“You were gone,” she whispers. “I did what I had to do to protect my family.”
“Yeah? Well, so did I.”
She can’t stand the sight of his face. She turns away from him, stomach sick. When she starts down the aisle, he follows.
“It’s over,” he tells her. “It’s done. Whatever happens next, we’ll be okay. We’ll figure it—”
“Don’t.” She rounds on him so fast, he flinches. “Don’t say another word. Not one more. I never want to speak to you again.”
Asher looks as though he’s the one with the stake in his chest. All the blood drains from his face, leaving him white as a sheet. Behind her, Camellia is crying openly.
“Shea, wait a minute.” Poppy’s touch alights on her arm. “Let’s think this through.”
“Don’t touch me.” She shakes Poppy off, launching up onto her toes in an effort to get right in Asher’s face. “You’ve ruined everything, do you understand that? Lys was all I had left.”
Asher’s eyes flash. “You had me. You’ve always had me.”
“Not anymore.” Her voice shakes. “You’re dead to me, Asher Thorley.”
“Shea!”
She ignores Poppy, pushing past Camellia and shoving out into the fledgling dawn.
Where she slams directly into Oliver Keeling, waiting on the topmost step.