Chapter 9
nine
. . .
Solenne
I return to the grove before dawn.
The rain has passed, but the air is heavy. Damp, laced with petrichor and something sharper beneath … the scent of scorched bark, perhaps, or magic gone slightly sour. My bare feet sink into the softened earth, and for the first time in decades, I do not greet the grove with calm.
Something is wrong.
The trees sense it too. Their branches do not sway in welcome. Their roots twitch subtly beneath the surface. I kneel between the three eldest oaks and press my palms to the moss.
“Speak to me,” I whisper.
At first, there is only stillness. Then the faintest rustle, the groan of a windless limb.
You let her in.
The words shiver up through the soil, not spoken but felt. They settle in the hollow of my chest like stones.
I close my eyes, steadying my breath.
“She was lost,” I say aloud. “Wounded. Her magic was … untethered.”
The silence responds with nothing but weight.
“She didn’t know what she was,” I continue, softer. “She didn’t even know what she wasn’t.”
Still, the trees do not answer.
I lower my forehead to the moss. Beneath my ribs, my heart aches with a kind of hollow I don’t know how to name. A root pulses against my palm. It’s sickly. Dull. There’s rot in the far edges of the grove, where the soil should be richest but now curls in on itself. A gnarling of energy.
The pact is weakening.
I breathe, trying not to let fear take root.
In the years since I made my choice, rooted myself here, gave up the world beyond bark and bloom … the pact has remained my anchor. It demands solitude. Stillness. Sacrifice. My magic feeds the land, the land shelters my spirit. A perfect circle.
Until her.
Tansy.
Even thinking her name makes the trees shudder.
I should leave. Reaffirm the rites. Offer my blood to the old stones. Bind my spirit back to root before the balance breaks completely.
But instead, I rise.
And walk back toward the cottage.
The path winds through overgrown brush. Her steps are everywhere … eager, untrained, humming with accidental bloom. I step over a patch of crocus that shouldn’t be flowering this late in the season. A willow leans toward the path like it’s trying to listen.
When I reach the edge of the clearing, I pause.
And there she is.
Dancing in the rain.
Barefoot. Radiant.
Her dress clings to her legs, damp and wild. Her arms stretch above her like she’s pulling stars down to meet her. She spins, laughing softly, and every time her feet press into the earth, something blooms.
A cluster of violets. A patch of clover. A single white rose.
She doesn’t see me. Not yet.
I should call out. I should remind her she is not meant to be here. That every step she takes is a threat to my magic, my peace, the pact itself.
But I don’t.
I just watch.
Her hair clings to her cheeks, curling in tangles that glow like dark fire. Her lips are parted slightly, breathless with joy. And her eyes … those amber eyes … catch the light of a lingering sunbeam and turn the color of warm honey poured over shadow.
She is chaos. She is warmth. She is everything I have tried not to want.
Desire cracks like a branch in my chest.
I reach for my own collarbone, an old reflex, and feel it.
Petals.
Tiny white ones, soft as sighs, blooming along the slope of my shoulder. I stare at them, horrified.
Not now. Not again.
It’s been decades since my magic answered like this. Since I responded like this.
I back away before she can see.
But even as I turn, I know the truth…
I am not sure I want to stop the breaking.
I retreat deeper into the grove.
The whispers follow me.
You let her in. You let her in.
I press my hands to my ears and will the voices away. They aren’t angry, not yet. Just … bewildered. The forest has never known longing. It only understands need … water, root, and light. Not her.
And yet, my palms still ache from where she held them. My mouth still tastes of lavender and smoke.
Back in the grove’s core, I kneel at the central altar. It’s not truly an altar, just a ring of ancient stones, mossed and half buried. I light a cone of dried resin and close my eyes.
The smoke curls around me like an old memory.
“Tell me what to do,” I whisper.
But the forest is quiet.
And all I can hear … is her laughter.
When I finally return to the cottage, the rain has passed.
The sky glows with the softness of evening.
Tansy is sitting on the steps, hair towel dried, her fingers picking absently at a chain of daisy heads. She looks up when she sees me. Her smile is hesitant. Hopeful.
“You OK?” she asks.
I nod.
She scoots over to make room.
“I think I overwatered your lemon balm,” she says, glancing sheepishly toward a potted herb by the door. “Sorry. It looked thirsty.”
I sit beside her.
The herb is blooming.
“It forgives you,” I say.
She grins, eyes crinkling.
And the white petals on my shoulder bloom again.
Wilder this time.
Unstoppable.