Chapter 17 #2
“There’s something at the center of its base,” Aleks said, pointing, then aiming a sphere of his own light toward it a moment later.
With the added light, we all saw it clearly: A half-buried, partially broken structure made of stone slabs.
Like an altar, almost. The tree’s roots had grown around it, forming a cage.
Something inside of that altar pulsed with the same golden light that crisscrossed the trunk.
Aleks made his orb of light grow brighter. Parts of the tree seemed to recoil in response, limbs creaking and clattering in protest.
Or in warning.
I swore I saw the roots moving, too, tightening around the altar and its golden treasure, protecting it.
“Could that really be it?” Zayn asked.
“…I can feel power coming from it,” I said, breathlessly. “And it’s building.”
“But is that power coming from the shard, or from the spelled tree that’s protecting it?” Aleks wondered.
“Either way, it doesn’t look like they’ll be easy to separate,” Thalia said.
“Not without cutting through the wood, or whatever this strange material is.” She knocked her fist against the smooth black tree; it sounded hard but hollow.
“And who knows what will happen if we do that? Something tells me the forest won’t like it. ”
A cold sweat washed over me.
Cutting it free will have consequences.
“Orin warned me about this,” I said quietly.
Aleks glanced my way, concerned for a moment, before stepping forward to more closely inspect our target. Panic shot through me, but he moved with perfect calm, leaping over wayward branches and scrambling gracefully across the massive roots before finally placing a hand at the base of the trunk.
I shivered as I felt his power rising, taking on a similar energy as when I used my own power to obtain visions of the past. Except, Light magic didn’t divine the past. It saw the future—a much trickier spell, and not one he attempted very often.
Because the future is always fluid, he often said.
But he seemed determined to pin it down, this time. Several tense moments passed before his eyes opened and flashed in Thalia’s direction.
“She’s right,” he said as he made his way back to us. “The forest won’t like it at all if we try to cut these things apart.”
As if it had heard us discussing the mere possibility of slicing into it, that forest shuddered even more convincingly to life; this time, I was certain I saw deliberate movement—and not just from the restless root system.
Vines slithered like snakes. Branches twisted sharply toward us, curling downward like claws groping for prey. A limb struck for Aleks, but he leapt away at the last possible instant, rolling aside as it hit the ground with enough force to shatter into dozens of tiny splinters.
More limbs rattled and shifted threateningly around us. Roots rose up from the ground like living beasts, arching their backs in threat. The air grew heavy and electric, humming with waking power.
I scrambled out of reach of the deadliest-looking branches, Thalia and Zayn following my lead.
Aleks rejoined us without taking his eyes off the golden glow at the base of the tree.
Power rolled off him in waves, enveloping me in warmth.
I expected his thoughts to follow, like they so often had here lately.
Instead, it was an image that dropped into my head as his fingertips brushed my palm: A vision of Grimnor cutting through the gnarled limbs, loosing the glowing fragment from its altar.
I realized what he was doing—trying to show me the future he’d seen, whether it would ultimately prove true or not.
While he kept his eyes narrowed and his sword raised toward the center tree, I took his hand more completely.
I bowed my head, focusing. I saw images of the forest bending and breaking, collapsing altogether in some places, as a wave of unstable-looking energy raced outward from this center point.
That wave stretched beyond the edge of the forest, draping like a shimmering, black veil of mourning, toward…
“…Rose Point?”
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, trying to hold on, to see more of the vision.
The angle of it shifted higher, as though I’d scaled the center tree and was looking down upon everything.
From this vantage point, I could see the black veil stretching toward the magic that had long surrounded my childhood home.
Clawing at the edges, as if to claim some of that magic.
Drawing it inward and stabilizing the forest again, it seemed…
But at what cost?
A rumbling sounded through the vision—though I would have sworn I could feel the vibrations of it in the present. My knees buckled. I braced myself against Aleks, opening my eyes to find Zayn and Thalia staring at me.
“What about Rose Point?” Thalia asked.
I shook my head, unable to put what I’d just seen into words.
Aleks quietly said, “The magic that’s surrounded that manor for all these years…the stasis spell…I think its origin is this forest.”
Tense silence followed his words.
I swallowed hard. “Orin told me that the purpose of this grove is to nullify dangerous divine power.”
Zayn frowned, considering. “When so much divine Shadow and Light magic violently collided at Rose Point seven years ago…”
“It must have triggered a protective spell from this grove,” I finished in a whisper. “One powerful enough to reach beyond its usual borders, wrapping around Rose Point and leaving it in the strange, semi-frozen state it’s been in for the past seven years.”
“So, what happens to Rose Point if we disrupt things?” Zayn asked.
I didn’t want to guess.
No one did.
Stasis.
Things don’t live or die here.
Was the magic of this grove really the reason my old home, my mother—all that remained of my old life—had not decayed? Because of whatever spells the members of the Void Order had woven here?
How had that Order created something so powerful, so…impossible?
The more I learned about them, the more questions I had. And the more I feared they might prove an even more dangerous enemy than any we’d faced thus far.
The darkness around us deepened as the seconds passed. The wind rose and fell with a strange rhythm, as if the grove was breathing. The trees bent inward like a fist closing around a heart. Around my heart. More blue blossoms were drifting down from somewhere, a mesmerizing rain falling over me.
“We have to choose…let’s either cut it free or get the hell out of here.” Thalia’s voice seemed to come from very far away. She raised her staff, shadows gathering at its tip, but she looked uncertain. “Nova. We have to choose. Now.”
But the grove seemed to be offering me another option.
Stay.
A scent tickled my nose: cardamom and bergamot, the perfume my mother wore. Laughter echoed through the trees—my father’s laugh, high and bright and alive. Somewhere in the dark, I heard music. A waltz from my birthday. The last song before everything had gone so wrong. Before so much had ended.
But what if it didn’t have to end?
This was the grove’s gift, after all: not death, but suspension. I could stay here, wrapped in the warm memory of what I’d lost, and never have to face what came next. Never have to fail again. Never have to watch another person I loved slip through my fingers.
Moving forward meant accepting that they were gone. Really gone. Not cursed or sleeping or waiting for me to save them.
Just...gone.
“Nova.” Aleks’s voice cut through the dream I was slipping into. He was right beside me, suddenly, magic flickering unsteadily beneath his skin. When I met his eyes, I saw the same terrible temptation reflected there.
He wanted to stay, too.
Of course he did. Here in this frozen moment, we didn’t have to think about his past. About what the Light Keepers had done to him. What Lorien had done, what he was still doing, what might become of us and our magic and everything else.
“We could just stay,” I whispered, quiet enough that only he could hear. “We could be safe here.”
“Safe…” he repeated. But then he gave his head a hard shake. “Is that what you call this? Nova, look around. This isn’t safe.”
But I was looking around. I was watching as the nearest vines and roots began moving again, inching closer and trying to overtake us. To embrace us. My companions hacked relentlessly at them, but I kept still.
I’d spent seven years running while carrying the weight of my failure—the curse I couldn’t break, the family I couldn’t save, the world I couldn’t seem to find my place in.
That weight had twisted itself into my spine, wrapped around my ribs, squeezed until I couldn’t remember what it felt like to breathe without it.
What if I just...set it down?
What if I let the magic of this grove take me in and hold up that weight for a while?
Vines were encircling my wrists, lifting me onto my toes.
Already, I felt lighter. I started to tuck my head toward my chest, exhaling slowly.
But before I could drift entirely away, Aleks shouted my name.
He spun toward me, sword flashing, cutting through the vines and catching me as I stumbled forward.
“I’m so tired, Aleks.” My voice broke as I pressed my forehead to his chest. “I’m so tired of moving forward.”
His hand found mine. His skin was fever-hot, magic burning just beneath the surface. “I know, Nova. Gods, I know.” He squeezed my fingers, and I felt the tremor in his grip. “But you can’t stay here. You know that. Too many people are counting on you.”
“What if I can’t save any of them?”
I took a step back. A root snaked around my ankles and tightened, pulling me down to my knees.
More vines snagged my wrists. These were covered in thorns and delicate white flowers—jasmine, my mother’s favorite.
I stared at them as I whispered, “What if I’m not strong enough?
What if it’s not just Rose Point I can’t save, but everything? What if I fail? What if…”
“Then you fail.” His answer was immediate, unflinching, as he dropped to his knees before me and again started to cut me free. “You try, and you fail, and you get back up and you try again. Together, we can—”
His words choked off. The vines were claiming him too, now, one of them taking his throat in a violent, silencing grip.
Something shifted inside me of me at the sight, as I realized: the grove wasn’t giving us a choice anymore.
It was going to keep us whether we chose to stay or not.
Zayn and Thalia were still fighting desperately against the encroaching forest. Their shouting, and the clash of steel against wood, seemed distant, muffled.
The tempting memories returned with an intensity that seemed to be trying to drown them out—the music swelled.
My mother’s perfume grew stronger. I blinked and I would have sworn I saw her smiling face watching me from deeper in the woods.
And my father was there, too, laughing and holding his arms out to me like he had when I was still small and the world made sense.
Just let go, the grove whispered. Let go and rest here with them.
For one desperate heartbeat, I considered it.
Let go.
I want to let go.
Then, Aleksander’s magic surged—wild and blazing—burning away the vines that held him. His eyes locked on mine. “Don’t you dare, Chaos.”
The memory of my mother’s smile flickered.
I’m sorry, I thought. I’m sorry I can’t stay.
I reached for Grimnor.
The sword resisted at first; it was caught just as I had been, vines wrapped around the hilt, flowers blooming from the guard. But when I closed my hand around it, Shadows surged through my veins, cold as ice.
Death, not stasis.
I was Death, and it was time to embrace my power.
Because sometimes it was the only path forward.
I raced for the center tree.
Limbs shot toward me from every direction.
I knocked aside two only to spin around and find three more stabbing toward my chest. Zayn caught one with his blade.
Aleks knocked the second one aside while Thalia swept around me, beating back the third, along with the grasping branches, and clearing a path.
“Hurry,” she said, nodding toward the altar at the base of the tree.
I moved even faster than before—too fast to allow myself any time to think. I could focus only on my target, on the swing of my blade, on the choice I was making.
The grove cried out as Grimnor cut through the spelled, ancient wood, the sound like a thousand birds screeching as they took flight.
The fragment tumbled free, landing in the dead leaves at my feet.
I picked it up. It was light as a feather and cold as snow. Images flashed through my mind as my fingers closed around it: a garden at night; a woman running; a palace looming in the background.
All around us, the forest began to wilt. Leaves curled into themselves. Flowers blackened and fell. The trees bent backward, bark peeling, thick branches snapping as easily as dried twigs.
In my hands, the fragment of Lorien’s soul was soon doing the opposite, waking with a fierce heat, becoming hot and bright.
I held it to my chest, as if I could use its warmth to fill the emptiness I felt as I scanned the dying grove, searching for the comforting ghosts of my mother and father, for some sign that I’d made the right choice.
“Put that out of sight,” Aleks said, appearing so suddenly at my side it made me jump. Fear burned in his eyes, and his voice was strange. Angry, almost.
Startled as I was to hear him speak to me like that, I couldn’t seem to do as he asked; even as the shard burned against my palms, I couldn’t let it go.
“Nova, please—”
Then the sound of a building collapsing roared in from the distance, loud enough to rattle me to my core.
I shoved the soul fragment into my pocket and started to run.