Chapter 15 #4
My heart in my throat, I hurried over and felt for her pulse—faint but steady.
Farrin, still singing, touched my hand. I followed her gaze to the tree, which had gone completely still.
The tunnel Gemma and I had made was gone, buried in fallen branches.
Whatever had hit the tree—some stray bit of magic from a fae or from one of my Roses—had punched a hole into its gnarled trunk and stunned it silent.
I scanned the wreckage, making quick calculations.
We’d gotten extraordinarily lucky; that hole was positioned right above the key.
“Keep singing, Farrin,” I said, then started to climb.
I hadn’t made it three feet before Gareth joined me, carrying my sword in one hand.
“I’m coming with you,” he announced breathlessly.
I didn’t stop climbing, but I was sorely tempted to, if only so I could punch him. “Get out of here,” I snapped, snatching back my sword and returning it to its sheath. “You’re supposed to be helping Talan.”
“He’s fine. Truly a strapping young man. It’s more important that I help you.”
“And what help will you be to me, exactly?”
The hole was just ahead, yawning like the mouth of a cave.
The charred bark around it pulsed with a soft blue light.
Beneath us, something shifted with a faint groan.
We froze, listening hard and barely daring to breathe, but then the tree fell silent once more.
We climbed the last few yards in silence, then crouched at the hole and peered inside.
We saw only a thick and quiet darkness, and at the very bottom, a faint glimmer of silver.
Gareth raised his broken glasses to wipe his face. I caught a glimpse of his wounded arm; the venom’s bruise had doubled in size.
“If you die,” he answered mildly, “then at least you won’t be alone.”
His quiet voice shook me. The sounds of battle raged behind us—the crackle of magic, our friends in combat—and Gareth’s voice was the thing that nearly made me lose my nerve.
I could see the words he didn’t say right there on his face: he didn’t trust that I wouldn’t die doing this thing.
More than that, he didn’t trust that I would fight to stay alive.
Maybe he was right not to.
“As soon as I have the key in my hands,” I said, a little shaky, “you’ll need to claim me as your prize and end the hunt. So as long as I’m alive, you’d better be too.”
Then I climbed through the hole and began my descent. Gareth followed my path, and despite my best efforts to remain unimpressed, he impressed me. Even with a limp and a poisoned arm, he moved at a decent speed, and he didn’t slip once.
A few short minutes later, my boot touched earth. We stood in a vast cavern of roots and stone. The only light came from the hole through which we’d climbed—now some seventy feet above us—and from my own body. The glamour was gone, and my skin glowed softly with power.
“Well, that’s handy,” Gareth remarked. To his credit, he did not gawk.
I said nothing, scanning the labyrinth around us until a faint glimmer to the right caught my eye.
“There it is,” I whispered.
Now that we were this close to it, the similarity to the other anchors was undeniable.
Made of the same dark metal as the Three-Eyed Crown and the Mhorghast egg, the key lay in a tangle of feathery roots and bright yellow moss.
It was half the length of my forearm and crusted with jewels, and as we approached, it began, quietly, to hum.
I reached for it, then hesitated and glanced at Gareth. The air around the key vibrated with power, making my fingertips tingle, but nothing pushed me back. No ward magic, no barriers at all.
“Too easy?” Gareth suggested, gazing at the key in fascination.
“Let’s hope not,” I murmured.
Then, as I reached for the key, my hand brushed against the yellow moss.
The pain was so sudden and sharp that I nearly blacked out.
Even worse, everything around us abruptly heaved—the roots, the earth itself—like a massive beast gasping for breath.
Gareth caught me before I could fall, and I leaned against him for a moment, blinking away the pain.
A deep rumble shook my chest as the roots continued to shift.
The tree, it seemed, was waking up.
“It burned me,” I spat, shaking out my hand. I tried to ignore the angry yellow welts forming on my fingers.
“And now there’s more of it,” Gareth muttered. “Look.”
As the tree stirred, its rumbling groans growing louder by the second, the yellow moss began to spread.
Its tendrils snaked everywhere—around the roots, across the floor.
As the moss moved, so did the roots, as if it was the thing awakening them.
One root lashed across the ground; Gareth jumped out of the way with a curse just as a crash from above made us look up.
The hole was closing—our only way out.
I grabbed my sword and passed it to Gareth. “Cover me. Chop the roots, whack the moss, I don’t care. Just strike anything that comes for us and climb as fast as you can.”
He took the sword without question, and then, before either of us could talk me out of it, I thrust my hand deep into the moss.
I’d never stuck my hand into a fire before, but I imagined this was how it would feel.
The searing pain made me see stars, and I couldn’t shake the idea that something in this moss was peeling my skin from my bones.
But I kept digging until my fingers finally met metal.
I was sobbing, though I didn’t realize it until I wrenched the key free of the moss and staggered back.
“Breathe, Mara, and listen to me,” Gareth was saying, his voice thick with tears. “Gods, I’m so sorry. It will be all right. We’ve got to climb now, darling. Can you climb?”
Gasping for breath, I wedged the key into my waistband. The metal bit into the skin of my belly, but that was nothing compared to the pain in my hand. I couldn’t look at it. I couldn’t, or I would be sick.
I started to climb, tears streaming down my face. Each time I grabbed on to a root with my bare hand, the pain exploded anew. But I had to keep climbing no matter what. If my fingers fell off, I’d do it one-handed.
Gareth was right behind me, his progress inconsistent.
Every few seconds he stopped to hack away at something.
The chop of the blade against wood was sickening.
I felt like we were clawing through the meat of a beast’s belly.
And the hole above us was closing faster and faster, weaving itself shut.
The darkness was terrible. I couldn’t see where I was going, and the air hissed with awakening roots, like we were crawling through a pit of snakes.
I felt like my body was gone, like it had fallen away and all that was left of me was agony.
For an instant I imagined letting go and dropping to my death, letting the moss eat me alive. That would be it. There would be no more pain, no more dead Roses, no more anything.
“Mara, don’t you dare,” Gareth shouted from below me. “Keep climbing, or so help me, I’ll kill you myself.”
That made me laugh through my tears. The hole above us was nearly closed. We’d never fit. Maybe I could punch my way through with my good hand. Then I’d have a matching ruined set.
“Kill me?” I gasped. “You’d never, not before you’ve had the chance to fuck me.”
“And what would that be like? Do tell, and please spare me no details.”
His voice gave me the push I needed to climb the last few feet, and just as we reached the top and I started to laugh in delirious despair at the sight of the fistsized hole, the entire top of the tree exploded outward.
Splintered wood flew everywhere, and the world outside roared with the sounds of battle, but the sight of escape was irresistible.
I climbed fast, screaming through the pain, screaming for Gareth to hurry. Once we were out, I scrambled down the roots with him just behind me. I was clumsy, uncaring. I fell twice, knocked my jaw against a root and tasted blood, but at last we were free, standing on solid ground.
And there was Gemma, haggard and half alive.
But even so, her hands were bright with power, and her magic washed over us in hot waves, reassembling our glamours and keeping the thrashing roots at bay.
Just behind her was Farrin, still holding her up and singing, her voice as fresh as ever and her song ringing with triumph.
I felt for the key—still there, tucked against my skin—and reached for Gareth with my unhurt hand. He took it gently and pulled me against him, and I closed my eyes and held on to him. His arm was strong around my waist; his heart beat wildly against mine.
“I claim you as my prize,” he murmured into my hair, “and thus this hunt is finished.”
The relief that swept through me was nearly as powerful as the pain in my hand.
I sagged against Gareth in a daze, only dimly noticing our surroundings.
Cries of anger, then of fear. Dark shapes darting swiftly through the air.
A clash of swords; a sharp fae scream. Golden eyes flying toward me, and the cool brush of dark wings. “Kill them!” someone cried.
“Mother?” I whispered.
Then I knew nothing more.