And then—
Nigel.
Luna could feel him. Through the storm of twisting darkness in her head. Through the surging power of that foreign entity, seeking to overwhelm her. She wrapped all the green light in her being around herself, pulling it close, pushing against that darkness, and . . .
He was there.
His lips were on hers, a desperate kiss. A connection of body and soul.
Oh, Nigel!
She tried to reach back to him, tried to let him know that she was still present, that she had not been wholly reduced. Could he feel her? Did he realize? Did he know?
And then—
A quake rocked through her essential being, shaking it down to the very foundations of selfhood.
She didn’t experience it as pain. She was far too separated from her own body just then for such sensations.
But she certainly sensed Jastira’s reaction all around her, the explosive hurricane of raw and writhing spirit.
Darkness, agony, horror, rage. Battering her awareness, until Luna could do nothing but duck away from it, shielding herself in green light.
What have you done? Jastira’s voice echoed through the caverns of her soul. What have you done, you traitorous, whoreson dog!
It was quite a respectable slur. Archaic but effective. Even Auntie Aurora would have approved that one, surely.
A force like a blow seemed to hit Luna, driving her back deeper and deeper under the layers of darkness. She felt a weird sensation of separation which she could neither understand nor define.
Then, abruptly, unexpectedly, she found herself seated inside her own head, gazing out through her own eyes.
It was strange to experience any degree of physicality, and at first she couldn’t decide if she was relieved or not to feel the structure of a skull, to peer through eye-shaped windows.
But she was here now, so she forced her lashes to part and gazed out.
And there he was.
Her husband. Her Nigel.
Standing directly before her, his face vicious, his lip curled in a snarl, his teeth on edge.
She felt something else as well, something . . . inexplicable.
Luna dropped her gaze, blinked a few times. Tilted her head to one side as she contemplated the sight of a rusty old trowel protruding from her chest, the handle gripped in her husband’s hand. For a moment, she was too confused to understand.
Then she thought, Oh. Of course.
She remembered watching Nigel place the spell on this instrument.
An old work of sorcery that, by rights, ought to have been worked on some mighty sword or fell dagger.
But those weren’t the sorts of tools found lying around a garden.
Still, the magic was the same, the power woven with Dire-force and gleaming with anti-light and unnamable colors.
She remembered watching him take that ensorcelled trowel and drive it into the Heart Tree—but the spell had caused the trowel to affect only the dark magic which was trying to ensorcell the Heart Tree, not the tree itself.
With great skill and cunning, he had transformed it into a spirit dagger.
The enchantment was still alive. Still powerful.
Wrought by the Grimshade Lord with permission from his Sovereign.
And now she saw it protruding from her body without seeming to touch her body at all.
Only the alter-image, the glamourized vision of loveliness that was Jastira.
It was her invasive soul which he pierced.
With a vicious twist, he drove it deeper.
Jastira screamed.
Luna gasped, staggered. Not from any physical pain, but from the hideous sensation of all that black sorcery pouring out from her, the undoing of the resurrection spell which had placed this foreign entity inside her.
Jastira did not let go easily, however. Luna felt her reaching out, dragging magic through the various energy-lines still connecting her to the last few standing sorcerers.
Luna, once more in possession of at least a few of her senses, heard strangled cries uttered, saw cowled forms collapsing, drained of their magical essence.
Their darkness fed their mistress’s, and she swelled and grew and fought.
But Nigel’s spell was stronger. The Grimshade Lord, the Sorcerer of the Age—not even the Shadowbane Lady was a match for him.
Luna turned her gaze back to her husband.
He was difficult to see through all the whorling of Jastira’s spirit pouring out from her, through the weird haze of anti-light and anti-glitter and the sparking colors of the Dire.
But he was there. She could just discern his face, wreathed in an expression of raw fury which made him look singularly monstrous.
Where was her lover? Where was her Nigel?
Where was the man who had changed her life for the better in every possible way?
He stood before her, almost unrecognizable as he leaned into a different side of his nature.
A side which, she knew, had been there all along.
A dark, deadly, completely Dire version of Nigel Grimm. The man who could save her.
He was speaking a spell. Words spilled from his tongue in a language of damnation, a spell far darker than any she’d ever imagined. It seemed to suction the darkness of Jastira right out of her body, every last clinging strand of soul which sought to hold on.
Then, breaking through the whirling chaos of shattering spell-sigils, Luna saw a portal opening. A new portal—not a doorway to the Dire Dimensions. No, this was something far worse. Far darker. Far more final.
With a sudden wrench of spirit, Luna realized what it was her husband intended to do.
She whipped her head swiftly to look at him.
To really look at him, not just with her physical eyes, but with the new green-light magic which burned through her.
She saw his soul separating from his body, whirling up into the storm with Jastira’s as the two of them blended together.
A terrible, inexplicable magic which Luna could not understand, but she was a quick study.
She could read the situation well enough.
Gosh darn it, Mr. Grimm! her mind screamed. You’re selling your soul to damn Jastira’s, aren’t you?
He had to make certain this time. He had to know that, when he hurled her from this world, she could never return, not by any resurrection spell. He was saving Luna’s life, not just in this moment. Forever.
But at the cost of his own soul.
“No!” Luna screamed, her voice lost in the Dire-fueled storm.
How dare he? How dare he sacrifice himself?
And not himself alone, but everything they were supposed to be for each other!
How dare he sacrifice their future, their children, their home, their family, all the memories they were going to make together?
Absolutely not. She wouldn’t let him. Drat the man, he didn’t get to make that choice!
Luna dropped to the ground. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she was still floating several inches up, but she made herself heavy and fell to the blighted soil of Alfred P.
Grimm’s gravesite. Collapsing to her hands and knees, she pressed her hands hard into the earth and, though she didn’t really know what she was doing, instinctively sent the green light in her soul down deep, deep, and deeper still.
Down through all the dried-up and drained reaches of enchanted acreage, stretching out farther and farther. Until she found it.
The Heart of Garden.
The great tree, still alive. Hidden. Untouched and untarnished. Though everything else was drained, the Heart was still alive.
Help me! she called to it. Help me save him!
A moment of stillness.
Then a powerful surge of Green Magic flowed back through her, like an electric charge.
Jolting through the green light-streams in her spirit until she fairly burst with the magnified force.
There never was a spell like Garden, after all.
There never was a heartbeat like that which throbbed in the center of that tree.
She felt there the souls of two great magic-makers, the spell’s creators—Alfred P.
Grimm and his unappreciated son. A profound legacy of heartbreak and disaster and, in the end, of hard-won understanding.
Perhaps even . . . love. Love discovered after death.
The sympathy of legacy. Of hands-in-soil, of hearts poured into green and growing things.
There was so much pain, but there was goodness as well, which might, with time, with patience, with nurturing, ultimately be redeemed.
The love of a mother, who gave her life for her child.
The devotion of a man, who sought to make his wife a kitchen garden.
The devastation of loss, the hope of new life.
A hope that would go on blooming and growing in the legacy of Nigel and his children and his children’s children.
And not just Nigel’s alone.
Hers.
Because Garden belonged to her now too. And her children would play here.
They would dig and plant and scrape knees and hunt worms and feed ducks and make pets of turtles.
They would grow in this soil, blossoming like little flowers in the sun.
And she and Nigel would watch them, care for them, kiss their booboos, scrub the dirt out from behind their ears.
Thus would they create their Happily Ever After. Together.
Gazing through green-glowing eyes, Luna watched the soul of her husband, tangled with Jastira’s, a writhing mass as they floated toward that yawning mouth of eternal sundering.
Luna stretched out her hand—her long, light-brimming, green-shimmering hand—and caught hold of those two spirits.
With a single shake, she separated them, dragging them apart from each other.
Because he did not belong to Jastira. Neither in this world nor in hell.
“Sorry, Janet,” she said. “He’s mine.”
The portal continued to yawn. She felt its devouring hunger, dragging, drawing.
Because an unbound soul must go somewhere.
But if she let Jastira’s soul loose now, Nigel’s soul would still be drawn after it.
It was the nature of this hellish magic.
The spell he wrought must be undone, or else, the moment she released either of them, they would simply reconnect and vanish where she could no longer reach them.
She must find a place to plant Jastira’s soul.
Somewhere it could never harm anyone again.
Turning her far-seeing, green gaze, Luna looked across the vast stretches of decimated grounds. Looked to the hidden center where the Heart Tree grew, huge as a mountain, its branches laden with ripe, red fruit.
Take her, Garden, Luna said. Trap her inside of you. She won’t harm anyone there.
A moment of questioning uncertainty hung in the atmosphere.
Then the Heart Tree opened. Not in any physical way, but a profound opening of spirit.
A new gate, a new portal. Luna stretched out her green hand once more, across the miles.
Jastira screamed inarticulately, her soul roiling with wrath.
But there was nothing she could do now. Not against such magic as this.
So Luna stuffed the soul of her cousin deep into the Heart Tree, and it snapped shut.
Suddenly, the sky overhead turned blue, faintly pinked on the edges with dawn.