Chapter 15
M aren’s voice carried through the trees outside.
Xandros' hand had only just fallen from my face, and the skin along my cheek still held his warmth.
I leaned away from him as boots crossed the porch.
Bramble lifted his head from the chair beside the hearth. Unease tightened through our bond, and he scrambled onto the table as Ivy came from the back room.
Her eyes moved between Xandros and me before the knock sounded.
She opened the door.
Maren stood outside with Caelan and Griffin behind her.
Four Thornwardens waited farther down the path, packs strapped across their shoulders and weapons at their sides.
My stomach tightened. They had come prepared to stay.
“Should we have been expecting company?” Xandros asked under his breath.
I gripped the edge of the table. “Not this kind of company…”
The Circle rarely ever left the Grove, so for two of their members to show up here, now… It felt about as ominous as a thorn-covered moon.
A moment later, Maren stepped inside my family home. Caelan followed, dark shadows bruising the skin beneath his eyes.
“They have news,” Caelan began.
“Please,” I said as I gestured toward the table. “Make yourselves comfortable…”
“What happened at the Cedarstone marker has been felt throughout the Deepwood.” Her voice echoed through the room, hollowing me out.
Caelan shifted his stance. “Why did you not mention this in your messages?”
Griffin bristled, looking down his hooked nose at the First Thorn. “The Circle keeps its own counsel until it becomes necessary to share.”
Elder Maren shot him a glance from the corner of her eye and sighed. “It is also difficult to condense a message like this one. I felt it better to bring this news in person. And to see the road for myself.”
Everyone’s expressions bore the same level of confusion that I currently felt before she continued on.
“The road affected all three of the Grove’s patients and their various levels of corruption. Rhian’s retreated, centralizing around his wound once again. Torren’s fever dropped, and his heart strengthened. He is alert and seemingly well, though his Wild remains impossible to access.
“And my people?” Xandros stood and stepped around the table, his hand resting on the back of my chair. “How is Tala? The others?”
Maren’s expression hardened. “Your friend Tala did improve. Her breathing eased for several hours.”
Heat stirred beneath my star.
Maren kept going. “But by the following morning, every improvement had begun to reverse.”
My fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
“Another Druid reached the Grove after your party left. He came from one of the outer settlements and made it to the gates alone.”
Something in Caelan’s face made my stomach tighten.
“He was infected?”
Maren nodded. “Badly. The corruption had already spread through most of him.”
My mouth went dry.
“He said the others with him were dead. He lost consciousness before they could learn much more.”
“Did he survive?” The question left me before I could decide if I was ready to hear the answer.
“No.”
The word landed heavily between us.
Maren’s grip tightened around her staff. “The corruption continued moving through his body after his heart stopped. The healers would not risk putting him into the earth.”
Icy claws raked through my stomach.
Druids returned their dead to the Deepwood. Wild seeds took root beside our bodies so death fed whatever grew after us.
“What did they do?”
“They burned him.”
My fingers went numb against the table.
No seed. No return to the earth. Nothing the roots could touch.
Maren looked toward the window where the forest stretched beyond the old house.
“And Tala?” The way Xandros asked, it sounded like he was already expecting the worst possible answer. He gripped the back of my chair even tighter, his entire body going rigid.
“She survives, if only just.” She sighed. “But it doesn’t end with the survival of our people. Yesterday, two more corrupted animals were found near the Grove, and the Mother Tree severed another contaminated pathway before the corruption could move deeper into the Grove.”
Bramble whimpered. He leapt up onto the table and circled my arm until his long, narrow body was wrapped around me completely.
The Veil was closed. The corruption was still spreading. But while that road was open, Rhian and Torren and Tala had all improved.
The star beneath my palm burned hotter, soft tendrils of light gently stretching toward the male at my side.
Three sick bodies from two different worlds had answered the same way.
I looked at the packs waiting on the porch behind them, realization dawning on me. “That’s why you came. You want us to show you the road.”
“It is part of the reason.” Maren dipped her chin. “When Briar crowns Moon,” she began, and the familiar words tightened something in my chest. “And root entwines star, the forgotten gates shall open.”
Gates . Not gate.
This wasn’t the only one.
An impending dread came over me. Maren glanced again toward the forest outside, gripping her staff a little tighter.
“We have spent all this time watching the eastern boundary, but I am no longer certain Cedarstone is the only place we should be guarding.”
Xandros shook his head and stepped closer. “No. The roads were destroyed centuries ago. Your people made sure of that.”
Griffin bristled, taking a step forward. “And do you know why?”
Xandros swallowed, his lips forming a narrow line.
“Your people took the Wild itself. They pulled it through those roads until whole stretches of the Deepwood weakened, until our soil and trees began to die. And still they wanted more.”
Xandros' constellations glared.
Griffin planted both hands over the top of his staff. “Crown Prince Aurelian Umbriel ordered them to keep taking even after the Deepwood began to fail.”
Something shifted across Xandros' face too quickly for me to catch.
“When our ancestors told yours the forest could give no more, they refused to stop.” Griffin struck the base of his staff against the floor. “What we had given freely became something they believed they were owed. And when we tried to close the roads, your king sent soldiers to keep them open.”
Xandros stared at him. “That isn’t how the Severing was taught to us.”
“Of course it wasn’t. I imagine your histories say we abandoned you.”
Something shifted in Xandros' face.
“Our people were forced to choose,” Griffin continued. “The roads or the Deepwood. We chose the Deepwood.”
Xandros' jaw tightened, but Maren struck her staff against the floor before he could answer.
“Enough. Whatever happened between our ancestors, the roads are waking now.”
The room went quiet except for the sound of Bramble’s anxious little breaths near my shoulder.
Maren looked toward the forest beyond the open door. “We know where one of these roads lies. And we know it can be opened.”
Starlight flickered in my palm, and Xandros tensed at my side. “You want to open it again.”
“Yes.”
Ivy’s tiny frame stepped in front of me. “Nope.”
Maren’s gaze shifted to her.
“Apologies, Elder Maren. I mean no disrespect, but Verena was unconscious for three days. Her Wild has barely begun answering her again.”
“Hey.” I pushed back from the chair on shaking legs, my hand gripping the table for balance. “I’m standing now.”
Ivy shot me a look, her nose and eyebrows scrunching together. “That is an embarrassingly low standard, my friend. But it does further my point.”
Caelan moved closer to Maren. “Then use mine.”
He held out an arm; green vines moved beneath the bracers along his wrists.
“The carvings showed Wild on one side and starlight on the other. If that is all the road requires, there is no reason to put her against that stone again.”
Maren’s gaze stayed on me. “It has to be Verena.”
Caelan dropped his arm, his gaze shifting unsteadily toward me. “Why?”
A beat passed before Maren answered. “Because the road won’t answer to another Druid.”
A shiver ran down my spine.
“How could you possibly know that?” I swallowed the lump forming in my throat.
Maren held my gaze for a long moment. “Because a Cedarstone has guarded that road long before any of us were born.”
My pulse stumbled. “My family guarded this entire boundary.”
“No, child.” Maren’s expression softened ever so slightly. “They guarded that stone specifically.”
My throat was suddenly very dry in a way I was sure only whiskey could sate. “Why?”
Her mouth tightened. “That answer will have to wait.”
I pushed away from the table. “Then what exactly are you asking me to do?”
Maren glanced toward Xandros before looking back at me.
“We are telling you to open the road.” It was Griffin who answered.
“Only for a few minutes, and no farther than necessary.” Maren glared at her fellow Elder. “We simply need to know whether you can control it, if closing it is truly within your power, and whether what happened to Rhian and the others could happen again.”
Griffin set both hands over the top of his staff. “And if opening it threatens the Deepwood again, then we will bury the damned thing for good.”
Xandros stepped forward. The constellations along his hands ignited as his fingers curled at his sides.
“That road may be the only way my people can return home. And it may be the only thing we have found capable of slowing what is killing Asterra. You don’t get to destroy it just because you are afraid of what it might do.”
“And you do not get to set our home on fire just because yours is already burning.” Griffin’s voice shook with barely contained fury.
Xandros' entire body went rigid. His throat moved once before he answered.
“And if the Deepwood were burning while Asterra stood beside the only well, how long would you keep asking before you took the water?”
His words stole the air from the room.
My fingers tightened against the edge of the table.
Griffin had told us what the roads had cost the Deepwood. But I had seen what remained of Asterra with my own eyes.
Gray earth. Dying trees. A sky stripped of its light.