Chapter 20
“ W e can help them.”
Xandros went still as his eyes found mine.
Mud streaked the side of his face and darkened the pale strands of hair at his temple, but I barely saw any of it.
“Rhian,” he said.
I nodded.
Then I looked toward the place where the road had disappeared between the trees.
“And your people.”
His fingers tightened against my waist.
The hope that crossed his face was small enough I might have missed it weeks ago. I knew him better now. I saw the way his mouth parted before he caught himself, the sharp breath he tried to quiet, the gold that stirred faintly beneath the constellations at his throat.
Asterra had taught him to distrust hope.
I knew enough now to understand why.
Hours blurred beneath my boots as we pushed west without stopping for more than water. By the time the Grove walls rose between the trees, my lungs burned, and sweat cooled beneath the mud drying on my clothes.
The watch caught sight of us before we reached the archway.
A whistle cut through the canopy.
Roots pulled apart from the gate while Thornwardens crowded the opening beyond them. Perrin came through first with his sword already drawn, then stopped hard enough that the point dipped toward the earth.
His brow furrowed as if the sight of me made no sense. “You came back.”
“Of course I came back.” I glanced past him toward the Grove. “I still live here.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, but the faint smile disappeared when I moved past him.
“I need to see Rhian.”
Perrin shifted into my path. “The Circle left orders in case either of you returned.” His gaze moved over my shoulder to Xandros.
Gold gathered in Xandros' palm.
I shook my head once. “Then they know where to find us.”
When I stepped around Perrin, his hand closed around my arm.
“Verena.”
I stopped, slowly looking down at where each point of his fingers pressed into my skin.
He let go.
“I think we can help him, Perrin.”
Everything in his face changed, and I didn’t wait for his permission to keep moving.
Xandros stayed close as we crossed into the Grove.
The Mother Tree filled the space ahead, warm amber glowing through her bark in slow, viscous currents, as though light had taken the place of sap. It carried none of Asterra’s sharp celestial gold. This was deeper, softer, threaded through living wood and leaf and soil.
After Asterra, the sight of her nearly broke something apart in my chest.
Roots spread beneath my boots in every direction, familiar and alive, carrying the Mother Tree through the soil and into me until the hollow ache I had carried beyond the Veil filled too quickly.
Xandros caught my elbow.
I gripped his forearm and breathed through the rush of Wild flooding my veins.
His thumb pressed once against my skin.
“You’re shaking.” His gaze roamed over me, searching for an injury.
“I can feel her again.” I closed my eyes for one heartbeat and let the Wild steady beneath my skin.
We crossed the Grove without slowing. People moved between the living paths around us with baskets of herbs, folded linens, and buckets of water, all of it funneling toward the infirmary.
The closer we came, the quieter it grew.
Voices dropped beneath the Mother Tree’s roots. Footsteps softened. Even the healers moving in and out spoke in low murmurs, as though the entire hollow had settled into the careful silence of people waiting for someone to die.
My stomach tightened.
The roots opened ahead of us, and the sharp smell of crushed herbs and old blood met me first.
There were more beds in the infirmary than when we had left.
Two Druids from the southern border lay apart from the others behind woven barriers of living roots and amber resin. Even through the thin panes, indigo showed beneath their skin, branching along the throat of one before disappearing beneath his tunic.
The other writhed against her bedding, clutching the bandaged space where her arm should have been while indigo pulsed along her neck and into her jaw. A healer sat beside her with both hands wrapped around a cup she no longer seemed to be drinking from.
I searched the beds too quickly, catching on unfamiliar faces, blankets, and more flashes of indigo.
What if I’m too late? The question slammed into me, knocking the air from my lungs. What if I am too late and he has already been consumed by the corrupted Everlight?
My pulse thundered in my ears, swallowing the low sounds of the infirmary as I searched again.
Then I found him.
Rhian lay in the farthest corner of the room, his dark curls spread across the pillow and his face too pale against them.
Indigo had spread farther across his ribs and climbed toward his throat.
The thin barrier of Everlight around the worst of it flickered weakly with every shallow rise of his chest.
Bramble launched himself from my shoulder and landed beside him, burrowing beneath Rhian’s arm with a low, broken chirr.
I stopped at the edge of the bed.
For one awful heartbeat, I saw blood instead of blankets. Rhian beneath the Briar Moon, my hands pressed beneath his ribs while crimson poured through my fingers.
Xandros stepped beside me while Solan pushed himself upright across the bed. Exhaustion hollowed the skin beneath his eyes. “The barrier won’t hold much longer.”
“Then don’t build another one.”
Nessa turned sharply toward me, and I held up my hands to stop her. “Before you argue, we found something in Asterra.”
I curled my fingers around Rhian’s arm.
“I need something living,” I said. “Something small. Separate from the Mother Tree.”
Nessa stared at me.
At the palace, I had forced indigo away from Xandros and back into the fractured stone. The archive record showed a Veil Weaver drawing it from a body into living growth.
If I could make it change direction again, a separate plant would give it somewhere contained to go.
“If the records we found in Asterra were right, I think we can move it.”
Ivy was working two beds down with her sleeves rolled to the elbows, Sula pressed close against her hip. The infirmary had pulled in everyone with enough healing knowledge to be useful.
Nessa turned toward her. “Bring a rooted plant. Pot and all.”
Ivy hurried away, Sula huffing as she followed on her heels.
My gaze dropped to the faint vines beneath Rhian’s skin, and my throat tightened.
“Don’t you dare make me do all this and die anyway.”
His face didn’t change.
Xandros' hand settled against the small of my back, warm and steady.
The touch anchored me in the room, holding me steady when every part of me felt like crumbling into ash and dust.
Ivy returned, carrying a shallow clay basin with a young willow growing from it. Thin roots pressed against the damp soil near the surface, and several bright leaves trembled as she set it beside the bed.
My hand hovered just above Rhian’s chest where the indigo was deepest, and I looked up at Xandros.
For all the things we still didn’t know, I knew this part of him now.
The way he watched before offering help.
The way he waited for me to decide what happened to my own body and my own power.
Xandros held out his hand, palm up, and waited until I placed mine into it. Gold warmed my fingers almost immediately.
Beneath Rhian’s skin, the indigo shifted toward him with enough force to kick my pulse harder.
I turned back to Rhian and pressed my right palm over the indigo branching beneath his ribs. Tendrils of bitter cold bit through the star, and Rhian’s body jerked beneath my hand.
Nessa immediately braced one of his shoulders while Solan brought both hands over Rhian’s chest.
I closed my eyes.
Rhian’s Wild reached me in weak, broken currents, living power struggling around pockets of cold. Beneath it all, faint but familiar, he was still there.
My throat tightened.
The indigo pulled toward Xandros' Everlight, just as it had in the palace.
I let it move far enough to draw free of Rhian, caught its path, and turned it toward the willow.
Pain flashed through my palm. My fingers locked around Xandros' as the first stream of indigo slipped from beneath Rhian’s skin and crossed through me.
The willow shuddered, darkness climbing from its roots and settling into the lowest leaves, staining their veins indigo.
I held my breath as if that could change anything. As if that single breath could tip the scales of whether or not we succeeded.
The leaves remained green around it.
“It’s holding it.” The words left me in a rush.
Xandros' thumb pressed firmly against mine. “Keep going.”
I reached deeper.
More indigo followed, cold dragging through my arms as I forced it toward the willow. Rhian twisted beneath my hand with a ragged cry, and my concentration slipped.
The corruption snapped toward Xandros, and his constellations flared.
Fear seized my chest. I caught the path before it reached him and wrenched it back toward the willow.
“Verena.”
“I have it.”
His hand stayed in mine.
Solid. Steady.
He trusted me to keep the thing destroying his world from reaching him.
I tightened my grip and pulled again.
A movement across the bed caught the edge of my vision. Caelan had stopped beside Nessa. He said nothing, clenching one hand around the bedframe, while he watched his son with a rawness I had never seen in him before.
More indigo drained from Rhian while dark veins spread through the willow’s leaves. Its branches bowed, then slowly lifted again.
One knot remained beneath Rhian’s ribs, tangled through the Wild still trying to move around it.
And that Wild was his.
I knew the feel of it from years of sparring and patrols, from every time he had shoved his Wild against mine during training and insisted cheating was strategy.
I knew it from his laughter beside me in the trees, from the voice that had followed me through nearly every memory of growing up, and from the day we had stood together beneath the Mother Tree and taken our vows as Thornwardens.
My eyes burned. “There you are.”
I reached for it. For him.
The last knot pulled toward Xandros, and gold strengthened beneath our joined hands.
Rhian cried out as the strand tore free. The small willow shuddered, its soil spilling over the edge of the bed and onto my boots.
Rhian dropped back against the bed, a rough breath dragging into his lungs.
My knees nearly gave out.
Bramble scrambled toward the top of the bed and shoved his nose beneath Rhian’s chin, the intensity of his relief crashing into mine.
“Rhian.”
His lashes fluttered.
Then his eyes opened.
His gaze wandered across the ceiling before finding me, then shifted to Bramble, who had nearly climbed onto his face.
Rhian swallowed. “For the record...” His voice came out rough. “He still has no respect for personal space.”
A laugh broke through the tears already burning my eyes.
I folded over him, pressing my forehead into his shoulder. His fingers moved weakly into my hair.
“You absolute bastard.”
“You look terrible.”
Another laugh escaped me, wet and painful, as Bramble chirred and shoved himself between us, nestling beneath Rhian’s chin.
Rhian’s hand moved to settle weakly in his fur.
His chest rose against my temple.
The first night beneath the Briar Moon had never left my mind, his blood hot between my fingers while I begged him to breathe.
Now he was.
Xandros' hand settled against the back of my neck. I reached for him without lifting my head and found the steady beat of his pulse beneath my fingers.
For a moment, I stayed between them.
When I finally straightened, my gaze caught on the willow.
Thin veins of indigo still threaded its leaves, surrounded by living green.
Xandros saw it too.
Asterra flashed through my mind with the fading constellations of its people, its ashen trees, and a sky losing its stars.
Rhian drew another full breath beside me.
I closed my hand tighter around Xandros'.
For once, hope did not feel like something either of us had stolen from someone else.
Across the bed, Caelan finally moved.
His hand settled over Rhian’s shoulder, fingers tightening once against the blanket. Rhian turned his head toward him, and whatever passed across Caelan’s face made me look away.
A cry carried from behind the amber barrier across the infirmary.
The female from the southern border had twisted onto her side again. Indigo pulsed beneath her jaw.
My attention caught on the willow beside Rhian’s bed. Xandros followed my gaze.
“The others,” I said.
His fingers closed around mine. “We help them, too.”
Ivy brought more young plants from the Grove nursery.
The second healing went faster because I knew what I was reaching for. The third took nearly everything the Mother Tree had restored in me. By the time the indigo stopped climbing the female’s neck, my arms shook, and the gold beneath Xandros' constellations had dimmed.
Her missing arm remained wrapped in bloodstained linen.
We could remove the corruption. But I didn’t think we could return what it had already taken.
My gaze found Nessa. “Torren?”
Her expression softened.
“His Wild was severed, Verena. Nothing we did here can give that back.”
The answer hurt, even with Rhian breathing behind me.
Caelan looked from the darkened willow to Xandros and me. “What else did you find?”
“Other roads survived.”
His attention sharpened.
“The Briar Moon is waking them whether anyone touches them or not. The more they fracture, the more the Marred can use them.”
I didn’t add my other concern. That something even more dangerous could find his way through our borders. Aurelian’s steely expression flashed through my mind, and a shiver raced down my spine.
A muscle shifted in the First Thorn’s jaw. “Then Cedarstone isn’t the only place we need guarded.”
“No.”
He held my gaze for another beat before turning toward the infirmary entrance.
“The Circle is already gathering. You need to tell them everything.”