Chapter 23 #2
I exhaled and reached for the pommel. The balance settled easily into my hand, the blade light enough that I could wield it one-handed without fighting its weight.
“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it.
Caelan’s gaze held mine for a moment before he nodded and turned away.
We stopped at the infirmary long enough to collect Bramble, who looked fresh from a berry massacre. Red juice stained the fur beneath his mouth and streaked one paw.
He climbed me without hesitation and settled around my shoulders, pressing his narrow face against my cheek.
Relief coursed through our bond.
I stroked a hand down his back before adjusting my sword belt.
Xandros waited nearby with his damp hair falling across his forehead and the edge of a gold constellation visible beneath the open collar of his shirt.
The sight pulled the morning back into me with excitement.
I knew the warmth of those markings beneath my hands now. I knew why he called me Wildflower. I knew what his face looked like when pleasure or laughter stripped away everything he carried for everyone else.
He held out his hand.
I took it.
The western hollow lay close enough that the Grove had only just disappeared behind the trees when the stream came into view.
A narrow stream cut through the trees and slipped beneath a shelf of dark stone. Ferns crowded its banks, their fronds wet where the water had splashed them. Thick roots crossed the hollow in tangled ridges before disappearing beneath moss and leaf mold.
I had passed the place before.
That unsettled me more than finding something unfamiliar would have.
The road had been here beneath our feet all along.
Caelan spread the Thornwardens along the higher bank while Maren remained near the path. Xandros and I followed the stream until the star in my palm began to burn.
“There.”
I crouched beside the stone shelf.
Water had worn the exposed rock smooth, but beneath the roots, I could make out lines too deliberate to be natural. A curve. A cluster of shallow points. Another line disappearing beneath moss.
Xandros lowered himself beside me.
Gold glimmered along his hand before he touched the stone.
The carvings answered.
Light slipped beneath the water.
The stream brightened until green and gold shimmered across its surface, and the roots above the stone shifted as though waking from a long sleep.
The Mother Tree answered the moment my palm touched the rock.
Her Wild filled my arm with familiar comfort before moving toward the road.
Xandros' Everlight joined it.
An iridescent seam opened above the water.
It widened slowly, revealing silver trunks beneath Asterra’s dark sky.
The nearest tree sagged over brittle ground. Indigo traced claw marks in the grooves of one side of its trunk.
Xandros went still beside me.
I closed my eyes and reached past the road in front of us.
The wider pattern waited at the edge of my awareness, easier to find now that I knew what I was looking for. I followed the pressure gathering around the buried roads rather than searching for the roads themselves.
One pathway answered. Then another.
Wild moved outward through both. A heartbeat later, Everlight returned along the same living paths.
The current changed beneath my hand, and warmth returned.
I opened my eyes. The fern nearest my knee lifted from the mud, its color deepening. Moss spread across the edge of the stone in a bright green sheet.
My breathing hitched.
Across the Veil, gold threaded through the silver tree.
A dark, shriveled leaf twitched and unfurled.
Xandros went completely still as another leaf followed, and then the branch itself lifted toward the sky.
I looked up with him.
A single speck of light blurred in the dark expanse, so tiny I could have missed it. But then it grew brighter, and brighter still, as if to make sure we knew exactly what it was.
A new star burned above Asterra.
My lips parted.
A second appeared farther away. Then another.
Xandros did not move. His eyes shone as he looked up at the impossible.
I had walked beneath that empty sky with him. I had seen fading constellations hidden beneath sleeves and people waiting for water that might never come. I had watched children look at him as though he could somehow return everything their world had lost.
Now light spread over his face.
His eyes found mine.
“It’s working.” His voice broke as he spoke.
I exhaled with laughter as relief rushed hot through my chest.
The exchange steadied, spreading the strain through the wider weave instead of tearing through Xandros and me.
For several precious moments, nothing hurt.
Asterra’s branches lifted. The Deepwood brightened around us.
And another star appeared.
I looked at Xandros and saw the same impossible realization settling into him.
We had been right.
Neither of our worlds needed to die for the other one to live.
Then something shifted beneath my palm. One of the farther currents flickered like torchlight caught in the rain.
I turned toward it instinctively and sent more Wild along the weakened path. The strain eased, only for another road farther south to falter.
A tremor moved through the hollow. Water jumped against the stream bank.
“What happened?” Xandros glanced from the sky down to the stream.
“I don’t know. I’m trying to find where it broke.” I cursed and began to reach deeper.
The shape of the weave had changed. Some pathways carried our power cleanly while others narrowed or stopped where the old connections had died. Whatever survived was being forced to carry what the broken portions couldn’t handle, and the imbalance kept growing.
I redirected the flow toward a stronger road.
For a moment, it held.
Then something split deep beneath the forest.
Pain lanced from my palm to my shoulder. Bramble cried out and flattened himself against my neck.
Another gap opened in the Mother Tree’s pulse, and the ground trembled beneath me. A sharp gasp tore from my lips as the Mother Tree’s pulse weakened.
I pushed harder, trying to keep the power distributed long enough to stabilize it.
The vines along my arms smoldered.
Another shudder travelled through the ground. The stream broke over its banks, and behind us, roots tore through the soil.
“Verena.” Xandros' free hand tightened around my waist.
I barely heard him.
The Mother Tree had always lived beneath my awareness with a rhythm so constant I had never imagined silence between one pulse and the next. I had known that silence only in Asterra, with the Veil between us. Here in the Deepwood, the pause terrified me.
The next beat came weaker.
My stomach sank.