Chapter 24 #2
I noticed it before I understood why.
His shoulders had loosened into the mattress, one arm resting openly across the blanket while the line between his brows had finally smoothed away. Even his breathing had changed, deeper and slower than I was used to hearing from him.
No guards waited beyond the door. No king controlled the halls outside it, and no failing road demanded that he spend what little strength he had left.
For the first time since I had known him, Xandros looked completely at rest.
He had come into my room and fallen asleep.
My throat tightened.
I reached up and brushed a strand of pale hair away from his face, letting my fingertips trace the curve of his brow, the straight line of his nose, and finally the soft bow of his lips.
How could anyone be this perfect?
My chest ached as I looked at him.
Sometime after returning from his visit with Rhian, Bramble had curled himself into a compact heap at the foot of the bed. I had barely noticed him come back.
I lowered my hand, and Xandros moved almost immediately. His fingers found my waist without his eyes opening and drew me closer against him.
A soft knock came at the door.
Every muscle in my body tightened.
Xandros slept through it.
The knock came again, and Bramble lifted his head from the blankets, ears pricking toward the sound.
Carefully, I eased Xandros' arm from around me and slipped from the bed.
His hand slid across the blanket after I moved, searching once before settling.
The sight held me for another second.
Then I quickly slipped into a fresh tunic and leggings, and crossed the room.
Maren stood outside.
She was alone.
The lines around her mouth looked deeper than they had that afternoon, and a thin roll of parchment was clenched in one hand.
My stomach tightened.
“What happened?”
Her gaze moved past my shoulder.
Xandros was visible from the doorway, asleep beneath the low amber light.
Maren looked back at me. “I need to show you something.”
I kept one hand on the door.
“Can it wait until morning?”
Pain flickered through her expression.
“I wish it could.”
My gaze returned to the bed. Bramble had moved into the space I left behind, curling against Xandros' hip.
He would wake if I was gone too long.
That thought should not have mattered.
But it did.
“I’ll be back,” I whispered to the sleeping room, grabbing my boots from beneath the bench.
I slipped them on in the corridor and followed Maren into the Grove.
The night air had cooled sharply.
More lamps burned along the central paths than usual. Thornwardens moved between them carrying supplies, water, and folded blankets.
I slowed.
A group had gathered near the entrance.
At first, I thought another patrol had returned, but then I saw the children.
Behind the Thornwardens came families. Kindred. Druids carrying whatever they had been able to take with them.
A healer rushed toward a female stumbling through the entrance with blood soaking one side of her tunic. A little girl clung to her hand until the female’s knees gave way and she was lowered onto a litter.
The child stepped back as the healers crowded around her.
Her mother reached between them.
The little girl caught her hand with both of hers and held on.
More families moved past them.
One male carried a wooden box tight against his chest. Another female held a cooking pot by its handle, her fingers locked around it as though she had walked out of her home with the first thing she could reach.
A Thornwarden guided an elderly female toward the sanctuary. Leaves tangled in her hair, and one side of her face had swollen purple.
My feet stopped moving, and Maren stopped with me.
“Where did they come from?”
“The northern settlements.”
My gaze moved over the crowd. “How many?”
“That is the third group.”
Dread turned my stomach.
A boy standing near the entrance stared at the Mother Tree.
He could not have been more than seven or eight. Indigo had stained the bandage around his forearm where something had cut him.
His mother noticed me looking and pulled his sleeve lower.
“What happened?”
Maren continued toward the library, and I followed because I couldn’t make my legs remain where they were.
“The ground opened beneath one of the northern patrol paths shortly after we left for Stonewater. The rift didn’t stay open, but a pack of Marred came through before it closed.”
“A pack?”
Maren nodded. “Two dozen villagers died, Verena.”
My stomach clenched.
“And several more are missing.”
My head spun, and I turned back to the boy.
He had disappeared into the sanctuary with his mother, but now that I was looking, I found several more just like him. Children, babies, the elderly, and more, all of them deeply injured and far too many with indigo lines branching beneath their skin.
Maren pushed open the library door. Maps still covered the tables, but even more parchment had joined them.
Messages.
Some were written on proper sheets. Others had been scratched onto scraps of hide, leaves, or whatever could be found quickly enough to send with a runner or bird.
I stepped toward the nearest.
A dark, crimson smear stained the bottom of the page.
Blood.
Maren placed the roll she carried beside it.
“This arrived from the south.”
I picked it up with trembling fingers. The writing slanted badly across the page, but I could make most of it out. Two outer settlements had been evacuated after the Wild disappeared from the ground around them.
Not weakened.
Gone.
Trees had dropped entire crowns of leaves within hours. Roots had pulled free of the soil hard enough to split the walls of three homes. One of the smaller streams had sunk into a fracture and vanished beneath the ground.
A patrol sent to help had found animals running north, fleeing another pack of Marred hunting them.
I lowered the parchment, my eyes blurring.
“No.”
Maren said nothing as I grabbed the next message.
A family shelter near the western boundary had collapsed when roots tore through its floor.
Four injured.
One dead.
I picked up another message, and it was more of the same. Animals turning on the Druids. Trees crumbling.
Another message from the human settlement near the Deepwood who had sent riders toward the border because they believed something beneath the forest was poisoning their land.
I shoved them away.
“We can contain this.”
Maren remained across the table, both hands resting on her staff.
“We close the roads as they wake. Move Thornwardens to the sites we know about and bring everyone else toward the Grove. We keep the Marred away from the fractures and buy ourselves time.”
“We are already doing that.”
The answer stopped me.
My eyes went to the library entrance.
Outside, people I had never seen before were being led deeper into the Grove, carrying blankets, children, whatever pieces of their lives they had managed to bring with them.
I looked back at the reports.
“Then we keep doing it.”
Maren drew one final message from beneath the others and placed it in front of me.
I almost refused to read it.
Almost.
The report had come from the east. A stand of trees had split when the Wild beneath them suddenly pulled toward buried stone. Roots tore through the hillside, bringing earth and timber down over the patrol sent to investigate.
Two Thornwardens had been trapped beneath it.
Only one had come out alive.
My fingers loosened around the parchment.
“This still doesn't make permanent sealing the answer.”
“No.” Maren's voice stayed quiet. “It means the Deepwood is running out of time for us to find another one.”
I hated the certainty my body heard in those words.
“There is time.” I moved toward the maps. “We haven't finished going through these. We don't know every surviving road. We don't know whether damaged sections can be repaired or whether there are other ways to spread the strain. Give us until morning.”
Maren didn't interrupt me.
That somehow made it worse.
I searched the charcoal lines anyway, looking for something I had failed to see before.
“We were right about the exchange. That has to mean something.”
“It does.”
I looked up.
Grief had settled into the lines around her mouth.
“That is why I brought you here.”
She reached beneath one of the oldest maps and withdrew a narrow strip of cured hide.
The sight of it turned my stomach before she said a word.
“We found this after you left.”
“What is it?”
“A record from the First Severing.”
I stepped back from the table as Maren laid it down between us.
“There is a way to stop the roads from waking permanently.”
“No.” The word came before I could think about it.
For several stilted heartbeats, Maren let me have it. Then she gestured to the parchment.
I didn’t want to read it. I didn’t want to know anymore.
I knew nothing written there would make this easier. I picked it up anyway.
A Veil Weaver could reverse the exchange while the weave was active. The living celestial anchor would have to be separated from the bridge first, sending his current back toward Asterra, while the Weaver used the Mother Tree's weave to unmake every road behind it.
By the time I finished, I could barely feel my hands.
Xandros' voice came back to me with horrible clarity.
Take the living gold before it turns.
My fingers curled against my palms.
“He trusted me with that.”
Maren went very still.
“He showed me how to sever his Everlight because he thought I might have to save the road if the indigo took him.” The next breath burned my lungs. “He trusted me to know when it was necessary.”
Maren's eyes lowered.
I stepped closer.
“He chose to close that road today.” My voice shook now, and I hated it. “He knew what closing it meant for Asterra, and he did it because the Deepwood was being hurt.”
She said nothing.
“He would not save his world by destroying mine.”
The old record lay between us.
I couldn't look at it anymore.
“And now you're showing me how to save mine by destroying his.”
“I am showing you the only immediate method we found.”
“That isn't better.” My voice grew louder with every word.
“It isn’t.”
The lack of defense stole some of the force from my anger.