Chapter 26
B ramble’s cries echoed through the Grove. I heard every broken chirr, but only the faintest trace of him reached me through the bond.
I strained against the Mother Tree, my hands still fixed to the bark while her pulse beat strong beneath my aching palms. Amber light slowly climbed through the ridges of her trunk and held there, warm and steady.
The roads were gone.
Nothing pulled at her roots. No warning whistles or screams cut through the Grove, and no Marred shrieks rose beyond the walls.
The seal had held.
Pressure still wrapped around my wrists and shoulders, but it no longer dragged deeper. With every pulse of the Mother Tree beneath my palms, the strain eased.
I flexed my fingers and for the first time, they moved.
The bark released me slowly. I pulled one hand free, then the other, and sagged back onto my knees.
My Wild didn’t return.
I reached for it anyway and found only the vast boundary where I had left it, stretched through every place the roads had once torn open.
But the Mother Tree was still there.
Her pulse moved faintly through something deeper than the Wild I had given away, an old living connection buried inside me.
Bramble cried below. His fear brushed weakly through our bond and my breath shook loose.
Then a second pull caught beneath my right palm. I froze.
Xandros.
The soul bond stretched away from me, impossibly thin through the wall I had made.
I reached for it before I could stop myself.
Pain cinched beneath my ribs.
The Mother Tree’s pulse struck harder inside me, and Bramble’s fear sharpened at the same instant.
I flinched, and slowly, I reached toward Xandros again.
The same resistance caught me. One tether stretched through the Veil while the other ran backward into everything I had been bound to since birth.
My eyes dropped to the graying vines along my arms. The leaves were so pale now, barely even there.
I pressed one shaking hand against the Mother Tree.
Bramble cried again, and this time I understood.
To follow the tether through the Veil, I would have to tear myself free of the Mother Tree first. Completely.
I looked down at Bramble fighting in Caelan’s arms, my stomach twisting into painful knots. Without the Mother Tree, without her Wild… we were no longer Kindred.
“Bring him to me,” I said, hating the way my voice cracked.
Caelan’s jaw hardened. “Verena–”
“Please.”
For a moment, he didn’t move.
But then he climbed. He shifted Bramble against one arm and stepped over the roots rising around me until he could crouch at my side.
Bramble lunged from his hold.
Caelan caught him before he could scramble across the bark and pressed him against my chest instead.
His fur struck my cheek, and my breathing hitched.
Bramble shoved his nose beneath my jaw and clawed at my tunic, frantic to climb higher. I turned my face into the familiar softness between his ears.
Moss, and smoke, and berries, and home.
Somewhere beneath the pressure of the Veil, the faintest trace of his fear brushed against me. So weak I nearly missed it.
He was warm against my skin, but the small, fierce presence that had filled me for years had already faded to almost nothing.
I pressed my cheek deeper into his fur.
My lips trembled. “I’m sorry.”
Bramble pushed his head beneath my chin again. I rubbed my cheek over one velvet ear because I couldn’t move my hands.
“He’ll need Rhian.”
Caelan looked at me sharply. “And he’ll have him.”
My chest shook, and Bramble twisted toward my face.
A crease formed between Caelan’s brows. “He’ll have you both.”
The star in my right palm pulsed once and I shook my head. “No.”
Caelan went very still.
I looked at Bramble one last time. His black nose twitched against my chin. His claws caught in my tunic as he tucked his head beneath my jaw, burrowing into the familiar space against my neck.
For years, I had sensed him coming before his paws ever reached me.
Soon, the memory of his weight against my skin would be all I had left.
I pressed my mouth to his tiny head. “I love you, Little Terror.”
Then I turned back to Caelan. “Take him.”
Bramble’s answering cry ripped through me as Caelan pulled him from my chest. He twisted in his arms, claws reaching for me, and my body pitched after him before I caught myself against the Mother Tree.
I fixed my eyes on the amber light moving beneath the bark.
One pulse.
Then another.
Caelan’s voice broke through the roaring in my ears. “What happens if you do this?”
I looked down at the gray vines along my skin, their leaves curling at the edges like plants left for too long in the sun. “I don’t know.”
“Verena–”
“But I know what happens if I don’t.”
The Mother Tree’s pulse thundered against my palms.
The words I had carried since I was old enough to understand what a Thornwarden was moved quietly through my memory.
Purpose: Protect the forest.
Duty: Protect the Circle.
Above all, protect the Veil.
My vow-markings remained gray, the vines and leaves far too still.
The Deepwood needed nothing else from the Wild I had already given it.
What came next belonged only to me.
I bowed my head.
Somewhere beneath the Wild I had already given, I found the place where my life was still joined to the Mother Tree. It had always been there, buried so deeply inside me that I had never known where she ended and I began.
I gathered what remained of my strength around that bond and pulled.
Pain tore through my chest, and a scream broke from my mouth.
Caelan caught my shoulder. “Verena!”
I pulled harder.
Amber light blazed behind my eyes as my fingers spasmed against the bark. For one terrible heartbeat, I felt the Veil strain with me.
It held.
The boundary remained solid around us, my Wild still woven through every place I had forced it into.
Only the bond tying my body to the Mother Tree stretched thinner.
My vision blurred at the edges. Then it broke.
Bramble vanished from inside me.
A sob tore loose as my hands slipped from the bark. The force threw me backward into Caelan, and he caught me around the shoulders when my legs folded beneath me.
Everything inside me went quiet.
The Mother Tree still towered before me, her massive trunk rising through the center of the Grove before splitting into branches that stretched across the canopy. Some hung broken now, their jagged ends pale against the dark bark, but amber light moved steadily through what remained.
I watched it pulse.
Nothing answered inside me.
The Grove spread beneath her in ruins. Splintered branches covered the paths. Blood darkened roots and stone. Druids and Marred lay where they had fallen, and one section of the living wall had been torn open during the attack, leaving the First Roots broken and exposed.
Beyond them, the Deepwood stretched beneath miles of tangled green canopy.
The Mother Tree lived.
The Veil remained whole.
The Wild I had torn from myself still lived in both of them.
I could see all of it, but I couldn’t feel any of it.
Caelan remained crouched beside me, one hand braced at my shoulder.
“Verena.”
Something in the way he said my name made me look at him.
His gaze moved over my face, then dropped.
I followed it to my arms. For a second, I only stared.
Then I lifted my hands. Blood welled across my palms, and the vines covering my forearms had gone pale gray from wrist to elbow.
Caelan looked between me and the Mother Tree, his expression falling. “You can’t feel her anymore, can you?”
I shook my head.
A muscle moved along his cheek.
Bramble twisted in his hold again.
I reached toward my Kindred, my bloodied hands stopping just before I touched his fur.
If I took him back, I would not put him down.
Caelan stared at me. “Verena…”
He stood with Bramble still struggling in his arms, but he didn’t move away. Confusion crossed his face.
Bramble cried again, raw and frantic. My body jerked toward the sound, but I forced myself to stay where I was.
Something stirred in my right palm.
I froze. The Veil Weaver star had faded to little more than an outline, but the sensation came from somewhere deeper.
The faintest pull.
Xandros.
I followed it without moving, waiting for it to disappear, but it didn’t.
The tether was still somehow there.
My breath caught.
Nothing rooted me to the Mother Tree anymore, but that thin pull remained, stretching toward the place where the last road had closed.
I crawled toward it, desperation clawing at my chest. I glanced over my shoulder one last time to find Caelan staring at me.
“Take care of them.”
His expression shifted, realization setting in. “Verena?”
I reached between the roots, following the thin golden thread still pulling me toward him. Resistance met my fingertips and spread across my hand.
The seam had narrowed until almost nothing remained but that thread.
Numbness bit into my fingers when I pushed deeper. My arm seized all the way to my shoulder.
“Verena, wait.”
But I couldn’t, not anymore.
My people were alive. The forest still stood.
I curled my fingers around that thread of gold and followed Xandros.
Pressure clamped around my arm and wrenched me forward. Cold swallowed my shoulder and crushed across my chest as the seam tightened around me. My ribs compressed until I couldn’t drag air into my lungs.
The gold tether stretched ahead of me, thin and unyielding through the dark.
I held on until the pressure finally broke.
My knees struck hard ground, pain shooting through both legs until I pitched forward.
Strong arms caught me before I fell.
One locked around my waist. The other braced across my shoulders.
Storm-charged air and warm amber filled my lungs.
Xandros .
My fingers closed in the front of his shirt before I even knew I had moved. Every muscle beneath my touch tightened.
He held me for one stunned breath, then another.
His breathing reached me over the pounding of my pulse, fast and uneven against the top of my head.
Alive.
Real.
My eyes burned, and the ground beneath us gave a faint shudder.
I twisted in his hold.
A hairline shimmer folded into itself above the pale soil and disappeared.
The space between the silver trees stood empty.