Bitterbloom

Chapter 20

twenty

My skin rattles in sheer terror of it all, but I grind my teeth and straighten my spine.

Kill my own father? I am here to seek his redemption, not to damn him—and myself in the process—to living death.

But I could bring him back, couldn’t I? Carry through these dead man’s words and then bring him back? I fist the bell.

“You have a deal.”

His fingers wrap around mine, cold and slimy as worms, a grin cracking along his face.

I do not know much of the world outside Rixton, but I have been taught that murder is a cardinal sin, one punishable only by the fiery tongue of Erybrus, and I have just damned myself by promising to slit the neck of my own father.

But I will bring all of us back. Stitch our family together.

The innkeeper crosses to Bram and Rascal, cuts their bonds. “Looking forward to my prize, little Reaper.”

I hurry into my clothes and walk with Bram from the inn. His fingers are cold at my back through my blouse. When we reach the cover of trees, he grips my wrist and turns me around. I bite back a groan.

Every inch of his face reads fury. The fire in his eyes, the twist of his lips, the way the light catches the shadowed hollows of his cheekbones.

I hate it. But it’s the disappointment I hate the most. It ekes in the air like poison, covering him, suffocating me.

I wrench my hand away, my mouth a severe line, nostrils flaring.

“What?”

“What? You know what. I warned you not to make a deal with these people, Adelaide. The dead are not forgiving. If you don’t follow through with your end of the bargain, that man, he’ll—”

“He’ll what?”

I am so close to Bram’s face. The delicate loosening of his skin is apparent, just below his eyes. A gentle decay. It hurts to imagine what he will become if I don’t bring him home. If I don’t save him too.

“He’ll hunt you down and take your soul to Erybrus.”

I try to ignore the dread pricking holes in my stomach and reach into my pocket, bringing out the bell. “You forget, I have this.”

A crease deepens between Bram’s brows. “How did you get it back?”

“I don’t see how that’s important.”

His jaw juts from the papery skin of his cheek, teeth grinding. He is going to shout at me, leave me here in the dark. And for the first time, I realize how much I need him. Want him.

“Bram—”

In the hush of the forest, he pins me against a tree. His face is arresting. All hard lines, dark stubble. His hands are at my waist, anchoring me. Something warm slips along the center of my core.

Bram Avery is unlike anything I have ever seen. His focus, his surety, his conviction…it’s striking. I fight the desire, the way he makes every inch of me tremble.

“You trust too easily, Adelaide Thorn,” he whispers, and then he’s walking away.

All I know how to do is breathe deeply and follow him. I can’t let him out of my sight. His anger is grounding. It is real. Perhaps the only realness in this world of dead things.

“You act as if you know everything there is to know about this place,” he spits. “Like you can just go making deals with dead people and suffer no consequences.”

“Bram, I—”

He whirls on me. “There are so many things you don’t know.”

The shadows in his gaze send a chill through my bones.

Here, in the dim light, he looks more dead than alive for the first time since he appeared in my bedroom.

His skin seems sallow and thin, stretched tallow wax.

The violet stains beneath his eyes are wan and deep, dripping down to his chin like spilled ink.

“I’m sorry,” is all I manage, but Bram is already moving away through the trees.

“Don’t bother,” he clips back. “You’ve already made your deal.”

He disappears amidst the crooked white and silver trunks, and I am here, and I am not. I am tied to a chair, my mouth stuffed with words that are not my own, verses scrawled in Father’s hand.

“Are you coming or not?”

Bram’s voice sends me crashing back into my own body, chest heaving.

My skin is slick with cold sweat, and a shiver runs the course of my spine.

Bram stands at the tree line, brow dark, but with more concern now than anger.

Rascal waits at his side, tail wagging. I clench my fists and move toward him, though the memory niggles at the back of my mind.

I am wicked; I am weak. If I were stronger, I would take the bell in my hand, send Bram home, and face this weary world without him. But he is right. I know nothing of this place, and I need him.

The walk through the red wood is filled with sounds that send my skin crawling.

Groans and screams, the laughter of young children morphing to the scraping of nails on stone.

It turns my stomach, makes me cling fast to the bell.

I hold it so tightly I fear it might come apart in my hand with each step.

Bram does not know of this, not now, not after everything I have put him through. When we reach the ruin of Rixton, I pause at the vicarage. Look up. Envision what it looks like back home.

Even there, it is a broken thing. Even there, so am I.

Little Reaper. I leave Bram’s side and dive through the opening, spilling out on the other side where the bitterbloom weaves, rebellious in the light of a dead moon. Bram chases after me, his feet crunching the broken earth beneath us.

“Adelaide, what the hell are you doing? We need to reach the castle.”

I shove hair from my face and stare down at the flowers. “I don’t understand—”

He reaches for my wrist, his fingers like dagger points. “If we don’t get to the castle soon, who knows what Ransom will wind up doing.”

I spin, my cheeks racing hot. Ransom’s greedy hands still linger on my skin, and I taste the bitter bite of his lips.

I close my eyes for a beat, brushing away the memory and trying desperately to replace it with a daydream.

Ransom running to the castle before us, finding our mothers, apologizing when we arrive.

Saying he’s sorry, but look, he found them!

Doesn’t that make up for it? But trying to make the thought real, force it to fit, is like shoving solid rock through cheesecloth.

Bram lifts his hand from mine. My skin tenses, but I continue to stare at the blooms, reach a finger to brush the velvet petals. Each one so vibrant. So alive. How can they grow in a world where the faces of people are sloughing off?

“How are these alive?”

Bram shifts beside me, his voice thin with irritation. “How would I know?”

“Because I know nothing, remember?”

The bitter bite of my words hit their mark. He rubs his eyes.

“I honestly have no idea, Adelaide. It doesn’t make sense. There, is that the answer you wanted?”

A sort of blush rises in his cheeks. It is horribly distracting.

Ever since he spilled the rabbit blood and watched me hold the heart, I swear there is something more human about him.

More pain, more joy, more fear set behind those amber eyes.

Even when Ransom had me pressed against the wall, I couldn’t stop thinking what if it was him—Bram—to make it better.

Make it safe. Because that is what he makes me feel more than anyone else in this wretched world ever has.

Safe.

I could imagine it was Bram who had his hands at my waist, his fingers like knife points in my thigh—

The flowers. Back to the flowers.

“Touch one.”

Bram lifts his brows. “I’m sorry?”

“I said, touch one.”

“Adelaide, we don’t have time for—”

I grab his hand and pull it toward a snowy bloom, the centers like drops of honey. Almost instantly, when his fingers brush against it, the bitterbloom shrivels. He gasps and pulls away.

“What the—”

I stare at the dead flower, each petal now a burial shroud. None of the others have been affected, only the one Bram touched. I reach out toward it, my finger like a butterfly kiss. And the petal unfurls. Turns white once more. Gray to cream to pure milky white. I pull away, my skin stinging.

“What the hell did you just do?” Bram brushes his hand along the bed of flowers. The blooms go dead at an alarming rate.

I do not look up, my eyes trained on the bitterbloom. It seems to waver, as if a breeze has come. And then, I reach for all the flowers. I gather them in fistfuls, careful not to pull them from the earth, and watch while each and every one turns a shade so bright they are almost blinding.

Bram goes slack-jawed. “This is impossible.”

I touch every flower until the bed is bursting. Honey yellow, nacreous pearl, pops of almost unnatural green. They seem to grow right from my very fingers, kissing my flesh as though I am the sun. They take my breath away. Something sizzles in my veins, and I press my hand against Bram’s arm.

“Are you seeing this? It isn’t just me?”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t have drunk that ale. Perhaps we’re still at the alehouse, intoxicated. Or…” His voice trails off.

“You know that isn’t true. Look at me.” I reach for Bram’s face, and he flinches. As though my touch is painful. “When you gutted that rabbit and I chose the heart, you said it was an interesting choice. Why?”

His eyes dart like a caged beast. “Most souls here, we crave the things we have forgotten. The taste of fresh bread, the swill of wine on our tongue. I have seen people rip apart a deer, only to come away with the punctured stomach, the liver. Just to taste something that reminds them of home, even if that means tasting grass, the poison of river water. But you chose the heart. Which means the thing you desire most is life itself.”

My body goes rigid. The memory of the heart in my hands is hazy, trapped on the other side of a frosted window. But I can still remember the way it felt in my hands.

“That’s foolish, Bram. You’ve seen my blood. You heard what the innkeeper called me.”

Little Reaper.

He shakes his head. “You don’t get it, do you? Here, in the wood, we are neither Erybrus’s nor Ithrandril’s. We have a choice. The Reapers, they have a choice too. Ithrandril wants all souls to come to them, but it allows the Reapers to make their choice. Are they for Erybrus or for Ithrandril?”

“But the dead, Bram. The dead are brought here. And the dead belong to Erybrus.” I am desperate, trying to make sense of all this against the teachings I have grown up with. Father telling me time and time again that I was cursed, death walking, touched by shadow.

“You’ve missed the entire point of this place, Adelaide.

People aren’t trapped here because they want to come back to life.

We’re trapped here because we’re greedy.

We don’t know how to move on into true death.

There’s something we feel we’ve been cheated of.

Something that holds us to home with fraying ropes. ”

Don’t make deals with these people. Bram didn’t tell me just as a warning. He told me because the inhabitants of this place are obsessed. With winning. With beating and cheating life.

“But don’t…don’t you want to be brought home, Bram? To be brought back to life? That was our deal….” My voice drops, and I feel punched in the gut. I twist on him, eyes hard. “You tricked me.”

He raises his hands in surrender, a shy smile on his lips. “I did no such thing. I made a deal to be brought home. I bargained for life, not to cheat death. And I’ve upheld my side thus far, haven’t I?”

What am I even doing here?

What could someone like Bram possibly need from me when I can’t even find my own mother? I have signed away my own father’s life. How can I uphold my end of this wretched deal with Bram?

“I just want to find my mother.” I only realize I’m crying when I reach up to wipe at my cheeks, my hand coming away wet.

Bram looks at me like I am a portrait in a gold frame hung in some museum. Behind rope. Behind glass. Untouchable.

“Don’t.”

“What?” he asks, shrinking back.

“Don’t look at me like I’m something broken.”

“I’m not. I’m—” There, in his eyes, the recognition. “Sorry, let’s…let’s get moving.”

He turns, takes one step, and freezes. The mud slurries around his boot, letting up an awful stink. Rascal whines and nuzzles my leg. I sink my fingers instinctively into his fur.

“Bram, what is it? What’s wrong?”

He holds still, so motionless he might be made of marble. Breath turns to ice in my lungs. Slowly, he turns, one finger pressed against white lips. The sight of it is enough to turn my insides hollow.

“Haunts,” he says. “They’ve found us.”