Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Splice stumbled into the hallway, not sure where he was going, only that he needed to get away. Away from the feel of her body under his hands. Away from the echo of her cry when he shoved her. Away from the unbearable, impossible truth.
That for a moment he had stopped being simply an extension of something greater and became someone.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. He had been created to channel the Thornfather’s will and words. Not to want. Not to crave touch for its own sake. Not to lose control. Not to shove her. Not to hurt her.
And, green gods help him—not to want her.
He could still feel her mouth around him, velvety and hot. The flick of her tongue. The greedy little gasp she made when he twitched between her lips. The way she welcomed him into her body, not as a conduit or a ritual, but as a man.
Her cunt had clenched around his vines when she came, gripping him like a fist, as though trying to drag him deeper, to bind him inside her until there was no end to where she began and he ended.
He had almost come with her, his vines shuddering in time with her cries, the bloom of her blood flushing hot in her cheeks.
He found the stairwell without thinking, pushing through the heavy door and letting it shut behind him. Alone now, tucked away from her eyes, from anyone’s eyes, he braced himself against the wall and groaned, pressing the heel of his hand to the aching heat in his trousers.
He was still hard. The fabric was already damp where the head pressed, sap staining the weave. The image of her undone—eyes wide, mouth open in ecstasy, sweat sliding down her throat—almost made him sob.
He pressed harder. His vines twitched under his skin, straining, desperate to unfurl and seek the heat they remembered. He shoved his hand beneath his waistband, dragging it over the aching length of his cock.
He stroked, slow at first, trembling, his breath tearing ragged from his chest. A guttural groan ripped from his throat; he bit his lip until sap welled on his tongue.
It wasn’t enough. His hand wasn’t hers, but he stroked faster.
Just once. Just this time. If he could finish, maybe the pressure would ease. Maybe then he could scrape her taste, her voice, her heat out of him.
His back arched. His vines writhed beneath his skin, pulsing to the rhythm of his hand. He was right there—right there—
Mycor’s agony ripped down the bond, searing and merciless. Splice screamed, crumpling to his knees as pleasure soured into raw denial. Sap slicked his palms, hot and bitter, a half-spent climax. Every nerve throbbed raw, the heat curdling into something shamefully human.
Hot, primal, ancient pain vibrated down the bond, and Splice knew, with a certainty that hollowed him to the root, that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
And here he was. Hands slick with sap. Cock still half-hard. A beast, not a vessel.
He tried to shove the memory of Goldie from his mind—the taste of her, the feel of her, the maddening hunger she stirred—but it clung like thorns beneath the skin.
“No,” he gasped, dragging breath into lungs that felt too shallow, too unworthy. “No more.”
He wiped his hand on his trousers, sap smearing like shame, and forced himself upright. He had no right to hesitate. Not when his god was in pain. Not when the world was cracking beneath their feet.
He descended into the atrium, head bowed.
The Thornfather was bowed inward on himself, limbs furled like a dying fern, his massive form hunched and trembling as though under invisible weight. The air around him pulsed with pain, a slow, seeping throb that made the stone floor feel unsteady beneath Splice’s feet.
“The ground is unquiet,” Mycor groaned. “Something pushes upward. Old. Unwelcome.”
Splice felt it too—a fever in the moss, a wrongness thrumming in the air.
He pressed his hand to the bark of his chest, reaching instinctively into the green core of himself.
The bond answered with a flare of ache, hollow and depleted.
He had already given too much. His essence skittered against emptiness, no strength left to offer.
The god shivered anyway, eyes flaring open, luminous in the dim. Splice swayed, dizzy from the echo of the attempt.
“The land bleeds,” Mycor whispered, voice stronger but thick with anguish. “Blood wets the soil. But… the ground… shifted.”
The god’s eyes lifted, hollowed by pain, gleaming green in the gloom. “You tasted her.”
The shame struck like lightning, fast and searing. Splice tasted bile, sap, memory.
“We…” he began, but the truth clogged his throat. “She… I meant only—comfort. She was hurting. I—I forgot myself.”
He bowed his head, voice cracking. “It was a mistake. It will not happen again.”
Mycor did not speak. The gaze that held Splice was not harsh, nor judging, simply vast. In it was an ancient stillness that stole Splice’s breath.
Splice began to fold beneath the weight of it, clarity as sharp as an axe. He was a graft. And deadwood could be cut away. He could be unmade as quickly as he had been made if his god willed it. If his god had decided he had grown too far from his original cutting.
Splice steadied his breath and bowed his head, awaiting the judgment of his god. I have failed in my purpose, he thought. If I am to be unmade, let it be swift.
"Stay with her."
Splice’s head snapped up, pulse hammering. Had he misheard? But Mycor’s gaze was fixed on him, green-lit and fathomless. Not angry. Quiet. Infinitely measuring.
“She is touched,” the Thornfather said, voice like wind through ancient branches. “Where she walks, the roots sing. Where her blood falls, the land stirs awake.”
He stepped closer, vines whispering across stone. “I charge you with this: watch her. Guard her. She draws attention to things that have long remained buried.”
Relief unfurled in Splice’s chest. No uprooting. No fire. Only the impossible weight of trust—to protect the very thing that was unraveling him.
Then a chill traced up his spine. “Attention?” he asked, barely above a breath. “Mycor… to what?”
“Something was broken,” Mycor intoned. “It must be witnessed. Repaired.”
Frustration twisted low in his gut. “I don’t understand.”
The Thornfather inclined his head. “It is a seed,” the god murmured. “Grow it.”
“Yes, Mycor,” he whispered. He rose slowly, limbs trembling, relief settling around him like a weight. Perhaps he had not been condemned. Perhaps he had been spared, had gotten away with—
“A word of caution, my Splice,” Mycor whispered, his words threading the air like roots through stone.
Splice stilled, the breath catching in his throat.
“She is a catalyst, and your desire is a spark held to dry tinder,” his god intoned. “Act not from fear of my judgment, but with respect for the inferno you might unleash.”
Splice’s throat worked, a tremor running through him. Every instinct screamed to bow, to beg, to swear he would not fail again, but the words tangled in his chest. He could only stand there, hollowed and burning, the truth of his god’s warning taking root in the space where shame had lived.
“Understood,” he managed.
He bowed low, then he turned and fled, heartwood hammering like a trapped thing, each step echoing with the weight of what had been given and what might one day burn him alive.