Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Goldie’s eyelids fluttered open. The world smelled of rich earth and something sweeter. Her body was heavy, yet wrapped in warmth so complete it felt dangerously close to home.
She stirred and coughed softly. Instantly, Splice’s arms tightened. He rocked her gently, his fingers moving through her hair in slow, deliberate caresses. The motion sent a shiver through her core.
Her gaze drifted upward and found his. In the pale moonlight, his eyes were molten with something that flickered between hunger and tenderness. He leaned closer, lips brushing her temple with a whisper of warmth.
“Goldie,” he murmured, voice husky.
She tried to lift a hand to his face but found it pinned beneath his arm. Slowly, awareness rippled through her. She was naked. Her body was pressed against the rough weave of his coat, the cool night air brushing exposed skin.
“Why am I…”
Her voice cracked, and the words tangled in her throat. Splice’s gaze flickered away, as if scorched by what he might see if he looked too long. He shifted, carefully pulling back, and in one swift movement stripped off his coat to drape it over her shoulders.
“Here.” His voice was rougher than she’d ever heard it.
She tugged the fabric close, heart hammering at the ghost of his heat still clinging to it.
“What happened?”
His hand lifted and his fingertips brushed her cheek. TThe touch jolted through her, sparking a flush that raced beneath her bare skin. His eyes darkened, then shuttered.
“Let’s get you dressed.”
He turned to gather her clothes, leaving her swaddled in his coat. She hugged it tighter against herself. Everything felt amplified—the earth under her skin, the charged whisper of air through the branches, the strange aftertaste of power in her veins.
Goldie cleared her throat, forcing lightness. “Well, that went well. Sleepwalking, and all that. Gold star for me. Thanks for following.”
Splice didn’t meet her eyes. He quickly dropped her clothes into her hands, and then turned away, staring at the ground.
“Okay, then,” Goldie muttered. She dressed quickly, tugging her clothes on with brisk fingers. When she straightened, she caught him fidgeting, thumb rubbing the seam of his palm like he was working through a knot.
A soft sigh rippled through the foliage. She shivered, and Splice’s head snapped up. For a heartbeat, they simply stared at one another.
Goldie held out his coat. He accepted it.
She wrapped her arms around herself, then cleared her throat. “Mycor?” she asked, tentative. “Did… did anything happen?”
Splice closed his eyes and shook his head. He seemed poised to speak, then stopped, swallowed, and said nothing.
Goldie studied him for a beat, the silence stretching. Whatever he wasn’t saying pressed heavier than words.
She forced a wry smile. “Right. Well. Maybe we should head back. No point waiting here for the police to show up.”
They walked back in silence. The space between them crackled, sharp as static before a storm. Goldie tried to think, to claw back some memory of sleepwalking. She remembered slipping into bed… and then waking up naked, cradled in Splice’s arms in the Grove Core.
Her brow furrowed as she stared down at her running shoes, step after step tapping against the Bellwether sidewalks. Something clung to her ribs like a half-remembered melody. A hum, low and resonant, coiling in her sternum the way a struck bell vibrates long after the sound fades.
And layered on top of that… Splice. His scent, clinging sharp and green in her nostrils. The ghost of his fingers against her skin when they weren’t there at all. Her pulse jumped, hard and inconvenient, heat pooling low in her body until she had to bite back a sound.
Gods and goddesses. Still horny. Fantastic.
They passed beneath a maple, and the branches bent, leaves brushing low in a conspiratorial whisper. Goldie flinched, the vibration in her chest flaring in response. She glanced at Splice, catching the tight line of his jaw as he deliberately looked away.
That was it. Enough. She stopped short, hands on her hips.
“Splice,” she snapped, annoyance sharpening every syllable. “Come on. What happened?”
He stopped dead and turned to her, his leaf-shadow-green eyes blazing. “Goldie. I will tell you. But not right now. Please. We need to get back to Greymarket first.”
“Why?”
In two strides he was on her, his hands closing around her arms, and the whole world narrowed to the span of his grip.
His chest brushed hers, close enough that she could feel the rise and fall of his breath, and he looked like he was one heartbeat away from pinning her against the nearest wall and devouring her whole.
She wasn’t sure whether she’d stop him. Gods, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to. Every nerve in her body screamed yes, yes, now, as her pulse pounded so hard between her thighs that she thought she might melt into the pavement.
“Because I can’t think straight right now. Please, Goldie. I need to get back to Mycor. And…” He shook his head hard, as if the words themselves were breaking off inside him. “I don’t want anything to happen. Not here. Not like this. Please.”
Goldie’s body vibrated, caught between fury and desire, every inch of her begging to be reckless. To let him lose control. To lose it herself. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, forcing a shaky exhale.
“Okay,” she said finally, voice unsteady but steady enough. “We can… okay.”
She pulled her hoodie tighter around her shoulders, grounding herself in the ordinary act of walking forward. Splice fell into step beside her, silent but solid.
Greymarket Towers finally rose ahead, its familiar outline carved sharply against the blue-black hush of the night sky. Goldie’s chest tightened as she and Splice crossed the threshold and triggered the lobby doors.
Inside, the lobby chandelier glowed, its bulbs humming with a sluggish pulse that fractured the marble floor into long, wavering shadows.
The vine-patterned wallpaper shivered as though something stirred beneath it, but the air itself remained still.
Even the elevators stood silent, their cages trembling faintly like a beast keeping very still under a handler’s hand.
They moved without speaking. The atrium doors parted at their approach, gliding open with measured grace.
At the edge of the still, obsidian pond, the Thornfather lay collapsed.
His bark-skin was split in deep fissures, sap oozing dark and slow, and his crown of antlers sagged beneath an invisible weight.
A brittle stillness clung to him. His skin had dulled to the gray of drought-cracked earth. The moss along his spine yellowed and crisped, and the blossoms on his crown were shriveled to husks.
Splice sank to his knees and laid a hand on his god’s chest. Goldie braced instinctively, half-afraid she’d see him pour himself away then and there, tethering his life to the dying body. But he only sighed, bowing his head, shoulders slumping with defeat.
Hesitantly, she lowered herself beside him. Her palm found the Thornfather’s arm. The god stirred faintly, bark creaking, a hollow shift beneath her hand. She felt his life through the contact—thin and fragile, but still present. But beneath it was rot. Curling through him like spreading bruises.
It hurt. Gods and goddesses, it all hurt. His hurt, Splice’s hurt, the building’s silent ache pressed against her chest until Goldie’s eyes stung.
She stroked Mycor’s arm anyway, and though it seemed like a useless gesture of comfort, she couldn’t shake the sense that it mattered. That her touch, slight as it was, threaded some small warmth back into him. Not enough, but something.
There are bones in me. A wound I share with your god.
The whisper curled through her chest, low and resonant, and Goldie froze.
She looked down at the Thornfather, at his cracked bark and weeping sap, and for a dizzying heartbeat she thought she felt the same wound yawning inside her.
Her hand slipped from the god’s arm. Slowly, she turned to Splice, her throat dry, heart hammering.
“What’s the wound, Splice?” she asked softly. “What needs to be overwritten?”
Splice lifted his head. Shadows clung under his eyes, his expression worn thin.
Goldie’s breath caught. The whisper from moments before stirred again inside her. The rot must be excised.
“Did the Grove Core speak to you?”
“Yes.” His jaw tightened. He glanced at her, and a faint green flush crept up the line of his throat, blooming into his cheeks. “It… wanted to perform a ritual to heal itself and Mycor.” His hands curled into fists against his knees. “With you as the vessel. And me, serving as stud.”
Goldie’s body roared, every nerve sparking as her brain short-circuited. And beneath that, something deeper inside her rose up in fierce agreement: yes, that’s exactly what I want.
A flush burned up her neck, a mirror to his, and a ragged laugh broke free. “Serve as stud?” she echoed, her voice low and shaky as she gestured vaguely at herself. “Well, I see why you declined. A gentleman of your stature must have some standards.”
Splice didn’t laugh. His gaze pinned her, molten and unguarded in the dim glow.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to. But it wasn’t you asking, Goldie. And… I didn’t want that. Not now, not ever. Not even for Mycor.”
His voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t want it if it’s not… you.”
All of Goldie’s swirling emotions were instantly burned away by the sincerity in his words.
He hadn’t wanted a mindless vessel. He had wanted her.
Her body reacted before her mind could catch up. A helpless shiver ran through her, nipples tightening against the thin fabric of her shirt.
She bit her lip hard, trying to steady herself, but it only made the pulse between her legs pound harder. Somehow, impossibly, the tenderness of his confession made the wanting worse.
She had to clear her throat before she could form words, her voice fragile and careful, as if too much force might shatter the moment.
“So… what did the Grove Core say, exactly? When it… suggested that.”
His gaze dropped. “It said that the land requires a new seal. A binding of life to mend what death has broken.”
“Do you…” She swallowed hard, her voice hitching as the words caught in her mouth. “Do you think that would work?”
His head snapped up, and the vines along his throat twitched once. For a long heartbeat he just stared at her, as if the weight of her words had pinned him in place.
“I mean,” she stammered, cheeks burning, “it makes a certain kind of sense. Land, fertility, life magic… all that.”
Her gaze flicked to the Thornfather’s slumbering form, then back to Splice.
“And frankly,” she added, her voice wobbling between sincerity and trembling bravado, “I’ve had sex for far less noble reasons.”
Splice’s mouth opened, then shut again, his throat working. “I said we would find another way,” he managed at last.
“Yes, but…”
Her mouth went dry. She could feel the hum inside her, the undeniable vibration of rightness, thrumming down into her bones.
“If this is what the land is asking for…” Her voice shook, but she forced herself to keep going, to be brave. She drew in a shaky breath, the air thick as honey in her lungs. “Shouldn’t we at least… try?”
The silence that followed was the loudest thing she had ever heard, a roaring vacuum where her own frantic heartbeat pounded like a drum in her ears. His stillness was excruciating, every second of his silence flaying her open.
Please say yes, a reckless, humming part of her begged—the part still vibrating with the Grove Core’s raw power, the part that had tasted how right this could feel.
Please say no, whispered another voice, smaller and brittle—the performative Goldie, the one who knew how to guard her heart with sparkle and jokes, who never, ever let anyone see her speaking honestly.
She didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted him to take control. She wanted to be the one in control. She wanted to run. She wanted to crawl into his lap. The contradictions tangled together until she thought she might come apart from the wanting alone.
Splice shut his eyes, as though bracing himself on the edge of a precipice. When he opened them again, the storm had passed, leaving only a calm, resolute certainty that stole the breath from her chest.
“Yes,” he said, the single word soft and devastating. “We should.”