Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
Slowly, awareness returned. It seeped back in, not just through Goldie’s own senses, but through the new, shared channel that now bound them together. She felt Splice first: his breath, his heartbeat, the faint tremor of his pulse echoing inside her ribs.
Beyond him, the Thornfather stirred, his vast consciousness a low, resonant hum beneath her skin. And deeper still, she could feel the Grove Core itself shifting, its roots flexing and branches sighing as if at peace.
Goldie drew in a shuddering breath. “It worked,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, raw.
Her cheek rested against the bark-like plane of Splice’s chest, and she felt his relief too—a long-held tension unwinding through him like water breaking free of a dam.
He pushed up onto his elbows, looming above her. The alien glow had faded from his eyes. He still looked otherworldly, vines and bark and man, but something in his expression was softer, achingly human.
His hand rose, palm smoothing over her cheek. “For now,” he murmured, his voice ragged with exhaustion.
Her breath caught. She stared up at him, the words landing heavy in her chest.
“For now? What do you mean, for now? We just had the most intense, god-saving sex in the history of… well, ever.” She gave him a theatrical little pout. “That should count for something permanent.”
A faint, weary smile curved Splice’s lips. “It did. It was. a balm. It soothed the fever. But the infection remains.”
Goldie groaned and flung her hands over her face. “You have got to be kidding me. So, what? You’re saying we have to do it again? Is this officially a more sex will solve it kind of problem?”
Her tone was flippant, threaded with weary humor, but her body gave a happy little hum at the idea.
Splice’s hand skimmed down her side, resting heavy and warm on her hip. “Goldie, I would happily take you again, every moment until the sun rises. But this sickness runs deeper than our actions can purge.”
He leaned down and gave her a soft, lingering kiss.
As his lips touched hers, the hum of the land pulsed through her veins and something cracked, like a door creaking open in the dark.
For a heartbeat, Goldie wasn’t in the atrium at all. Cold earth pressed against her knees. A circle of salt burned in the dirt. Shadows crowded close—seven figures, indistinct, their faces smudged like wet ink. Then came the scream—raw, human, terrified—and the world cracked with it.
Goldie tore back with a gasp. The vision broke apart, leaving only the taste of ash and the echo of that scream ringing in her chest.
Splice’s pupils were blown wide, his expression tight with alarm. “You saw that, too.”
She nodded, throat dry. “That… that was the memory from the bead. Wasn’t it?”
“Whatever we did, it pulled the memory closer,” Splice said quietly, as if listening for something she couldn’t hear. “To us. Through Mycor.”
The air shifted, thickening. The moss under them shivered. Goldie felt it even as she felt something vast and buried move within her.
Witch. The Grove’s Core brushed Goldie’s mind, faint but stronger now, amplified by their ritual. My roots are poisoned. My soil fouled.
The words vibrated through her bones, and she drew a sharp breath, tasting ash and green on her tongue. Splice’s vines flexed restlessly, but he didn’t stop her as she untangled herself from him and rose.
She knelt beside the Thornfather’s vast form, her hand hovering over the ridged bark of his forearm. The air between them vibrated, humming with pressure and promise.
Goldie drew a steadying breath and closed the gap.
The moment her palm met the god’s skin, the world fractured. The atrium dissolved like glass under flame, and the vision slammed through her, through Splice, through the Thornfather in one blinding rush.
The Green Holdings. The Grove Core. Dark, humid, alive with chant.
Candles guttered in iron sconces driven into the trunks of sentinel oaks, their flames casting writhing shadows across faces half-hidden by deep hoods. The Grove Core was a cathedral of living darkness.
A figure in green robes stooped over the chalk lines of a circle, tracing them with salt that hissed as if poured on flame.
The salt burned where it touched the earth, as though the very ground recoiled from it.
Seven silhouettes loomed around the perimeter, indistinct but terrible in their certainty.
At the circle's heart was a young man, bound hand and foot. His eyes were wide, terrified, catching the faint glow of candlelight. His blond hair was slick with sweat, and his blue eyes darted frantically between his captors, searching for mercy.
A dark, gleaming bead passed from hand to hand.
"This binds us," a man's voice muttered. "If any of you falter, if any of you tell, the bead will remember. Evidence, if betrayal comes."
A woman's voice, sneering: "Why would we betray? There's no profit in that."
"Plenty of profit in this, though," rumbled another male voice, and several of them laughed—harsh, nervous sounds that the Grove Core swallowed without echo.
"Thanks for getting us the sacrifice, Marlow. How'd you pull that off?"
The bead paused in young Marlow Truckenham's hand. His face was sharp with satisfaction rather than fear, his features coming into focus with startling clarity in the flickering candlelight, even as the others’ remained hazy.
"Easier than you'd think. Told him I had a job for him.
Construction work, cash under the table.
" He hefted the bead, watching it catch the light.
"Poor bastard actually thanked me for the opportunity. "
Someone sucked in a breath. "Gods, Marlow."
"What?" Truckenham’s smile was thin as a blade.
"You wanted a sacrifice with no ties to trace back to us.
I delivered exactly that: transplant, fresh off the bus from Chicago.
No one even knows he's in Bellwether." His eyes glinted in the candlelight.
"That's why I get the majority share. Because I do what needs to be done. "
The bound man—little more than a boy, Goldie realized with sickening dread—made a muffled sound behind his gag. His blue eyes fixed on Truckenham with pure hatred.
A woman’s voice cut across the words. "Enough. Let's finish this before someone comes looking."
The seven figures joined hands around the salt circle. The Grove Core itself seemed to lean in, branches creaking overhead like the ribs of some vast, listening creature. Their voices rose in unison, words that seemed to sink into the earth itself, each syllable heavy with intent:
"By blood we claim, by name we bind,
Our souls and shares are all aligned.
This sacred grove bends to our will,
Its power, ours, to tap and till."
The bound young man tried to speak through his gag, his muffled protests growing more desperate. The sound only made the chanting louder, more insistent, as if they were trying to drown out his humanity.
"From this death springs rightful claim;
We seal this pact with blood and name.
Let root and stone bear witness true—
The Holdings bound to chosen few."
The Grove Core recoiled. Ancient oaks twisted their branches away from the circle, bark splitting with sounds like screams. Leaves withered and fell like tears. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the candlelight, something howled, as if the earth itself screamed in pain.
Truckenham stepped forward into the circle's heart, and a knife gleamed in his steady hand. Unlike the others, he showed no fear, only cold determination. The blade caught the candlelight, casting dancing reflections on the salt lines that burned like molten silver.
The boy’s blue eyes fixed on the knife, then on Truckenham’s face. Behind the gag, his breathing came in sharp, panicked gasps. He tried to speak, to plead, but only desperate sounds escaped.
Truckenham knelt beside him, almost gentle, positioning the blade with practiced precision. "Nothing personal, friend," he murmured, his tone conversational. "But this land is worth more than your life. More than all our lives, really."
His free hand brushed a strand of blond, sweat-soaked hair from the boy’s forehead in a mockery of comfort. "And you? You'll be part of something truly important. The foundation of everything."
The boy’s muffled scream built behind the gag, his body thrashing against the ropes with renewed desperation.
Truckenham’s grip on the knife never wavered. "At least try to die with some dignity."
The knife descended in a slow arc and tore across the boy’s throat. Blood welled from the fresh wound, dark as wine in the candlelight, pooling and spilling into the carefully carved salt lines.
A white-hot light burst from the circles in cascading waves, and the earth convulsed.
Roots erupted through the soil, writhing and grasping, pulling the boy’s fading form down into the ground.
The branches in the trees wailed with splintering agony, wood crying out as though it, too, were being torn apart.
One of the conspirators fell to his knees, retching. Another backed away from the circle, face white with terror. The fire in the sconces flared, casting wild shadows that seemed to move independently, reaching toward them with accusatory fingers.
"It's done," a woman whispered, her voice hollow and stripped of triumph. The words fell flat in the suddenly oppressive air, where exhaustion and creeping dread curled around them like smoke.
The vision shattered, throwing Goldie back into her own body with a gasp. She was on her knees, her hand still pressed against the Thornfather's arm, tears streaming down her face as the aftershocks of borrowed terror and grief ripped through her.
Splice was there in an instant, his arms wrapping around her, pulling her back against the solid warmth of his chest.
"They killed him," she sobbed, the words ragged and torn from her throat. "That boy... he was so young, Splice. He was so scared."
Splice's hand came to rest over hers, his fingers pressing against the Thornfather's cool bark. The new connection between them hummed, a fragile, shimmering thread.
He frowned, and Goldie felt a flicker of his focus through their bond, a sense of him trying to grasp something that was already dissolving.
"It’s already fading," he said, a note of frustration in his voice. "We jostled the memory loose, but now… now it's like trying to see through murky water."
Goldie wiped at her tears with the back of her free hand, her mind latching onto the facts, the structure of the mystery, as an anchor against the emotional storm.
"Well, you were right," she said, her voice shaky, but hardening with a cold anger.
"About Truckenham being part of the original ritual.”
They looked from each other to the sleeping god, to the terrible truth settling between them. The murder of Marlow Truckenham wasn't the start of the story. It was just the latest chapter in a conspiracy that was rooted in blood, and now, somehow, theirs to unravel.