Chapter 40
Chapter
Forty
Tamsin brushed her hands together, brisk and businesslike. “Well. That’s that. Housekeeping.” She spared Jonah’s unmoving form a single glance before lifting her gaze to Goldie and Splice, her smile cool and satisfied.
She strode to the edge of the circle, her gaze cool and appraising. From a sheath at her waist, she drew a slender knife, its blade of polished obsidian catching none of the light. Instead, it seemed to drink the glow around it, swallowing the last of the evening’s color.
“Now. I believe it’s time to begin.”
“Wait!” The word tore from Goldie’s throat, raw and desperate. Her mind raced, heart slamming against her chest. And then, in the whirling terror, something caught. A single, desperate idea. Fragile. Terrible. But it was something.
“Please,” she gasped, latching onto that spark like it was the only solid thing left. “Before you do this… can I at least say goodbye to him?”
She turned to Splice, her voice cracking. “Please.”
Tamsin stilled, head tilting in something like weary affection, and her eyes showed a flicker of genuine regret. “You know,” she murmured, “I really do like you, Goldie. I wish you hadn’t forced me into this position.”
A small, indulgent smile curved her lips. “So, yes. Say your goodbyes. I’m not completely heartless.”
With a casual flick of Tamsin’s hand, the silver bonds binding their arms unraveled, though the magic pinning their feet to the ground held firm.
It was enough.
Goldie lunged to Splice’s side, wrapping her arms around him in a fierce, trembling embrace.
He was rigid with contained fury, every line of his body straining against the silence that smothered him. White fire flickered weakly in his eyes, frantic and unstable, stuttering as he tried to reach the Thornfather. But the bond was failing. They were cut off. Alone.
Goldie pressed her cheek against the cool, bark-textured line of his jaw, lips brushing his ear. In a whisper, she spoke her last desperate gambit.
“Bite my lip. Hard enough to bleed.”
Splice drew back just enough to meet her gaze. The frantic white flicker in his eyes steadied and sharpened.
His hand, warm and solid, cupped the back of her head, fingers tangling in her hair.
The kiss was a collision, a desperate, passionate act that spoke of love and loss and a raw, final defiance.
Goldie tilted her head just so, her body instinctively shielding the intimacy of their mouths from Tamsin's cool, detached gaze.
For a moment, it was simply a maelstrom of feeling and unspoken promises. Then, she felt the sharp pressure of his teeth against her lower lip. Goldie forced herself not to wince, her nails digging into his shoulders as the skin parted. A hot, coppery tang flooded her mouth.
Giving a dramatic sob, Goldie tore herself from Splice’s embrace and threw herself face-down onto the grass of the Grove Core. Splice, understanding her cue, released her instantly, his face a mask of stoic concern for their audience of one.
"I don't want to die!" Goldie wailed into the earth, her voice muffled by soil and genuine terror. As she cried out, one hand clawed at the ground, fingers digging deep into the soft dirt, creating a small, hidden trench. "My cats! Who will take care of my cats?"
Without hesitation, she opened her mouth and bit down into the dirt, pressing her bleeding lip firmly into the soil she had disturbed as she made sounds of theatrical grief.
Help us, she thought frantically, pushing her will, her very essence, down through the point of contact. Please, she begged the soil, the roots, the Grove Core, Mycor, and any other power that might be listening. Please, help us.
“Oh, for goddesses sake, Goldie, give it a rest,” Tamsin snapped, her voice sharp with impatience. Goldie heard a heavy, dragging sound through the grass and damp earth.
“Really, that’s one thing I always disliked about you. That penchant for melodrama. Doesn’t it get exhausting?”
Goldie let out another sob, digging her fingers deeper into the soil. Maybe I can find a rock. Something sharp. Something heavy enough to—
WE ANSWER.
Goldie’s head snapped up, her sob cutting off.
Tamsin had finished dragging Jonah’s body into the circle. As she bent to close the broken salt line, a faint shimmer rose from the boundary
Goldie’s eyes darted to Splice, wide with a silent, frantic question. He met her gaze for a single heartbeat before his attention snapped back to the glow.
The shimmer thickened, motes of light weaving themselves into the shape of a young man with pale hair, sorrowful blue eyes, and a stubborn jaw. The earth gave a deep, resonant pulse, and the spirit’s light answered in perfect rhythm, a luminous echo of grief and power.
The intrusion shattered Tamsin’s focus. She froze, her hand hovering mid-gesture, then straightened slowly. Her head whipped around, eyes narrowing as she locked on the translucent figure hovering above Jonah’s body.
An ugly sneer twisted her lips. “Oh. Hello, Elijah. Come to take your brother to the otherworld? A little late for that, don’t you think?”
The flickering form stayed silent, its gaze fixed not on her, but on the spot where Jonah had fallen.
Tamsin rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic, Elijah,” she muttered, striding toward Goldie. In one swift, brutal motion, she fisted a handful of Goldie’s hair and yanked her head back. The silver bonds snapped tight again, pinning Goldie’s arms to her sides.
Splice let out a strangled, furious roar and lunged. Tamsin gestured negligently with the hand holding the knife, slamming him flat onto his face.
Tamsin leaned in close, the obsidian blade cold against Goldie’s skin. She began to chant, the words a low, guttural litany in a language Goldie didn’t recognize, but whose intent she felt in her very bones.
Goldie’s eyes darted wildly around, her mind screaming. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, this is it, this is where I die, all I did was summon Casper, gods above—
And then, a sound tore through the clearing, ripping the world apart. The unearthly sound cut through Tamsin’s chanting. Her voice broke, and the knife at Goldie’s throat jerked, wrenched backward by an invisible force.
“ENOUGH!”
A wave of incandescent power erupted from the ground. The obsidian knife was ripped from Tamsin’s grasp, sent flying into the dark underbrush to be swallowed by the night.
The silver bonds holding Goldie captive dissolved into smoke. She collapsed, gasping, and immediately scuttled backward like a frightened crab.
Tamsin was frozen, her arm still raised from her broken spell, fingers splayed uselessly in the air.
Her entire body was held rigid, every muscle locked in place as if an invisible fist had clenched around her.
Her eyes were blown wide with shock, fury, and something perilously close to fear as her mouth hung open in a soundless scream.
For the first time since Goldie had known her, Tamsin Donover looked utterly, horrifyingly helpless.
With a slow, inexorable purpose, the glowing figure of Elijah Pell drifted from the center of the circle, moving toward the witch who had orchestrated his death.
But as Goldie watched, her senses still alight and buzzing, she felt something else. A new pulse answered, thrumming through the ground and the air, shaking the marrow in her bones.
Mycor.
Marigold, he said, not in words, but in a pressure against her blood, a vibration of sap and soil. You hear me.
Goldie’s eyes flew wide. Her gaze whipped wildly to Splice.
He was flat on the ground, chest pressed to the earth like he’d been slammed there by the same force that tore Tamsin’s knife free.
He dragged his face up from the soil, a streak of dirt cutting across his cheek, his eyes suddenly, blessedly glowing white.
A bead of bloody sap shone at the corner of his freshly bitten mouth.
He winked.
A cacophony of otherworldly voices surged upward from the earth, a symphony of vengeance that shook the chamber and fixed itself upon Tamsin’s frozen body. The air thickened, vibrating with a power that was wild, ancient, and utterly merciless.
“You, who fed me poison,” hissed a voice that was not a voice but the rustle of a billion dead leaves skittering across dry ground. It was the Grove Core itself, its consciousness fully roused at last. Its wrath filled the air like smoke.
“You, whose greed shackled my slumber,” boomed a second voice, deep and resonant, the sound of granite cracking and roots splitting the foundations of the world. Mycor. No longer a distant pulse, but a present and furious power.
“You, who orchestrated my end,” intoned a third voice, thin and sorrowful, echoing from the shimmering ghost of Elijah Pell.
The ground around Tamsin began to writhe. Thick, thorny vines, black as tar, erupted from the soil, snaking toward the witch, their movements alive and intelligent. Hedges of bone-white thorns burst from the ground, their branches glistening with an unnatural, chilling frost.
Small, pale things began to push their way through the soil. First finger bones, then the curve of a rib, then the hollow-eyed socket of a human skull. Elijah's bones, rising from his grave, glowing with the same spectral light as his spirit.
The clearing became a whirlwind of elemental fury. Mist and smoke swirled around Tamsin, the vapors twisting into accusatory, screaming faces. The vines coiled tighter, the thorn bushes closed in, and the bones of the murdered boy assembled themselves at her feet.
A high, thin scream tore from Tamsin’s throat, a sound of pure terror that was swallowed by the roaring symphony of vengeance. The chorus of the ancient powers closed in, their judgment absolute, their voices weaving together into an inescapable verdict.
“YOU WILL FEED THE SOIL YOU STARVED,” roared the Grove Core, the words like stones grinding against each other.
“YOU WILL LIE IN THE GRAVE YOU DUG,” shrieked Elijah, his sorrow replaced by a cold, final fury.