Chapter 22
It took me a second to grasp what Dasha said before I blurted, “You’re going to kill me?”
“To resurrect our tree, it must be given life.”
“Why does it have to be mine?”
“Because Anivivi chose you.”
“Oh hell no. The voice didn’t say shit about me having to be sacrificed. I unaccept.” I thumped my chest, growling, “You hear that, spirit? Take it back. We both know I wouldn’t have said yes if you’d told me the whole truth.”
The only reply I got?
Dasha saying, “You should consider it an honor you were considered worthy.”
“I doubt you’d feel the same if your life was on the line.” Suddenly, hit by an idea, I grabbed her hand. Flesh to flesh. “Okay, spirit, here’s one of your people. Why don’t you piggyback onto her instead of me?”
To my surprise, Dasha didn’t pull away. She waited, as did I, for anything to happen.
After a few minutes I said, “I take it it’s still inside me.”
“Yes.”
I sighed and whirled from her to stare outside at the tree again. “Did Misha know I’d die?”
“He is unaware the transference requires sacrifice. We assumed that he would retrieve the necklace holding Anivivi and that I, or one of the other elders, would provide the life needed.”
At least he’d not been fucking a dead woman walking, but that provided cold comfort.
“So when are you planning to murder me?”
Dasha didn’t even flinch at my bluntness. “Within the hour. No point in drawing out your misery.” Dasha headed for the door but paused with her hand on the door. “I am truly sorry. I don’t know if this helps, but my people will remember and forever commemorate the good you are about to do today.”
Oh yay. I was going to become some historical footnote. How awesome.
NOT!
Fuck me. I needed to escape this place, and why shouldn’t I? I’d been misled. While I’d been more than willing to hand back the magic inside me, had I been told it would require me dying, I would have said hell no.
I was done being nice. Magic simmered within me. The argencae might have blocked my ability outside this valley, but here and now, I could use it as I pleased. And it pleased me to leave this place.
I went to the door and squinted at it, murmuring, “Unlock.”
Click.
Aha. Step one, get out of my—luxurious—prison cell, accomplished. The easiest part, but it was a start.
I entered a stairwell that wound downwards, and I skipped down the steps, expecting at any moment for someone to yell.
I made it to the main floor, a two-story space with wooden doors leading to who knew where. The only one that interested me? The oversized one that led outside. Only as I approached it, the door vanished, and a seamless wall of stone faced me.
My lips pursed. Obviously, some kind of magic meant to foil me. I put my hand on the wall. “Open sesame.”
Nothing happened.
“Make a door appear.”
Nada.
“I see we’re gonna have to do this the messy way,” I murmured. “Okay, magic spirit, I want to blast a hole through this rock.”
The wall trembled and began to crack. Daylight crept through, but before I could crow, “Freedom!” Dasha interrupted.
“You can’t leave.”
I whirled to see her standing at the far end of the entranceway. “I’m not staying so I can die for you and some stupid tree.”
“You would go without your friend?” A cage dangled from her side, a glaring Cedric trapped inside.
“Cedric! Are you all right?”
“Do I look all right? I went from being mauled by a smelly beast to ignobly trapped like a rat.”
“Let him go,” I demanded.
“Only if you agree to cooperate.”
“You’re asking me to give up my life for strangers. Are you mad?”
“Misha wasn’t a stranger.”
“Do you really think Misha would approve of your plan to kill me?”
Her lips pinched tight, giving me my answer.
“Why must you jump right away to murder? Did it ever occur to you to let me try and see if we could fix your damned tree without death?”
“All the magic in the world won’t revive it. It needs the spirit you hold within, and the only way for it to untether is if you die.”
“And what if you kill me and it still doesn’t work? What then?”
“Then we will try again.”
“Ah yes, because once I’m dead, you can store your precious spirit in another vessel until you figure it out,” my acerbic reply.
“I understand you’re upset, but you have to understand, without Anivivi, my people are fading. Our magic is nothing like it used to be. We are aging quickly. We’ve not had any births since its theft. If we don’t do something, the Luxalis will be no more.”
Finally, a persuasive argument, one that almost managed to sway me.
“You’re desperate, I get it, but how about instead of going all Aztec on my ass to appease your tree god spirit, you give me a chance?”
Dasha sighed. “You can try, but without a life, it won’t work.”
“We’ll see about that.” There had to be a way to shove the spirit inside back into the tree without me croaking in the process. And if it didn’t work…I had been likened to a magical nuclear bomb. I wouldn’t go down without a fight. “Which way to the tree?”
“Follow me.”
“Will you at least let Cedric out of his cage?”
She glanced over her shoulder at me. “No. He is the only bargaining power we have.”
I wanted to yell I hated the damned cat. That she could keep him. Cedric and I had butted heads so often, why should I put my ass on the line for him?
Because we were friends.
Ugh.
It might be a friendship rife with insults, but he’d stuck by me, and I could do no less for him.
I glared at Cedric and growled. “When this is all done, I am going to pet you, and you damned well better purr.”
“If we make it out alive, you can even dangle a strand of yarn and have me chase it,” he promised, bringing a smile to my lips.
A smile that faded as we stepped into the courtyard.
A shiver went through me, not because of the cold.
It was actually much warmer than expected.
What chilled me? The deadness that radiated all around.
I’d never realized how much I felt life, or whatever it was in the air that tingled the senses.
Whatever you called it, this courtyard lacked it, which worried me because if I couldn’t do something about the damned tree, my ass was grass—or would that be bark?
Dasha placed Cedric’s cage on the bench closest to the tree.
She clasped her hands in front of her and tilted her head back, eyes shut as she murmured, “When we fled Infernal, Anivivi was but a mere sapling, grown from the seed Ivivina, its parent, spat out, even as the lava singed its roots. We carried Anivivi to many worlds before settling here, where it rooted deeply. For centuries, Anivivi grew, and we flourished. Our people found peace. Lived happily. We also became complacent and neglected to remember the past. We forgot how sly and power-hungry the Umbradriad could be. When one came knocking at our gate, it seemed only right to take in the weary stranger. To open up our home. To bestow our trust. It never occurred to us our kindness would be betrayed. Never imagined such evil.” She approached the tree and placed her hand on it, whispering, “We failed to protect our most precious treasure.”
“You said you grew this tree from a seed. Did you not ever keep any from this one?”
“It never produced a seed for us.”
“And to grow Anivivi, you simply put it in the ground, watered it, and boom, it became a tree that supported your people?”
“Yes, but it also required a sacrifice too.” Dasha’s lips pinched.
“According to our histories, when my ancestors planted Anivivi, at first it wouldn’t grow.
It took an accident that resulted in a Luxalis gardener bleeding all over the soil and dying upon it before it sprouted. His death gave life to Anivivi.”
Was it his death, or did the tree need someone’s essence, AKA soul? If the latter, maybe I could shove the extra one I’d acquired back where it belonged. If it worked, I wouldn’t have to die.
“Okay, I’ve a few ideas. Let me give it a shot.”
Dasha moved away, and I approached the gray and crackling bark. Could the process to transfer be as simple as touch? I held my breath as I reached out my fingers and pressed them against the rough surface. In the good, I didn’t drop dead. In the bad, nothing happened.
I tried speaking to the spirit. Hey, buddy, I’ve brought you home. You can leave my body anytime you like.
Again, nada. Guess that would have been too easy.
I craned my head and eyed the splintered and brittle branches. I reached out to grab one, and it snapped without effort. If you asked me, this tree was beyond reviving. Still, I had to try, or my blood would be watering its roots.
Since I didn’t know if I should retain contact with it or not, I kept my hand on the trunk, closed my eyes, and wished really, really hard.
Okay. spirit. Time to shove you back where you belong. I pushed at my magic, imagined it flowing out of me into the tree. Wished for the spirit inside me to leave too.
My body turned cold, the palm against the bark even colder. Breathing in had me almost gasping at the chill. I opened my eyes, the lashes limned in frost, saw fog as I exhaled. The temperature around me had dropped. Maybe this was working.
I kept pushing and wishing for the magic—and the spirit—to inhabit the tree and bring it back to life.
“Take cover,” Cedric suddenly yelled, and rather than ask why, I retracted my hand, turned. and hunched just in time.
The tree gave up, not in a gigantic shock explosion, and yet it might as well have.
given what happened next. Branches dropped, so brittle they shattered upon impact, spraying splinters, none of which speared me.
Thank fuck. I’d never been good with the kind that ended up under the skin and needed a needle to remove.
“What have you done?” Dasha sounded horrified, likely because the tree was no more.
Not only had all the branches decided to collapse at once, the trunk had fallen apart, peeling open like jagged petals, revealing a hollow, and in that cradle…
I reached in and plucked a seed the size of a large grapefruit.