Chapter 39 The Tree
The Tree
Octavian had spotted me—spotted us, me and his brother, looking all cozy together at the rail of the elevator.
I couldn’t read his expression, but I could feel the intensity of it from here, burning deep down into me.
You’re the one who rejected me! I wanted to shout. You’re the one who pushed me away! But that didn’t stop my stomach from twisting with guilt—and with half a dozen other emotions that I didn’t want to look at too closely.
All I knew was that I couldn’t keep looking at him—not if I didn’t want to implode into a thousand burning pieces.
I twisted away from the rail, forgetting about how packed we all were until I found myself staring right at Alastor’s chest, the deathless rose tucked snugly between us.
He was frowning down at me. Of course.
“What’s wrong?” His brows were drawn together again. “Are you going to be sick?” He pulled back as much as he could—which was only a couple of inches, given the press of people around us.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that his primary concern seemed to be avoiding any vomit that might spontaneously spew out of me. I shook my head, assuring him I wasn’t going to ruin his clothes. “No, nothing like that.”
Something about my tone made his eyebrows rise again, and his gaze suddenly flicked past my shoulder—to the crowd below.
I glanced back, stomach clenching. Alastor had already thought the worst of me when he'd caught me with Radven. I could only imagine the lecture I’d get if he found out everything that had happened with Octavian today.
But I could no longer spot his brother—or anyone I knew—among the crowd. As the platform rose higher, the people below became little more than a sea of bright colors and flurried movement.
I glanced up. We’d nearly reached the huge branch above, and now that we were close I could see the wooden walkway built atop the branch’s broad, twisting length, widening at the end where our elevator would dock.
The platform jolted again as it eased into the dock, knocking all of us off-balance—and someone fell into Alastor, throwing him into me.
I was pushed back against the rail, with Alastor’s tall, muscled body pressed against me and the deathless rose trapped between us.
A couple of ribbons from his flower crown fell over his shoulder and brushed against my cheek.
This close, the scent of him—that earthy, masculine cedar with a touch of spicy citrus—was overwhelming, drowning out even the smells from the Festival below. He’d gone very stiff, and when my eyes flicked up to his—so close to mine—his expression was hard, guarded.
“Don’t worry,” I assured him, bracing my free hand against his chest to keep some distance between us. “I’m not getting any ideas. I know you’re not coming on to me.”
He didn’t say a word as he straightened again, his face maintaining its usual frown.
I just rolled my eyes. And offered a silent prayer of thanks that Octavian hadn’t witnessed that. I could only imagine how this little scene would have looked from below.
Alastor remained silent as we disembarked, following the rest of the small crowd onto the wooden walkway. And I was perfectly okay with that, as I was quickly distracted by our new surroundings—by the entire world that seemed to exist up here in the branches.
From below, this had looked like a giant treehouse.
Now that I stood here, though, I realized it was so much more than that.
Wooden walkways spread through the branches, connected by arched bridges in some places and rope bridges in others.
In some spots, where supports allowed for it, there were wider platforms—for mingling and watching the dancers below, mostly.
There were even bigger platforms around the trunk of the tree, wide enough to hold stalls selling drinks and trinkets to those who passed.
Another marketplace, all the way up here in the tree.
I tipped my head back, hoping to get a better view of the stars and moons above, but they were blocked by thick, leafy branches—which held stars of their own, in the form of hundreds of lanterns hung among the leaves to light the canopy.
After admiring them for a few seconds, I turned my attention below, looking over the wooden railing to the green hilltop beneath us.
The dancers were still going, twirling to the beautiful strains of the orchestra. The music drifted all the way up here, but it was muted, distant, like a song from a dream.
It took me a moment to realize I was looking for Octavian again. I pulled away from the rail, determined to focus on anything else.
“Who did Radven go to meet?” I asked Alastor.
He looked my way, brow wrinkled. “Hm?”
“When you…found us. You mentioned a contact. He still has contacts here after…” I glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “After all this time?”
“My brother has contacts everywhere,” Alastor said. “He’s always had a special talent for cultivating a network of intelligence wherever he goes. Particularly within the underworld.”
“Even in my world?”
He gives me a look. ”Especially in your world. His kind of influence is…useful. Particularly in situations where my kind of influence is not.”
“What’s your kind of influence?” I asked.
He hesitated, then said, “I suppose you would say I have a talent for politics.”
I considered that. “Are Theradorian politics anything like those from where I’m from?”
“In some ways, yes. But in others…” He glanced away, his eyes going distant. “The courts of Therador are a world of their own. There are as many battles and secrets within those gilded halls as there are in entire history books.”
“But you know how to navigate them?” I was intrigued.
Another pause. “Once, I did.”
He didn’t elaborate, so I said, “Are you planning to go back?”
He was silent for so long that I wasn’t sure he’d even heard me. And when he did finally speak, his voice was colder than I’d ever heard it.
“I will do whatever Therador demands of me.”
His tone made it clear he had no interest in talking about it further, but I tucked away this new bit of info to mull over later.
Three brothers—each with a very different talent.
Octavian was the hero, the protector, the fighter.
Radven was the spy, the rogue, the intelligence agent.
And Alastor was the prince, the one with the influence and political experience—even if it still wasn’t entirely clear whether he intended to claim his title again.
They have three very different powers, too, I thought, reminding myself of what Octavian had told me in the bath before we’d gotten distracted by other things. He’d said that Alastor could see the future—but he’d declined to give me any meaningful details about what exactly that entailed.
Had Alastor seen something about this curse? About his future in Therador?
Sadly, it was clear that—for the moment, anyway—the so-called Prince of the Lost was not open to further questions.
He stalked ahead, his face completely closed off, and when we reached the stalls at the heart of the tree he marched directly to the closest one and bought himself another drink.
He downed it in one long swig, then immediately ordered another.
I stood back, not particularly in the mood to get my head chewed off. While he was consuming his second drink—more slowly this time—I took the opportunity to raise the deathless rose to my ear once again. Just in case.
This time, I didn’t just listen. I remembered feeling a shiver of essence when the seller had held her ear to the little plant, so maybe I needed to tap into essence, too.
However one did that.
I closed my eyes, locating that shiver deep inside me. It was there, tickling just below the surface, responding to every sound and scent and wisp of energy around me.
But I wasn’t sure what to do from there.
I didn’t want to send out a blast of power the way I had in the forest, or in the field with the basilisk.
When Octavian had described essence, he’d made it sound like people could manipulate the essence of other things, not just influence whatever had built up within their own bodies. But how the heck did I do that?
“What are you doing?”
Alastor stood in front of me again, that permanent frown still plastered on his face. Apparently those two drinks had done little for his mood, because he was back to looking like it was some sort of chore to be in my presence.
Maybe I should just vomit again, I thought wryly. For a hot minute there after I’d thrown up, we’d almost been friends. Almost.
I lowered the succulent from my ear, not especially eager to explain to him what I was trying to do.
“What are we doing next?” I asked.
A cheer went up from somewhere on the other side of the tree.
Below us, the song of the orchestra trailed away, disappearing beneath the swell of excited shouts.
It was like we were standing above a giant concert arena and the headliner had just walked on stage.
I felt a nudge of shiver from somewhere in the near distance.
“Come on,” said a woman on the platform beside us, tugging her male companion along by the wrist. “I don’t want to miss the start of the pageant!”
And indeed, all around us people were moving to the edges of the platforms, finding any rail where they could look down at the Hill below.
I didn’t wait to see if Alastor wanted to watch—honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Instead, I followed the crowd, squeezing into a spot along the edge of the rail and looking down.
A moment later, I heard a step behind me and caught a whiff of Alastor’s distinctive scent.
He didn’t say a word, but at least he didn’t try to drag me away from the show, either.
Another crowd had gathered below, packed tight in the street that encircled the base of the Hill. They looked up and we looked down, all eyes focused on the hilltop.
The dancers were gone. They’d all disappeared to make room for the colorful procession of people now spilling across the grass, dancing and tumbling to the ever-growing cheers of the crowd.
They had several of those giant puppets with them, each one supported from beneath by at least six people holding wooden rods.
The first was a bird, with shimmering wings and a tail of flowing red fabric that moved like fire. The puppeteers danced and swerved across the hilltop, moving the creature in a way that made it appear to be truly flying. And then—
It changed. One instant it was a bird, and the next the puppeteers turned, twirled, and the fabric they held above their heads became something else—a snake, sleek and slithering, circling the base of the tree to the great applause of those who watched.
It changed once more, and this time I tried to catch the pattern, the sleight-of-hand behind the transformation. But I couldn’t. The snake became a wolf, with silver fur and sharp teeth and glowing eyes. The woman beside me shrieked so loud in her delight that she nearly deafened me.
And another puppet had appeared. This one was a tall, beautiful woman—and the puppeteers that guided her moved her with such grace it was like watching the wind sweep fallen petals across the grass on a spring day.
Her hair shone gold and silver and copper all at once, and her gown was made of frothy fabric laced with glittering ribbons, reminding me of the sun breaking through the clouds in the late afternoon.
In fact, her entire figure seemed to glow, as if she was lit from within.
The beautiful woman puppet danced across the Hill, twirling around the wolf with those lovely, elegant movements.
The shiver under my skin was growing, prickling, and I wished I was close enough to see what the puppeteers were doing, to study how they manipulated the essence of the fabrics to make them dance like that.
But no—the shiver wasn’t coming from the puppeteers, or from anyone on the Hill. I couldn’t explain how I knew it, but it was like that tickle inside me had a direction, like it was tugging at me from something in the middle distance.
I looked out across the town below. From this height I could see across the rooftops and over the rings of streets all the way to the settlement’s outer walls.
The streets were alive, rivers of color and movement and light, and any number of things could have caused that extra little surge of essence I felt.
My eyes dropped to the hilltop once more—where a third puppet had come forth to join the other two.
It was a manticore.
Oh, I realized when I looked more closely, It must be Leonaris.
Because it looked exactly like the majestic beast I’d seen in the mural down below, the one Ary had told me was the Mythic One, whatever that meant—like a great lion with dark, feathered wings sprouting from its back, and a tail with scales that sparkled in the lanternlight shining down from the branches.
Two great horns, curled like a ram’s, sprouted from its head, and they glinted as it raised its mouth to the sky and roared.
All around me, people’s shouts grew louder, and someone down the platform started a chant of “Leonaris! Leonaris!” that confirmed my guess about the creature’s identity.
And I couldn’t help but wonder, as I watched the magnificent puppet strut across the hilltop, guided by the team of performers underneath, how this beast compared to what Octavian had once been—had his coat shone like gold, and had his wings been so regal?
Or had he looked more brutal, more terrifying, more—
“Marigold.”
The deep, rumbling tones of Octavian’s voice behind me made me jump, and I spun around, nearly toppling into the people beside me.
He was there, standing right next to his brother, and while I caught a brief spark of puzzlement in Alastor’s face, Octavian only had eyes for me.
Those eyes pinned me to the spot, and in that heartbeat, I could see that the same wild, intense confusion that had lived inside me since our bath burned in him as well—pulsing and bewildering, powerful precisely because it was complicated, and messy, and bound to get messier before all this was over.
We both knew it.
I wasn’t ready to face him, wasn’t ready to sort through that tangle inside me, but my heart still stuttered as he opened his mouth to speak, and—
That tug of shiver I’d felt somewhere in the distance suddenly flared, and the world around us exploded.