Chapter 40 Treefall #2
The boy shrieked and kicked, sobbing as he screamed for his father. But the man was already falling.
His eyes met mine, though, for a split second, as the board beneath him fell away. There was a flash of relief there, of gratitude—before the fear took over.
I couldn’t watch. And the boy in front of me was still squirming, sobbing, fighting me. I had no idea if he’d seen his father fall—and I wasn’t sure if I could bear knowing.
“Please,” I said, gripping him as tightly as I could. “Please, please, we have to keep moving.”
I could already feel Alastor approaching behind me, his presence urging me onwards.
But if it was hard to crawl along the branch by myself, it was even harder with a traumatized child trying to writhe out of my grip. He may have been young, but he was strong enough for his kicks to knock the air right out of me. Or knock me off the branch completely, if I wasn’t careful.
“I’m trying to help you,” I told him, desperate. “Please.” I didn’t let myself look down again, didn’t let myself even see how far we would fall now if I couldn’t get us both to safety.
I managed to shuffle forward another foot or so before the kid’s heel hit me right in the ribs, hard enough to make me gasp.
“Please.” I was begging him now, on the verge of sobbing. “Please, just let me help you. Let me get you to the trunk.”
He didn’t listen. Didn’t stop screaming and crying. And there was nothing to do but swallow my tears and keep going, inch by agonizing inch, half-pushing and half-carrying the boy in front of me.
The shiver rose on my skin again, a painful prickle that ran from my toes all the way to my scalp.
This time I was prepared. I threw myself down on the branch once more, the boy pinned beneath me, my arms around him and gripping the branch below. He shrieked, fighting me, but he couldn’t move very much with all my weight on top of him.
“Hold on tight,” I said, just as the next wave of essence hit us.
Because that’s what it had to be, I’d realized—wave after wave of pure essence, aiming right for the tree where we now clung. If Laitha or Mordren was behind this, their power had to be truly unimaginable…
The tree shook, but though our branch shuddered beneath us, it didn’t break. And we held on. The boy’s cries quieted as terror took over and he clung to the bark, to me, to anything he could reach.
And he remained quiet when the shaking stopped, as if he was too stunned to utter another sound.
“Wrap your arms around my neck,” I told him. “And your legs around my waist.”
I helped him twist so he could grab onto me properly, and thankfully, he didn’t fight me anymore. He clung to me for dear life, his tiny legs nearly crushing my ribs, but at least I could move now.
I dragged us both forward, toward the trunk. By the time I reached it, I was sweaty and trembling and scraped up everywhere, but that didn’t matter. I’d done it.
But what are we supposed to do from here? I risked a glance back toward the others.
Alastor wasn’t far. There were others close behind him—two young girls, probably eight and ten, who looked so similar they had to be sisters. And beyond them, Octavian carried another small girl on his back as he crawled toward us.
Alastor’s face was a mask, his eyes focused downward as he crawled the last few feet to me. Only when his fingers brushed my skirt did he tear his eyes away from the carnage below and raise them to me.
“What do we do now?” I asked. My voice was ragged, raw, even though I hadn’t been using it.
He sat up slightly, looking above me, past my head.
“We go up,” he said. Even his voice sounded flat, with none of its usual bite. “There’s a door just above. By the next branch.”
I followed his gaze. Sure enough, about five feet up and a couple feet over, where the next branch sprouted from the trunk, there was a small door set into the bark.
It was only half as tall as a normal door, with an irregular shape designed to blend in with the tree around it, and I wondered how Alastor had even known it would be here.
But that was a question for another time.
The boy was still clinging to me, his arms wrapped around my neck as I carefully eased myself to a standing position, bracing myself against the trunk for balance.
Bits of loose bark flaked off beneath my boots as I found my footing, but I didn’t let myself watch them fall.
One look down and I wasn’t sure I’d have the courage to keep moving.
But even without the full terror of the drop below me, there was another challenge—getting to the other branch. It wasn’t far—I could reach it—but I didn’t have the upper body strength to haul myself up onto it, either. Especially with a five-year-old hanging off of me.
“Give me the boy,” Alastor said.
He’d eased himself to his feet as well, and I twisted toward him, trying to pass the child into his arms. But the boy started writhing and crying again, refusing to release his grip on my neck. The harder I tried to pull him away from me, the harder he fought.
“I’ll pull you up right after me,” I promised the boy, trying to pry his grip from me. “You’ll be safe with Alastor. Just hold on to him while—”
He gave an extra vigorous kick that hit me right in the stomach, cutting off my words.
And knocking me off balance.
I fell to the side, still gripping the boy with one arm and desperately grabbing for the trunk with the other—
Alastor caught me, his arm looping around my waist before I could plummet to my death.
But that didn’t stop me from seeing where I’d been headed, how far I would have fallen…
The drop was at least seven stories. Maybe more.
And there was so much carnage… Bodies of the fallen lying twisted and broken, people pinned beneath wooden planks.
The Leonaris puppet I’d been admiring the moment before this all began was crushed beneath one of those massive branches, the golden fabric that had once been its side now stained dark with what I could only guess was the blood of the puppeteers who lay bent and mangled inside.
I was going to be sick again.
“Marigold.”
It was Alastor’s voice that brought me back—to the branch, to the child still half-fighting me, to the others waiting and watching me.
Octavian had reached us now, too, and his azure eyes met mine, blazing with something I could feel even from here.
But despite that gaze on me, I was frozen.
We’d never make it out of this tree alive.
“I’m going to lift you both,” Alastor said. “Just grab the branch, and I’ll help push you up.”
He said it like it was so simple, like there wasn’t an eighty-foot drop beneath us, like the tree wasn’t about to shatter and break and send us all tumbling to our deaths—
“Marigold. Listen to me.” This time his voice was hard, commanding. “You have to do this.”
I can’t do this. I can’t—
“Marigold.” He said it with such authority that my eyes snapped up to him automatically.
The blank expression was gone. Before my eyes he’d become the commander, the prince. The one who was born to lead, whose very flesh and blood were bred for moments like this.
It was strange, and mesmerizing, and…
And he’s still kind of an asshole, I reminded myself. If he thinks he can just order me around—
“You can do this,” he said, and the commanding tone was gone, replaced by something softer but still firm. Solid. And then, “I trust you. I know you can do this.”
Those words…
I‘d heard those words before, back at the brothers’ mansion, just before I’d opened the portal.
I’d been in so much pain, burning with it, unable to speak or see or think, and yet those words had cut through it all, had been the thing that helped me break through the agony and find the light on the other side.
I trust you. I know you can do this.
I’d assumed, at the time, that Octavian had said them to me. But now I knew, with a strange little jolt, that it had been Alastor all along.
Alastor, who in most other situations seemed to believe me less-than-competent. Who’d questioned my character on more than one occasion, and who had implied I was purposefully causing drama with his brothers—
Stop. You can whine and snark about him to yourself later. Right now, there was something a little more urgent at hand.
So I nodded, and told him, “Do it.” Hopefully fast, before I had too much more time to think about the drop below us.
Alastor didn’t waste a second. “Turn around.”
I did as he asked, and he gripped me by the waist.
“Grab the branch,” he told me.
“Hold on tight,” I told the boy. “Close your eyes and don’t let go of me.” His little arms and legs constricted around my neck and ribs, but I could worry about breathing later.
I reached across the gap and grabbed the other branch, Alastor steadying me the whole time. It was a little larger than the one where we currently stood, but not so large that I couldn’t get my arms around it.
“I’m going to lift you now.”
That was all the warning he gave me before he hoisted me up by the waist, and I scrambled, trying to swing my leg over the branch without crushing the child who hung from my chest.
Don’t look down
Don’t look down
Don’t look down
Even with Alastor’s help, this still required far more core strength than I possessed, but I could almost get my ankle up over the branch, and if I twisted a little more—
Shiver hit me like a bolt of lightning, like an electric charge zapping beneath my skin. And I knew what followed, knew there was no time to react.
Another quake. And this one hit while I was still in midair.