Chapter 17
Seventeen
Ivy clung to Vale’s neck as they stepped out into a dark forest.
She barely held herself back from whooping as she recognized the pine trees. They were in the mortal realm! And from the look of the markings carved in the trees that were only used by the Circle to keep track of where they had been, they were on the Circle’s trail.
Ivy looked up at Vale and whispered, “Can you hear anything?”
Vale shushed her. His head was cocked, his tail swishing.
The green portal glowed behind him. Ivy craned her head and saw that they had emerged through a gnarled tree. The tree looked familiar, and Ivy blinked in shock as she spotted a stone slab in the distance.
They weren’t just close to the Circle. They were close to the place she had been offered to Vale. To the place Vale had been summoned.
“They’re here,” Ivy whispered. “Right? What are they trying to do?”
Vale shook his head and started to creep forward. For such a large creature, he was shockingly light on his feet.
The green portal sealed shut behind them. Ivy bit her cheek to stop herself from swearing. How would they get back?
Ivy’s uncle’s voice drifted through the trees. Light followed it, and Ivy squinted until she could make out a large campfire burning in the middle of a clearing. The Circle was gathered around it, Christopher in the center with his robed arms raised.
Ivy strained to look. He wasn’t holding his staff, and the vial that was usually tied to it was nowhere to be seen.
“He doesn’t have the vial,” Ivy whispered. “Do you think he’s hiding it?”
Vale shushed her.
“We gather here tonight to mourn our brothers and sisters,” Christopher yelled to the Circle.
“And to avenge them! Together, we will bind the monster that took them from us and bend him to our will. By now, our poison will have weakened him so much we might as well carry him out with our bare hands!”
A cheer went up. Christopher raised his robed arms higher, and Ivy frowned. He was wearing a strange headdress, one he only brought out for powerful spells. They were clearly planning something big.
“They mean to break into the void by force,” Ivy whispered. “Can they do that?”
“Not without an immense amount of power,” Vale replied. “More than any lone mortal has.”
“What’s our plan?”
Vale said nothing. He crept around the tree line, making sure to stay far away from the distant campfire light.
Ivy stayed quiet, calculating their next moves. She couldn’t fight, let alone do magic. Vale was weakened. Could they lure her uncle away and ambush him? All they needed was the vial. Surely, it was on his person. He wouldn’t let something that important out of his sight.
Vale continued to creep through the trees. Not toward the Circle, but around them. Was he flanking them?
“Where are we going?” Ivy whispered.
After a moment, Vale stopped. “Here.”
Ivy looked up.
There was a cage waiting in the dark. Hastily constructed, with fire spells melting the metal together. The bars of the cage were lodged deep in the ground and were covered in thin, flowery vines.
Ivy peered closer. Those weren’t just any flowery vines; they were the distinctive white petals of malblossom.
A cage for Vale, Ivy thought, her heart sinking. Then Vale carried her closer, and the moonlight revealed what the cage was truly for.
The Skullstalker, who was currently inside.
At first, Ivy thought it was just a man.
A large man, but still just a man restrained with malblossom-infused rope.
He was so much smaller than Vale that she didn’t realize it was a Skullstalker until she saw the blue tinge of his skin and the skull mask attached to his face.
He was struggling, grunting in pain as his flowery bindings scored his skin.
“Brother,” Vale hissed.
The Skullstalker froze. Then he twisted, and Ivy gasped in sympathy as she saw his glowing purple eyes. One of them was swollen shut, a malblossom still burning his eyelid where it hung over his face. He also had one horn broken off.
“Brother,” said the small Skullstalker, so loud and joyous they both shushed him.
Ivy whispered, “You know him?”
“I have never spoken to him,” Vale said. “But he has spoken to Slate and our Anderfel brother. He was asking them for a wife.”
“Or a husband,” said the small Skullstalker eagerly. “I am not picky.”
Something shifted behind his back. Ivy was shocked to see a big fuzzy tail attempting to wiggle where it was bound to his back.
“I am Zax,” the small Skullstalker announced. “What are your names?”
“I am Vale,” Vale said quietly.
“Vale!” Zax repeated, seemingly more bothered with introductions than getting his burning restraints off him. “And who is this? Is this your wife? What is your wife’s name?”
“Her name is Ivy,” Vale said.
Ivy’s heart skipped a beat. Vale had offered to make her his queen; maybe she shouldn’t be so enthralled at the idea of him calling her his wife. Wait, was she his wife now? She was part of the void, but he would tell her if they were Skullstalker-married. Right?
“Ivy!” Zax whispered, his tail still attempting to wag despite the ropes. “Hello!”
“Hello,” said Ivy, reluctantly charmed.
Vale stepped closer to the cage, placing Ivy down on the ground. Ivy glanced over at the campfire, where her uncle was still riling up the Circle and paying no attention to the Skullstalker they had caught.
“If they’ve already caught a Skullstalker, why do they need to break into your void for you?” Ivy asked.
“For a bigger army,” Vale replied.
Ivy got down on her knees and crawled forward until she could touch the bars on the Skullstaker’s cage. “How did they capture you?”
“Nets,” Zax said. “Lots of them. It really hurts.”
“I know, we’ll get you out of that soon.” Ivy winced at the smoke rising off Zax’s blue skin. “But what magic did they use to capture you?”
Vale bent down low behind her. “None. He is young. Small. They are easier to take down than older Skullstalkers. They will only need to prepare a spell to bind him to their commands when they send him to fight their battles.”
Ivy nodded. She pulled thoughtfully at the malblossom around the cage, then looked beseechingly up at Vale.
“I can get rid of the malblossom,” she whispered as her uncle droned on in the background about rights and destiny. “Can you lift the cage out of the ground?”
Vale flexed, his arm muscles straining his robes. “I can try.”
He looked dubious. Ivy wondered just how weak he felt right now. How the void fared without them around to care for it.
She turned back to the cage and started pulling malblossom away from the cage, making sure to be quiet every time she snapped a vine.
“They said they are going to use me in their battles,” Zax told them. “I like to hunt. When something runs from me, I chase it down and kill it. I might have joined their battle for fun. But not after they have done this. Now I will kill them all!”
“We will help,” Vale assured him.
Ivy kept plucking the malblossom off the cage bars. She wanted to protest, but she would save that for later. Right now, she had to focus on finding the antidote and getting it to the void.
Finally, she stripped enough malblossom for Vale to grip the cage bars. She stood back, tensing as Vale slowly started to pull.
One inch of the cage slid out of the ground. Then another. Vale’s face creased, growling quietly as he strained. Ivy waited for the group to turn around and notice, but they were too busy staring at her uncle, enraptured. Waiting.
Several bars of the cage came free. Vale lifted it, and Ivy crawled underneath them and started yanking at the malblossom ropes.
“I need something sharp,” she told Vale.
He grunted with the effort of holding the cage up. Then he lifted one hand off and snapped a claw from his thumb.
“Thanks,” Ivy whispered, and went back to work.
It did not take much sawing for Zax to snap the rest of the ropes and stumble up.
“Thank you,” he told Ivy, still sounding much too delighted for a creature with his eye swollen shut and burns over most of his body.
They crawled out from under the cage. Vale let the bars drop back into the ground. His knees wobbled, and Ivy touched his shoulder worriedly.
“I am fine,” he assured her. But he was breathing hard, sweat pricking his pale skin as he stared over Ivy’s shoulder and pointed.
Ivy turned. Her uncle had produced the top half of his staff, broken from his last encounter with Vale, and he was thrusting it in the air. Tied to the top of the broken staff, dangling and gleaming in the firelight, was—
“The antidote,” Ivy hissed. “We need to find some way to get it off of him without alerting the others! We could… We could make a noise to lead him away?”
“He would send his followers,” Vale argued.
Ivy sighed, crouching behind the cage, her mind churning. The vial was right there. If they could only…
Something curled over her bare foot.
Ivy barely held back a yelp. She looked down and was shocked to spot a line of ivy working over her toes.
Zax made a strange chirping noise. “Are you doing that?”
Ivy looked up at Vale. He inclined his head as if to say, Well, I’M not doing it.
“I guess so,” Ivy whispered.
Zax cocked his head, his remaining eye squinting down at the ivy as it slid over Ivy’s foot. “We could tie him up. How much ivy do you have? How fast can you—oh! Ivy! It has your name! Is that why you command it?”
“Um, sort of,” Ivy whispered, and turned back to the group crowded around the fire. Her uncle dropped his staff to his side, the antidote hanging perilously close to the ground.
Ivy took a deep breath. Then she extended a hand out to the ivy and willed it forward.
The ivy climbed over the forest floor, growing at a rate Ivy gaped at. Every moment brought a new stretch of vine, more leaves sprouting as it neared the Circle.
“Do not go straight through,” Vale said.
“I have it,” Ivy replied. The ivy was already curving around the group, edging around the campfire light before approaching Christopher from the side.