Chapter 19
Nineteen
Ivy’s uncle died in the middle of a scream.
Ivy watched his body fall to the forest floor and waited to feel something. Sorrow, or even regret. But all she could muster was weariness as she let her magic go, her plants stilling over her uncle’s body.
“It is done,” Vale announced, flexing the hand he had used to snap her uncle’s neck. “Let us…”
He trailed off. He swayed, falling to his knees yet again.
Ivy stumbled toward him, wiping the blood off her face. The void magic had taken much from her, but she could still walk. She fell to Vale’s side, ignoring the horrified stares from the people she used to call her own.
“Vale,” Ivy said. “We can go now! Look, I’ll get the antidote.”
She reached through the vines clustered over her uncle’s robes and pulled the vial out of his pocket, holding it in front of Vale’s drooping eyes.
“Look,” she repeated. “I have it! Everything will be okay. We just need to get…”
She looked around wildly. The crack they had used to emerge into this realm had vanished, and the tree was simply a tree again. But they still had the circle where he had emerged so many times before. Even if the circle of blood above the stone slab was lost to time, there had to be remnants.
“To the door you carried me through that very first time,” Ivy finished. “Okay? Just keep walking toward that.”
She tugged on his arm. Vale grunted, then reached back to yank the malblossom-tipped arrow from his leg. His hand smoked as he clutched it. But it still took him a moment to gather the strength to throw it down.
Dread washed over Ivy in an overwhelming wave. This was no battle injury; this was the wilderness void dying and dragging its Skullstalker guardian down with it.
“Vale,” Ivy whispered. “Are you going to walk to the door with me, or do I have to conjure some vines to drag you?”
Vale growled a strained laugh. Then he stood, legs quivering under him, fangs gritted.
Ivy put an arm around as much of his waist as she could manage. She could not catch him if he fell. But she could let him know she was here.
“Zax,” she called. “Don’t eat anyone else.”
Zax’s head shot up. He was sitting on his haunches, about to pounce on a man who was walking away a little too fast.
“But they trapped me,” Zax complained.
Ivy winced. They had broken his horn and might have blinded him in one eye, not to mention the burns all over his body. But she also knew what she would have done a month ago. And she would not have helped him.
“I know,” Ivy said, pushing Vale forward as he staggered toward the stone slab. “Leave them be.”
Zax chirped mournfully. “Okay. But if they run, I will chase.”
“Nobody run from him,” Ivy called to the others. “His instincts take over. Everybody just… walk away slowly.”
A woman made a hurt noise. At first, Ivy thought it was somebody who had been injured. Then the noise turned into a yell, and Ivy twisted to see Fawn Archton—the quiet, freckled wife whose husband had been torn to shreds when he tried to run from Zax—swinging a sword at Zax’s head.
Zax caught her arm easily. And still Fawn fought, her cheeks wet with tears and blood as she struggled against him.
Zax looked at Ivy expectantly. “Can I take this one as a wife?”
“No,” Vale croaked.
“Aw,” Zax repeated. He released Fawn, who had to be restrained by several members of the Circle before she could be persuaded to drop the sword.
Ivy wanted to tell her she was sorry. Fawn was a new addition to the Circle and had been almost kind to Ivy at times. Ivy had the feeling that her life before the Circle was tough. From what Ivy had seen, her husband only made it tougher. But other than the Circle, he was all she had.
Vale staggered. Ivy braced herself, but Vale did not fall again. He leaned against a tree, his pale blue skin streaming with sweat.
“Almost there,” Ivy urged. “Come on. Right there, can you see it?”
Vale growled weakly. He sagged, almost falling to his knees.
Ivy tugged on his antlers. She could hear people murmuring behind her, but she paid them no attention. They could do what they wished. She had a void to save.
After a slow, halting walk where both of them almost fell numerous times, Vale collapsed into the remnants of the circle he had been summoned into weeks ago.
The stone slab sat in front of them, but Ivy ignored it.
She had bigger things to do than reminisce over meeting the love of her life when he was dying in front of her.
“Good,” Ivy cried. “That’s great! Almost there. Now we just need to get back home. Can you do that, my love?”
Vale sucked in a breath. It was thin and ragged, his eyes glowing dimmer with each passing second.
Ivy choked back tears and fumbled for the antidote vial. She uncorked it with shaking fingers and poured a tiny trickle into the dirt, hoping with all her heart she didn’t just doom the void by wasting a drop.
“Just concentrate,” she told him as she shoved the cork back in. “Focus on your void. You have to get back, right? You have to take care of it. There’s so much you haven’t shown me yet!”
She shook him. Vale didn’t move, his fading eyes trained blearily on her.
Ivy’s stomach sank. Vale was clearly using all his strength to keep himself awake. How was he meant to get them back to the void?
“Okay,” Ivy whispered. “All on me, then.”
She closed her teary eyes and laid her hands in the dirt. The void’s magic was still in her, even if it was weak. She focused, straining desperately for the magic she had felt when she was communing with the plants that tangled around her uncle.
Just find a crack in the void, she reminded herself. Find it and yank.
The dullest flicker lit up in the back of her head. Joy, so small she could hardly sense it. The void was happy to welcome them back.
Ivy grabbed it and pulled.
The faraway murmur of the Circle vanished. A sickly crackling replaced it, and Ivy opened her eyes to a horrible sight.
The sky was white and shattered. The bone-bushes lay limp, and trees crumbled. They were lying in the remnants of the silver pool, which was so dry that the dirt cracked under their weight.
Ivy climbed out of the hole and pulled desperately on Vale’s antlers. “Hey! We’re back, come on!”
Vale did not move. He was lying with the lower half of his body in the hole, the rest of him resting in the dirt. His green eyes fixed on her, the fires so faint that a spike of fear shot through Ivy’s heart.
“It’s okay,” she managed. She pulled the vial out again, scrabbling at the cork with shaking hands. “I’m going to fix this, okay? I’m going to pour this in, and everything’s going to be fine. You just watch.”
She turned the vial into the hole. It trickled into the dirt, pooling around Vale’s clawed feet.
Ivy watched desperately. The liquid did not glow, or turn green, or anything that she had been hoping for. It just lay there on top of the dirt, not sinking in.
“Nothing’s happening,” Ivy whispered. “Vale? Why is nothing happening?”
Vale did not answer. In the distance, trees crumbled and bushes died, and nightbeasts roared weakly.
Ivy wiped her cheeks. She had to do something. Maybe the void had been wrong, and this wasn’t the antidote after all. But that didn’t mean she could give up. She could find another way. She could channel her magic.
Ivy reached for her new magic. Nothing responded. Her hands were just her hands, and her mind was just her mind, nothing spectacular about them at all.
“Ivy,” Vale rasped.
Ivy cried out with relief and cupped Vale’s face in her hands. “Vale! We need to do something. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
Vale’s head drooped. At first, Ivy thought he was simply exhausted. Then he spoke, and she realized that he was leaning into her touch.
“I was given… this void,” Vale said, each breath an effort. “Always thought… it was the best gift I could ever be given.”
“Vale,” Ivy whispered. “Please don’t.”
“I was wrong,” Vale murmured. “It was you.”
With that, his green eyes went dark.
Ivy stared at him in disbelief. This had to be a mistake. She shook him hard.
“Vale,” she cried. “Vale! Don’t leave!”
Vale’s unseeing eyes stared at nothing, dark and empty. Behind them, a tree crumbled into dust. Then another. The void was dead, and Ivy was standing in its corpse.
Ivy wailed. First in despair. Then, in anger, larger than anything she had ever felt.
“This isn’t how it ends,” she yelled. “I can— I can bring him back! I have magic, too. He said I could stay; he said I was going to be his queen. You can’t take him from me!”
Her voice radiated through the void, strange and echoey. For a moment, all was silent, like a breath being held.
Ivy didn’t notice. She leaned down and kissed Vale with all the desperation inside her. Her lip split open on his fangs, and still she kissed him. She kissed him until her sobs made it impossible, and she leaned back, hollow.
“Please,” she begged.
Nothing replied. Ivy closed her eyes and rested her head on Vale’s chest, ready to give up.
Then something impossible happened:
Red light bloomed on Vale’s chest.
Ivy sat up, tearing her eyes open.
There was a red light rising out of Vale’s chest. Folds of red swarming around each other, slowly forming…
“A rose,” Ivy whispered.
The rose lifted into the air, circling slowly. Waiting, Ivy realized.
She reached out and touched it with one shaky fingertip.
The rose exploded, swirling into the sky and scattering over the trees. The sky bled comforting black, the crumbling tree trunks coming together again. Corpsefrogs began to croak, and bone-bushes sprang up once more.
The silver pool filled slowly underneath Vale. But still, he did not wake.
Ivy touched his cheek, shaky with disbelief.
“Vale,” she said, her voice going strange and echoey once more as the void joined in, making her voice echo into the sky. “Time to wake up now, my love.”
The faintest flicker of green awakened in the depths of Vale’s eye sockets.
Ivy sagged with relief and threw her arms around him. After a moment, Vale returned the hug. Weakly at first, then so fiercely the breath was crushed from her.
Vale surged from the silver pool and pulled Ivy away long enough to stare at the void as it repaired itself.
“Ivy,” he said. “You did it.”
“We did it,” Ivy corrected him.
Vale’s green eyes flared. He gripped her chin and kissed her, licking blood from her lips. They stood there for a long while, trees cracking back into place and distant animals baying with delight as the wilderness void came alive once more.
Finally, Vale pulled back, leaning his cool, bone forehead against her warm skin. “I will find more assistants. You will have a good life here.”
Ivy looked up. The dark sky twinkled expectantly, forming small circles of light that Ivy had seen back in the throne-room painting. What had Ivy felt the void say, back at the castle? The caretaker must be fulfilled…
“Actually,” Ivy started as the first light-mote glided down. “About those assistants…”