Chapter 54
Rough hands yanked Audra from sleep.
With grim faces, the Echoes moved with brutal efficiency.
Audra fought, gnashing her teeth, but a gag was shoved into her mouth, the rough fabric tasting of dust and incense.
Ropes bit into her wrists, and a heavy sack descended over her head, plunging her into a suffocating darkness.
Panic clawed at her, threatening to overwhelm her senses, but she forced it down.
She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her terror.
And she must save her strength.
She was hauled out of the temple and dumped onto the floor of a waiting carriage so embedded with incras it made her skin itch, her eyes water.
The journey was a blur of jostling and the rhythmic chanting of the priestesses as they prayed to their gods.
Audra tried to tune out their voices, focusing instead on the sound of the wheels on the road, counting the rotations, focusing on the dips and sway of the carriage, anything to maintain a semblance of control.
Her muscles screamed in protest against the unnatural position of her bound limbs, but she endured, conserving her energy, and finally, blissfully, her arms and legs grew numb.
She tried to reach out to Zhaire, a plea for help, but it was useless; the carriage had incras embedded into the very wood, just as in the stone of the temple. She could not reach him, and he would not know that she needed him.
She was alone.
Audra’s shoulders and knees ached from being pulled into this unnatural position, but she didn’t fight or kick or try to free herself from the bonds; she rested as much as she could, saving her strength and biding her time.
After an eternity, the carriage finally lurched to a halt.
The same haggard, taloned hands that had been so rough before now handled her with a disturbing reverence. The sack was pulled away, and Audra sagged against Nyrah as she blinked against the harsh winter sunlight. It was a clear, cold day, not a cloud to be seen.
The gods would not permit anything to block their view of the prize they’d waited so long claim.
And there it was. Audra’s sacrificial altar—so different from the stone slab in the obsidian temple—where Zhaire had worshipped her on his knees only two nights ago.
The tree dwarfed the world, a titan of wood and magic.
Its trunk was a gnarled behemoth, every inch scarred and carved with incras stained with blood, its branches reaching toward the sky like the arms of a supplicant.
This tree had not shed its leaves a hundred years ago when autumn fell; it sprouted them boldly, sickening bloodred leaves that shimmered and shifted in the breeze.
The sheer scale of it was breathtaking, awe-inspiring, and bone-chilling. But mostly, it was repulsive.
Usually, Audra hated seeing scarred trees—young lovers in Salt Hollow often carved their initials into trees, an innocent, albeit misguided act of love, that left a lasting hurt on the tree.
But this tree … had it always been this sinister? She couldn’t imagine a time where it might have been benevolent or even a normal, benign tree. Not when the sap that seeped from its trunk like a weeping, festering wound was such a vibrant, blood-like hue of red.
The breeze shifted. Invading her senses, just beneath cloying rot and fetid pestilence, the sharp scent of iron. Audra slapped a hand over her mouth and nose, lest the smell make her sick. Goose bumps erupted across her arms, the back of her neck.
The sap … it was not blood-like—it was blood.
At some point, after countless sacrifices to the Veridian fae gods, the tree had ceased to be an element of the earth’s wondrous vitality and had transformed instead into a monument to perverse evil.
Whatever it had once been, its presence was now malignant, dark, and it hungered for her blood; she could feel its carnal thirst, its gluttonous want.
It would feast on her life and do it gladly.
With a shudder, Audra turned away from the tree, scanning the forest. There was nothing but its spawn—smaller, stunted versions of this tree—and six silent, watchful Echoes.
She was afraid.
She was so afraid.
She closed her eyes, reached for the bond, but this ritual site—something about its depraved aura blocked her bond with Zhaire. Like the temple, the carriage, she couldn’t reach him.
There was no way to call for help.
No one to save her.
No one here, save the priestesses, this terror-inducing perversion of a tree, and the Veridian gods, to hear her screams.
“Behold the Perennial Tree, Audra.” Nyrah’s voice was hushed, reverent.
Tears gleamed in her eyes as she gazed at the tree.
“This is where you fulfill your purpose.” She dropped her gaze to look at Audra, her face carved with a sickening smile.
“This is the culmination of your life, your highest glory; rejoice in being chosen.”
Audra met Nyrah’s gaze, her eyes burning with defiance. “My purpose is not yours to dictate.”
Nyrah’s smile did not falter. “Indeed, it is the will of the gods.”
“Should we untie her?” asked one of the Echoes.
“Yes, I think so. I have dreamed of this moment, Seen it, and she does not succeed despite her desire to escape. This will be a successful ritual, sisters,” said Nyrah.
Audra’s bonds were cut, and she hissed, flexing numb limbs, the circulation returning with prickling nettles.
“Come, child, to your glory.”
Feigning compliance, she followed the priestesses, picking her way over raised roots, scared to touch them, even with the soles of her boots, and patches of dead, frozen shrubbery.
Every step was measured, every even breath deliberate.
A lamb going willingly to the slaughter.
“Let us begin, sisters. Tonight, we feast.”
The priestesses began to chant. Nyrah pulled a sharp, curved ceremonial knife from within her vestments.
“Kneel, Audra, offer yourself to the gods.”
The priestesses circled her, stepping over the raised roots of the Perennial Tree; Audra’s gaze followed the knife, which glowed now with incras, never letting the blade out of her sight.
Finally, Nyrah halted behind her, twisting Audra’s face so she gazed up, toward the sky.
Fear railed within her. Sweat, despite the cold, slipped down her spine.
She tried and failed to slow her heartbeat, to still her trembling fingers. This was it; it was now or never.
The chanting rose in intensity, crescendoing, and she felt the knife’s edge press to her throat.
How many heirs had knelt just like this?
Thousands, she guessed, all raised by the priestesses, their minds twisted from birth to see themselves as nothing more than a god’s plaything, as nothing more than a lamb to be sacrificed upon the altar of greed.
She couldn’t do this.
She should give in. Give up.
She was exhausted.
So utterly alone.
So unbelievably scared.
Audra, my wild girl, when you are scared, you must fight … Fight just to spite your fear.
Her mother’s voice.
She felt Aisha’s gentle caress in place of the priestess’s painful grip. She needed her mother; she needed her here with her. She wanted to wake up from this nightmare, to run to her mother’s bed, to have her sing to her, soothe her fears.
But she was here with her, wasn’t she? She’d spoken so much love and strength into Audra every single day she was alive, and now, even now, in another realm, months after her death, Audra could feel her, hear her.
Fight just to spite your fear.
She could do this, would survive this, because the Chorus of Echoes had taken so much from her—but they couldn’t take her spite.
Audra closed her eyes and began to sing the protest song she’d belted with the crowd of wrathful women in Salt Hollow square a lifetime ago. She crooned the lilting ballad of rage, defiance, and hope.
As the song swelled, she opened herself to the darkness inside her. It had been building within her, clamoring to come out, trying to leach the life from every living thing around her. She’d suppressed it, hid from it, but now, it was finally time to claim it.
She threw her head back and let it erupt from her, a vortex of agony and rage.
Audra smiled now, as her power, a dark, undulating cloud, engulfed the Chorus of Echoes.
She lashed an arc of power farther, until it sliced, cut, carved gashes into the trunk of the tree, the branches above her.
She swore she could hear the Perennial Tree screaming as swaths of blood gushed out, pouring onto the earth, onto her and the Echoes.
Priestess Nyrah gave one strangled cry, dropping the knife to the ground, as she desperately tried to form a protective incra, to save herself from the brutal, suffocating power, but it was too late—Audra did not know if they had never let their prophesied Heir live this long, or blossom into who they were truly meant to be, or maybe the Echoes’ years of indoctrination had been enough, but their mistake this time was their end.
A scourge, Audra’s power latched onto the essence of life force within each priestess. Like the poison they allowed to sicken their young acolyte, her power snaked through their veins with the rush of their blood, coiled with the breath in their lungs, seeped into their pulsing hearts.
Blood began to spout from their mouths, splattering her, mixing with the hungry tree’s blood, but she didn’t care.
Audra’s eyes fluttered with exhilaration as she gripped their essence with her powers and ripped their life force from them, absorbing it into herself, feeling her own power surge and grow with each stolen breath.
The warmth that spread through her wasn’t comforting.
It was a burning, consuming fire. It healed her injuries, even as it fueled a depthless rage and an unsettling, ravenous hunger.
Audra laughed, a low, chilling sound that echoed through the clearing.
She felt like a god, but not a benevolent one like the fae pretended their gods were. No, she was a god of vengeance, a god of shadows, and the Echoes had made the fatal mistake of awakening her.