CHAPTER 6
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A few minutes earlier.
ADRIAN WOKE TO THE extremely unpleasant sensation of being boiled alive.
He surged to his feet with a curse then leaped out of the piping-hot cauldron someone had placed him inside, burning his hands in the process. He was still stripping out of his scalding-hot clothes when a familiar weight leaped onto his shoulder.
“Adrian!” Boston cried, shoving his head against the underside of his witch’s chin. “You’re up early.”
“I’m surprised I’m up at all,” Adrian said, wringing the water out of his rapidly-cooling shirt as he looked around in shock at the last place he expected to see again.
He was in his cabin. His cabin, from his Blackwood.
That was his cauldron in his fireplace that he’d just been boiling inside, but while he definitely hadn’t left the fire going, everything else looked exactly the same.
The pottery mugs from where he’d served tea to his father while explaining his plan to grow roots into Heaven were even still sitting on the table.
If he climbed into his loft, he was sure he’d find the cell phone he’d left charging on the window solar panel a week ago.
It was all exactly as he remembered, but this definitely wasn’t Seattle.
The forest he could feel through his freshly reburied heart felt far larger than the eleven-acre grove he’d grown on Bainbridge Island, and much, much older.
No amount of witchcraft could grow taproots longer than fifty feet in less than a century, but Adrian swore the roots of his new heart tree went all the way down to Earth.
He was still prodding them in confusion when he heard the familiar creak of his front door.
“Look at you!” cried a voice he knew as well as his own. “I should’ve known you’d be out early. You never could stand to wait until the treatment was completed.”
Adrian looked over his shoulder in surprise to see his mother standing in the doorway.
Like everything else since he’d woken up, Agatha looked exactly as he remembered, but the scene behind her was a total shock.
It was hard to make out details in the dark, but it looked like his cabin was inside the branches of a giant conifer.
Also still in Gilgamesh’s Heaven, if the reports he was receiving through his new and shockingly extensive root system were to be believed, which meant his plan had worked.
He’d grown a connection back down to Earth!
But the size of it was… was… It was overwhelming.
He’d never been directly connected to a forest this enormous.
It felt like he’d been wired straight into the Great Cycles themselves, and suddenly, Adrian needed to sit down.
“And that’s why you stay in the cauldron until the treatment is complete,” his mother said as Adrian sank to the floor. “Boston, why did you let him get out? He’s barely got enough blood to function.”
“You know I can’t control him, Lady Agatha,” replied that cat, who was still on Adrian’s shoulder. “He’s always done exactly as he pleases.”
“That would be why Muriel picked him,” Agatha admitted, giving her son an indulgent smile as she picked up the wet coat he’d stripped off and hung it by the fire to dry.
Adrian’s broom was already there, propped in its usual spot against the hot rocks to bake off the lingering damp from the Hells.
The carved raven head gave Adrian a self-satisfied wink when he glanced at it, and the witch dragged a hand through his dripping hair with a sigh.
“Will someone please fill me in on what I missed?”
“I suppose an explanation is in order,” his mother said as she walked to the linen chest to grab him a towel.
“The short answer is that you lived up to expectations. A few centuries ago, when the witch hunts forced us to move our heart trees from the Old World to the New, your aunts and I concocted a plan. We would use our relocation as cover to start a project we’d long been considering, a way to break Gilgamesh’s stranglehold on our coven.
You remember the grove your cousin Olivia was working on? ”
“Of course,” Adrian said, catching the towel she tossed him and scrubbing it over his face. “They were the biggest trees in the Blackwood other than the heart grove itself, the work of generations.”
“And now that work is finished,” Agatha told him proudly, waving her hand at the gigantic branches pushing against the cabin’s windows.
“Muriel knew that one day, I would bear a child capable of overthrowing Gilgamesh, so we grew these trees in preparation. We didn’t know when exactly it would happen, but the moment I saw your four-year-old eyes light up as you watched me working at my cauldron, I knew you were the one.
Since that day, everything we’ve done has been in support of the miracle you just achieved.
A prince of Heaven strong enough to earn Gilgamesh’s respect but principled enough to defy him.
A witch tied to the Blackwood tightly enough to grow his own grove, yet rebellious enough to earn the loyalty of the last demon queen. ”
She huffed as she walked into his bedroom to grab him some dry clothes.
“It was hair-raising work. There were so many details to get right, but our Muriel is nothing if not meticulous. Even I wasn’t sure you’d pan out at times, but she always insisted you were our best shot, and as usual, she was right. ”
Agatha returned to the main room with a smile, but Adrian took the folded black shirt she handed him with a grim expression.
“So it was all a setup from the beginning?”
“From before the beginning,” his mother corrected, holding out his witch hat, which she must’ve used magic to dry, clean, and reshape while he was unconscious, because it looked brand-new.
“You’ve been our weapon since before you were born, Adrian of the Blackwood,” she murmured as she placed the pointed hat on his head like a crown.
“I waited so long to have a son who loved the forest as much as I did. All the princes I bore to Gilgamesh were clever. Some of them even learned a bit of my magic, but you were the only one who could truly be called a witch.”
She was still adjusting the hat on his head when Adrian’s arm shot up to grab her wrist.
“What about the rest?” he demanded, glaring at her with eyes that, now that he’d been bled dry of all his quintessence, were once again the same gray-blue as his father’s. “My brothers, the other princes, did you give them all up to Gilgamesh?”
“Without a moment’s hesitation,” his mother replied. “I’m a witch, Adrian. Sacrifice is in my blood, and yours. You would have sacrificed yourself just now had we not been waiting to catch you.”
“That’s different,” he insisted, squeezing her wrist tighter. “They were children.”
“So were we,” Agatha said in a cold voice as she yanked her hand away.
“My sisters and I were barely out of our first decade when the new god known as Gilgamesh showed up to burn our forest. He kept us as slaves in those early days while he was perfecting his sorcery. I was sixteen the first time I seduced him and seventeen the first time I fed a lock of my hair to the Morrigan to ensure I’d bear him a son.
I’ve been repeating that cycle ever since to ensure our coven’s survival, and to ensure we’d get our revenge someday. ”
She leaned down and tapped Adrian on the chest. “You are that revenge. Ours and the Blackwood’s.
The fire the Great Forest poured through you into the Queen of Wrath is the same fire Gilgamesh used to burn our ancestors.
He tied them to their own heart trees and torched them to ash, but the forest has deep roots, and witches do not forget.
He thought he stole you from me like he steals everything, but you were, are, and always will be ours.
The moment you gave your heart to the forest, Gilgamesh’s fate was sealed. ”
Her voice was ringing with ancient anger by the time she finished, but all Adrian could do was lower his eyes.
Nothing she’d said had surprised him. His family always put the forest first. It was the first thing witches swore when they took the coven oaths, but Adrian’s heart was only partially roots.
The rest was still angrily, bitterly human, which meant it hurt to hear his mother talk so proudly about molding him into a weapon to stab into his father’s heart.
“I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear,” Agatha said as she reached up to touch her son’s face. “But none of it means that I don’t love you. I’ve loved all the sons I surrendered to Heaven.”
“You just loved the Blackwood more,” Adrian finished as he leaned away.
“The heart of a witch is the forest,” Agatha reminded him with a sad smile.
“I’m sure you would’ve behaved differently, which is fine.
A child should strive to be better than his parents, but I’m not ashamed of what I did.
Because of my actions, our coven has a chance to finally be free of Gilgamesh.
You have the chance to be free, as do your beloved Rebexa and her people.
Remember that before you judge me and your aunts too harshly, hmm? ”
“There’s no point in judgement,” Adrian said, turning away from her to finish putting on his dry clothes. “The past cannot be changed. The present can, though, so let’s focus on that before we lose the opportunity you did all this to achieve.”
“Spoken like a true Witch of the Flesh,” his mother said proudly, marching back toward his front door. “This way.”