Chapter 25
Fallen Leaves
MAX
“Ithink we have everything,” Nick says, fastening his backpack and lifting it from the attic floor.
I’m carrying a similar one, stuffed to the brim with spell supplies, camping gear, and the like, but Nick stops cold when he sees the extra black satchel slung across my chest.
I adjust the strap, Lady’s weight curled against my ribs. The carrier shifts, and a deeply unimpressed mrrp rises from inside.
“Are you fucking with me?” he asks. “You’re bringing the cat?”
“I’m not leaving her,” I shoot back, shaking my head. “Not with that mist creep sniffing around the house like it’s kindling.”
Nick drags a hand down his face. “Max. We’re walking into Faerie without the first clue on how to defend ourselves. And your solution is a cat carrier? How did you even manage to get her inside?”
“I…drugged her,” I say defensively.
His head jerks up. “You what?”
“I spiked her milk with a touch of sleep potion. She’s fine. Just drowsy.”
I pet Lady’s head through the mesh part of the carrier to ease my guilt.
“Isn’t it enough that I agreed to take your ghost?” Nick blinks a few times before picking up the crate holding the Spindle of the Gods. “She’s a cat, Maxie. Why don’t you just leave the door open for her?”
I serve my brother a reproachful glare and grab the lantern. The usual heat that floods me whenever I touch it mingles with the restless energy already thrumming beneath my skin.
“Yes, she’s a cat. And she’s coming.”
Without another word, I forge ahead, heading straight for the black passage. With all these nerves rattling through me, I feel almost too large for the portal.
The black, shimmering glass is not glass at all. It’s not exactly liquid either, more like the sensation of being sucked into a vacuum and immediately spit out.
A hard exhale quakes my lungs, the world around me blooming with colors and sounds, like Dorothy stepping into Oz. The happy chirps of woodland birds greet me as I squeeze past the rough bark of a crevasse that splits the trunk of a giant tree in half.
A wall of tangled roots immediately blocks my path. I set the lantern down at my feet, plant both palms against the damp branches, and shove. The roots groan and resist before slowly shifting, parting just enough for me to pass.
Beyond them, the path opens into a meadow.
Leftover shadows from the event horizon dance along my skin for a moment, hopping from spot to spot until they wane.
“By the Dark One,” I breathe softly, barely aware of the loud rustle in the roots as Nick steps out behind me.
The incredible scenery of a forest flaunting every imaginable shade of red ravishes my eyes.
The woods are locked in an endless autumn that paints the canopy, branches, and trunks in strokes of scarlet, ruby, maroon, orange, yellow, crimson, sienna, and burnt umber.
Cold air sweeps past my face, carrying scents that cajole lost memories out of me.
Pine resin. Autumn crocus. Iron-rich earth.
My body remembers this place, even if I spent my entire adult life turning my back on it.
This is the Red Forest. My birthplace. The land that would have welcomed me if history had been kinder.
“It’s…monumental,” I whisper.
Nick slips his hand in mine and gives it a meaningful squeeze. “It’s home,” he croaks.
A tremor runs through us both.
“The Red Forest…” E whistles in awe. “Very efficient branding.”
I release Nick’s hand and thread deeper into the clearing, Lady’s soft purring mellowing the loud beats of my heart. Leaves rustle in the trees. Shadows shift on the ground, the overcast sky glowing with a pale, unearthly light, and a lump forms in my throat.
I am home.
The air is richer here, and vibrations tickle the soles of my feet through my boots, as though the land itself is celebrating my return.
I remember our mother breathing this same air.
I picture her life before she had us, before her unsanctioned pregnancy made her a prime target for the Reds.
If not for the stupid laws they invented, her life wouldn’t have ended.
I might have grown up here, without having to hide, to lie, and without shame in the power coursing through me.
We came here looking for freedom, for justice, for the parts of ourselves we never found in the mortal world, but we have to be careful. The bed of fiery leaves at my feet may be beautiful, but I can’t forget that the soil beneath it swallowed my mother’s blood.
“Mabel certainly hasn’t snuck anyone out of the Red Forest through this portal in ages,” Nick breathes. “Look at this mess.”
I spin around.
He’s caressing the branches of the tree hosting the obsidian passage, examining it from every angle. “A few more years, and those roots would’ve blocked the passage altogether.”
All this time, this portal remained dormant above my head, a few creaking steps and a warded trapdoor away, our birthright tucked into the rafters.
“Maybe she stopped using it at some point,” I murmur. “Maybe it became too dangerous.”
“According to her diaries, she considered closing the passage a hundred times over, but given how emotional I feel right now, I can see why she didn’t,” Nick says.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” I ask, dumbfounded that he could’ve already gone through so much of the text we found.
“No,” he admits with a lopsided grin.
He’s right about Mabel, though. “Mabs lived the better part of her life in this forest. Destroying her way home would’ve been like tearing out a part of herself.”
“I bet she even crossed the passage once in a while.”
I nod at that. I bet she did, too. Just far enough to feel the bed of leaves beneath her bare feet, to touch the land and bring a little of its power back with her.
No wonder she was still the most powerful witch alive.
I take another step forward and glance behind me. The black shimmer we traveled through disappears, and the tree becomes indistinguishable from the other root-bound trunks around us. No visible seam remains.
The passage is buried beneath an illusion, warding runes likely shielding the opening from sight. I circle back, and the obsidian shimmer reveals itself again.
Nick drops his bag onto the forest floor and pulls out a thin leather-bound book full of colored tabs. “According to the map, there’s a safehouse nearby, but we should seal the passage behind us before we go any further.”
I swallow hard.
“Seal it?” E asks, mirroring my unease.
“Yes. The obsidian passage will not be destroyed when the Mist King shows up to collect the spindle and decides to make good on his threat to burn the house down. Logic dictates he could potentially use it to follow us here once the house is gone,” Nick says, flipping through the book.
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want this creep to pick up our trail.
When I combed through Mabel’s Book of Shadows and the other grimoires last night, I found a closing rite written in case she ever needed to cut the house off from Faerie for good. ”
“But can you do that?” E muses, clearly unconvinced.
Without missing a beat, my twin glances up from the page.
“Aye. All bridges between worlds are forged in shadow yet answer to blood.
Wards drawn to keep strangers out are painted in blood, each line akin to a key turning in a lock.
Closing an obsidian passage is like turning that key one final time and snapping it off in the mechanism.
“Bloodraven blood is the only ingredient needed to seal the portal forever, and the ritual looks easy enough. We can easily manage it between us.”
He’s kind to say us when he’s never known me to be particularly talented at witchcraft. Almost all my successful spells were cast in the last week.
“But a bridge shattered is not easily mended,” E says quietly. “If you close the passage, it’ll leave us stranded here.”
Nick nods in agreement. “Once sealed, only the Shadow King may reopen it. If we do this, there’ll be no easy retreat. No panicked dash back to the house, to Scotland. Once we seal it, we can’t go back.”
My fingers drift to the curve of Lady’s body through the carrier, and I ground myself in the warmth of her fur and the soothing rhythm of her breathing.
Then, I rest the lantern on the ground for a moment and tighten the straps of my backpack around my shoulders.
The weight reminds me that I packed everything that mattered.
Mabel’s pictures. My tarot cards. Spare clothes.
Herbs and medicine. The tiny fragments of a life I could carry away before the Mist King reduced the rest to ash.
Some part of me must’ve known I wasn’t going back.
“Let’s do it now, before we change our minds,” I grumble.
Nick doesn’t hesitate. He slices his palm and lets his blood drip at the base of the tree. I follow suit and imitate him until our blood seeps into the roots and moss, dark and bright all at once.
“Dark One, heed our prayers,” I say, putting the spell in motion.
Nick begins the chant he found in Mabel’s book, and I join him on the second line, our voices threading together in a way only twins can manage.
“Shadows found and shadows grown,
Take this path and make it none.
Blood to root and root to stone,
Dark One, close our blackest road.”
Shadows burst outward from the trunk in jagged veins, splitting through fallen leaves as though a mirror has cracked beneath our feet.
The earth darkens wherever the black lines spread, racing toward us fast enough that I stumble back with a curse and skip over one before it can brush my boots.
The obsidian surface at the heart of the tree ripples, distorts, then caves inward with a low, intimate shudder.
Roots twist around themselves and seal the path closed, spiraling into blackened whorls. The spilled blood flares scarlet, then gutters out, sinking into the earth with a hiss until nothing remains.
The birds begin to chirp again, but dark scars remain carved at the base of the tree trunk.
“Mabel is going to kill us when she finds out,” I say with a cringe.