Chapter 29
The ground is swallowing Caz. There’s no other explanation for it. Her ankles and wrists have already been consumed by the writhing mass of earth and roots, yet even that is less terrifying than the red hue now colouring her eyes.
‘What the fuck is happening?’ I scream again. I reach forward, ready to grab her, when a hand snatches me back.
‘Don’t!’ Kyor yanks me back sharply. ‘It’ll take you too if you get too close!’ His mouth is set grimly as he stares at Caz’s bowed body.
If I can’t physically pull her back, then I’ll command the plants to give her back!
Fighting the hammering in my chest, I reach out with my magic the way I’ve done with dozens of plants.
And yet before I can latch onto the plant, it pushes me back, as if it knows what I want and won’t give up its control. But how can that be? It’s a plant. Living, yes. Sentient, no. I try again.
This time, when it pushes me back, I physically stagger from the force of its shove.
‘Rose!’ Caz’s eyes flicker back to white as she chokes out my name in panic. ‘Rose!’
‘It’s okay. Everything will be okay. I’ve got you,’ I call back confidently.
But I don’t. I fucking don’t! Panic surges again, and thanks to her gift, she knows I’m lying through my teeth.
That I can’t help her.
But just because I can’t control the plant, doesn’t mean I can’t do something else. Could I freeze it?
I need to do something, anything, rather than stand here and watch Caz be dragged into the bowels of the earth.
Before I can attack the tree with ice, Ruben tries with fire.
‘Mind out!’ he shouts as he hurls a fireball straight at the tree trunk.
It’s by far the biggest flame I’ve seen him produce, easily rivalling the ones Mattieu from Rowell and some of the other fire-wielding Rettlings created in the trials.
For a second, I think it might work, but though the fire sizzles and sparks upon the trunk, it doesn’t catch.
He tries again, but this time the fire he conjures is smaller and even less effective.
We need something more. And if there’s one man we can rely on to always bring the hammer down, it’s the prince.
‘Kyor!’ I cry.
He doesn’t need me to finish. He knows what I want – a lightning strike.
‘I’m on it! Move. Everyone move back!’
I glance above. Even in the darkness, the thunderous peridot clouds above glimmer, whipping up a wind that lashes through the branches.
A heartbeat later, lightning strikes the trunk, igniting the hellish tree that is trying to steal Caz into the earth.
Flames crawl skyward and thunder follows, rumbling, deafening, enough to rupture eardrums, yet somehow still quieter than the scream that tears from Caz.
The tree is on fire, every single one of its branches littered with leaves of red flames, and yet it’s not stopping its relentless dragging of my friend into the earth.
Helplessness fills me as the roots continue to pull at her, to consume her.
They’re growing around her chest now, so fast that I can see them moving.
Her thighs are lost within the even angrier tangle that squeezes and constricts her as she sobs and screams. It’s punishing Caz for the pain we have caused it.
‘We need to put the fire out!’ I scream. ‘It’s not helping. It’s retaliating! It’s hurting her even more!’
I reach for my ice powers, but in my pure panic, they slip from me, as if I’m trying to juggle ice cubes.
Thankfully, Kyor is on it.
Rain lashes down, sudden and furious, steam hissing as water collides with fire.
The writhing of the roots slows, but though the tree has stopped squeezing her painfully, it has not stopped dragging her into the dirt.
Caz’s head is almost the only visible part of her now.
Eyes continually flashing between red and white.
‘Benny!’ I turn to my last hope. ‘What do we do? What can you see?’
‘I can’t see a weakness … I don’t know …’ His voice cracks. ‘I don’t know what to do!’
‘You can only ease her suffering.’ The voice that trembles through the darkness is low and cold, and for a brief moment everything else is swept from my mind as two figures step out of the shadows.
Figures that barely look human. Their bodies are layered in red furs, their heads hidden beneath hoods of fox heads, complete with long, snarling teeth.
For a heartbeat I freeze, gaping at the newcomers. Then I draw the dagger at my hip. Do they mean us harm? They have no weapons in their own hands, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have magic to floor us all.
‘The Quiet Ones!’ Loch gasps and drops to his knees, as if he’s praying to Aitara, the Mother of Gods herself. ‘You came.’
Ruben snaps at the strangers, ‘Stop this! Please, stop it!’
‘This is not our doing,’ one of them replies. Completely serene. Utterly unmoved. And for all I know, full of shit.
‘Kyor, hold them!’ I shout.
The buzz of static rumbles through the ground and their yelps of surprise confirm Kyor has indeed pinned them in place.
I lunge towards them.
‘Stop this!’ I snarl.
‘She can’t be saved now,’ one of them says. ‘The Sannthrall has her.’
Up close, the layers of skins they wear look impossibly thick, stitched with bone and sinew. Killing them with my dagger would be slow, and Caz doesn’t have time to spare.
‘I will give you one chance,’ I spit. ‘Reverse this. Now.’
The left figure tilts her skull-head. ‘You have an impressive blade.’
‘And I will use it on you,’ I snap.
‘Give it to us,’ she whispers. ‘Give us the dagger, then perhaps your friend may yet live.’
‘You said she couldn’t be saved.’ Ruben glares, stepping beside me.
Kyor flanks my other side, blade raised.
‘Perhaps we were wrong,’ the Quiet One murmurs. ‘Give us the knife and we will try.’
‘Rose,’ Kyor warns, voice tight. ‘That blade is magical. We’ve seen what it can do. You don’t know what it will cost to give it up. And she’s almost—’
I don’t look at him. I look at Caz, whose eyes – the only part left above the ground – flick wildly towards me. White-red-white. Terror. Pain. Pleading.
She isn’t gone.
Not yet.
Dinah said there were two more daggers, so there will be other chances to learn the truth of my mum’s heritage.
But Caz will have no second chance.
It’s hard to let go, yet I press the weapon into the Quiet One’s gloved hand all the same. ‘If you don’t save her, I swear by all the Gods, you won’t live to see morning,’ I snarl.
She bows her head. ‘Then we should hurry.’
Kyor releases them and the two fox-headed figures sprint the short distance to the heaving mass of roots.
They kneel and one of them rips off their gloves and lays their palms against the writhing earth, while the taller of the two lifts the dagger in a slow, ceremonial gesture.
Then, with a move so fast it takes me by surprise, they drive the blade downwards, slamming it into the Sannthrall’s writhing roots.
The sound that rips through the forest is unholy, and all the hair on my neck stands on end.
There’s a crack like splitting bone and an unearthly, impossible scream, as though it is ripped from stone.
The force throws me to my knees. Our horses rear and shriek. Elska growls and snaps to keep the equines close, but they panic all the same.
And for a moment … the roots seize.
Every tendril gripping Caz freezes, trembling as though stunned.
‘It stopped!’ Benny gasps.
‘Only for a moment,’ the Quiet One warns.
‘The Sannthrall is vicious and deadly. A single blade strike will not end it. We must dig your friend up before it recovers itself. Quickly!’ The fox-beings begin scrabbling at the earth with their hands while Benny and Loch run forward, throwing themselves to the ground to help their fellow Eastern Islander, this horrifying interlude having energised Loch enough to finally rouse him from his lethargic coma.
But I have a better idea than panic-digging her up.
‘Everyone, get back,’ I order, but they do not move. ‘Get back!’ I repeat impatiently.
‘NOW!’ Kyor roars, and they fall back, scrambling away from the twisted tree.
The Sannthrall pushed me out when I tried to command it. Now, with the blade driven into its heartwood and its focus shattered, I feel a tiny fracture – the faintest gap – in its will.
A tiny opening. A weakness.
‘Rose…?’ Kyor begins.
But I’m already moving. I slam my palms into the dirt, fingers digging into moss and soil. I reach for the plants the way I always do, but this time it’s like grabbing the tail of a beast made of thorns.
Luckily for Caz, I’m also made of thorns.
Magic surges up my arms, wild and furious, like a contained storm trapped beneath my skin.
‘Let. Her. GO!’ I roar. And I shove my will into the Sannthrall.
It’s a battle of two magics I didn’t even know existed.
Mine, with all its heritage that I haven’t even begun to grasp, and the Sannthrall’s, whatever the fuck it is.
It pushes back, slick and dark as it tries to claim me, tries to take hold of my being and manipulate me like I’m nothing more than a sprig of mint, but I am so so much more than that.
I’m the fucking gifted, and I’m not afraid to show it.
I wrench myself free of the tendrils of its power that still threaten to hold me and expel everything I have into it. The roots writhe in agony and for a heartbeat longer, they try to resist … and then they crack. And they’re mine.
I wrench my hands upward, and the roots obey.
They tear open like great jaws forced apart. Coils snap. Binds withdraw. The entire mass recoils violently from Caz as though burned.
And Caz—
She shoots free of the earth as if the dirt itself spits her out.
Benny dives and catches her before she hits the ground.
‘Caz! Caz, you’re all right. I’ve got you,’ Benny reassures her, voice breaking, but for a moment, there is nothing – nothing but silence emanating from her frozen frame.
Was I too late? I can’t bear it. I can’t!
‘No … no …’ I whisper as I crumple to my knees. The echo of the darkness that tried to take me is weakening my limbs. But I don’t care about myself. Not right now. My eyes are still fixed on Caz.
She can’t be. She can’t.
As I struggle to move, a choked, ragged sound cracks from Caz, then another and another as she gasps for air.
‘Thank fuck.’ I drop my head between my knees, unable to move as relief and exhaustion claim me.
‘She’s okay,’ Benny sobs out. ‘She’s going to be okay.’
I try to smile but find I can’t so much as lift my head. Instead, I remain on the ground, limbs trembling as the Quiet Ones withdraw the blade from the roots. Sap, thick and dark as old blood, hisses where the metal leaves the wound.
‘The Sannthrall will remember this,’ one of the Quiet Ones says with worry, glancing at the other.
Kyor steps forward, sword raised menacingly. ‘Give back the dagger.’
But the fox-headed creature simply lifts her chin, her face unreadable behind the skull mask. ‘We returned what mattered.’ She gestures to Caz.
The roots behind her shudder, slowly beginning to twitch again.
‘We suggest you leave the area,’ the other says. ‘Before it finishes waking.’
They’re right. There’s no way I can do that again – fight whatever the fuck that was. I can still feel the way its magic tried to take hold of me, and I’m not na?ve enough to think I’ve got out of this unscathed.
Still struggling to find strength in my legs, I crawl to Caz and touch her dirt-streaked cheek.
Her eyes flutter open. ‘Rose?’
My vision blurs with tears.
‘I’ve got you,’ I whisper. ‘I’ve got you.’ And this time, it’s the truth.
I reach my hand down to take hers, only for my entire chest to seize with pain.
‘Argh!’ I scream out as a burning agony tears through me.
‘Rose!’
Something has a hold of me from the inside, as if it is pulling at my very being, drawing on me, the way I draw on my magic.
A whipcrack of agony lashes up both my arms. My breath punches out of me and something races beneath my skin like a thousand barbed roots trying to tear free.
The Sannthrall! That’s the only thing it can be.
Its magic is still within me. Not a shadow – a shard. I didn’t push it from me. Not entirely.
I scramble backward, trying to get away from it.
But there is no getting away. As I look down, I see the dark spider veins weaving across my forearms, pulsing with green-white light.
My fingertips feel numb. Hollow. As if something enormous has just flowed through me and is still looking for a way back out.
Kyor is suddenly at my side, dropping to his knees. ‘Rose. Rose, look at me.’
‘I … I can’t—’ I try to speak, but my tongue feels thick. The world tilts.
I need to get it out of me, but I’m losing control. I can feel it. Like the mint that I grow and shrink at will, or the leaves that flourish at my command, this shard wants to claim me for its own.
‘Don’t!’ I choke out, not even sure who I’m speaking to as the sound of my voice is swallowed by the magic that roars in my ear.
Wild, ancient, an echo of the obscene hunger. Of hatred. Hatred for … me? I feel roots growing beneath my ribs, curling around my heart and claiming it as their own. Pulling me away from everything and everyone I love.
Kay’s and William’s faces flash in front of my mind, as if they are the last images I’m ever going to see.
I will not lose them!
No! I scream the words in my mind. You can’t take me! You can’t take any one of us!
A whorl of magic snarls again at my heart, but I push it away with everything I have.
I push until I have nothing left.
Kyor grabs my face in both hands, forcing my gaze to his. ‘Stay with me, Thorn. Breathe. Just breathe.’
But I don’t think I can.
The forest tilts sideways. His voice warps – distant, panicked, and breaking in ways Kyor’s voice has never broken.
‘Rose!’
My vision tunnels.
The last thing I feel is Kyor hauling me against his chest, the tremor in his arms betraying more fear than he’d ever admit to feeling.
He loves me. He truly does. And I’ll never hear it in his voice again. Never find a way to save my brother. Never hear my little niece or nephew’s first laugh.
The thought strikes some untaken part of me. I’ll never get to meet the child I was supposed to help guide in this world. Never see my sister become the mother she was always destined to be.
No, that’s not something I can accept.
With my last ounce of strength I draw on the place that the darkness hasn’t yet claimed and force it to grow. Grow enough to push the roots out from me. Out from my magic, my soul.
‘You can’t have me …’ I whisper as the world turns black.