Her laugh came out brittle, sharp at the edges. The sound bounced back at her from the high chamber walls, mingling with the faint sighs of the potted plants along the windowsill.
Chapter
Eighteen
Time passed strangely in the atrium now. It bent around the Thornfather’s breath, blooming in fits and starts.
The conversation about Marigold Flynn—watch her, guard her—had been Mycor’s last true moment of clarity. Since then, consciousness had slipped away in fragments, not the calm return to slumber but something sicker, fractured. Uneasy waking, uneasy silence.
Splice sat with his hands folded in his lap, spine straight, shoulders tense. Watching. Listening. Thinking. There wasn’t anything else he could do.
He hated this. He hated the way Greymarket creaked around him like a beast rousing from uneasy dreams. He hated this illogical path his god was on, hated the mess and uncertainty.
A soft skitter broke the quiet. From the rafters above, a blur of fur and too many eyes dropped down. It chittered once, its tail spiraling behind it in a slow curl, and deposited a folded piece of paper onto Splice’s thigh.
Slowly, Splice reached down and unfolded it. His eyes flicked across the lines once. Then again. He stood, still holding it. Read the final sentence a third time.
“They have summoned you,” he said aloud, voice tight, directing it toward the still figure sitting in a shadowed chair.
The Thornfather didn’t move. But Splice could feel him listening, weak though he was. Splice’s throat worked as indignation rose in his sap, laced with something horrifying and new.
Hurt.
They summoned a god, as many had throughout the ages, but never him. Never the Assistant. Never the eyes and ears and mouthpiece they were always so comfortable ignoring until they needed something translated or enforced or destroyed.
Yes, he was a proxy, a tool to be used when convenient and then set aside for its next use. That was his purpose. He had never minded. Until now.
Mycor’s vines shifted slightly along the back of the chair, the greenish-black tendrils curling, then unfurling again. He was shifting the way a creature does when pain won’t let it sleep: searching for stillness but unable to find it.
“I’ll go,” Splice said aloud, though the words echoed through the bond as well. Because of course he would. He always did.
The resentment rose again, fast and hot. He shoved it down. He didn’t want to upset his god, not while he was in this fragile state.
Be careful.Mycor’s words were a thread of thought brushing against the inside of Splice’s mind, frayed and dim, and he immediately felt guilty for his traitorous feelings.
Splice crushed the letter in one hand, fingers tightening until the paper crumpled like dried leaves. Without another word, he rose, crossing the threshold of the atrium and into the hallway beyond. He pushed through the massive front doors of Greymarket Towers and stepped into the street, the heavy front entrance sighing shut behind him like the building was reluctant to let him go.
Splice shoved his hands into the deep pockets of his coat, fingers curling into fists, nails biting the bark of his palms. His pace was brisk, mechanical, but inside, his vines were knotting and drawing tighter with every step.
I carry his will, his words, his work. I am the function, not the force.He exhaled through his nose, sharp and low.That is all.
Before long, Bellwether Civic Hall rose before him with grim precision. It was all sharp corners and gleaming glass, steel beams and poured concrete, clean lines and cold judgment. The entire structure reeked of control over chaos, of bureaucracy over breath.
Green gods, how he hated it.
A protest lingered at its steps, ragged, the edges fraying. Hand-painted signs drooped against tired arms:SAVE THE GROVE CORE, NO BLOOD FOR ZONING, LAND BELONGS TO ROOTS NOT SHAREHOLDERS. The protestors’ voices had gone hoarse, reduced to scattered chants that faltered as squads of police in pale warded uniforms kept watch.
A few glanced his way, suspicion sharpening their gazes. One young man’s mouth opened as though to jeer, but the words withered when he met Splice’s eyes. Another clutched her charm-bag tighter, as if the Assistant carried contagion.
Splice did not slow. He had walked through blood rites and burned meadows; a handful of restless mortals would not move him. And yet, beneath his coat, his anger burned hotter. The protestors shouted for the Green Holdings, for roots and land, but none of them spoke his god’s name. None of them saw the rot that ate his heart.
Splice pushed through the doors. The lobby was a cavernous thing, echoing with the sounds of hushed disagreement and enchanted copy machines.
Nothing grew in this building. No moss in the corners. No ivy cracking through the grout. No root systems humming below the foundation. It was a monument to rot-less death: an edifice of paper trails and sharpened pens.
He could feel Mycor recoil from it all, a pulse of disapproval deep in his chest, faint but steady.This place remembers nothing,his god whispered. Splice couldn’t disagree.
Humans and cryptids milled about; some in pressed suits, others in ceremonial garb that pulsed faintly with sigils of office. A horned civic liaison stood arguing with a squat witch in a dark robe who smelled faintly of brimstone. An aquatic-looking aide leaned over a portable misting unit, gills pulsing as the vapor curled around their face.
