“The rot must be excised,” the Grove Core said. “A new seal is required to mend what death has broken.”
Its touch was not Goldie’s. It lacked her hesitant warmth, the bright spark of human curiosity he’d felt in her apartment only hours before. This was an appraising pressure, like a gardener weighing the worth of a tool.
And yet it was still Goldie’s skin, Goldie’s form. A traitorous heat bloomed low in his belly.
“You were grown for this work,” the Grove Core whispered. “A conduit for the Thornfather’s strength. Potent and ready.”
With a slow, hypnotic grace, the avatar unzipped Goldie’s hoodie, shrugging it off and letting it fall to the mossy ground like a shed skin. Then, with the same deliberate, mesmerizing slowness, the avatar grasped the shirt’s hem and pulled it off.
Splice’s breath hitched. In the pale moonlight, Goldie’s skin was luminous. The avatar’s hands went to the clasp of the bra bra. There was a soft click, and the lace fell away, revealing full, round breasts freed to the cool night air.
A wave of primal lust, so powerful it was almost painful, crashed through him. It was an imperative, a biological command that his body was built to obey.
“This vessel is open and fertile.”
As the Grove Core spoke, its hands hooked into the waistband of Goldie’s leggings. It peeled them down over the gentle curve of her stomach and the dark, enticing shadow at the apex of her thighs. It stepped out of them with the same fluid grace, standing before him, utterly bare in the moonlight; a magnificent, perfect, living altar.
The ancient, purpose-driven part of him, the cultivar, roared to life. He could feel Mycor stirring in the depths of their bond, a distant, yet pained, thrum of approval.
The thing wearing Goldie’s body stretched, a slow, languid movement like a predator waking from a nap. A smile touched its lips that was all ancient hunger and without a single spark of Goldie's humor.
He wanted to close the distance between them. He wanted to feel the softness of Goldie’s skin against the rough texture of his own. He wanted to bury himself in her warmth, to plant the seed the Grove Core demanded, to fulfill the purpose for which he was made and feel the glorious, world-shaking release of it.
His mind flashed with the memory of her writhing on his vines, the raw, broken sounds she had made?—
—the soundsshehad made.
Splice stilled, looked past the glowing, possessive eyes, and saw the face he was beginning to know. He saw the woman who doted on her cats and flicked popcorn at him. The woman whose laughter was sharp and bright and wholly her own. He remembered the feeling of her fragile, shockingly human weight in his arms. He saw the curve of her lips now, parted slightly, not in breathless invitation, but in vacant possession.
Marigold. The woman who was not choosing this. Who was a passenger in her own body.
He took a step back, and the cool night air rushed into the space between them.
"No."
The avatar tilted its head as if trying to process a paradox. “But… the vessel is here,” it reasoned, its voice laced with genuine bewilderment.
“This is not her choice,” Splice said, the words feeling clumsy but certain on his tongue.
He took another half-step back, putting more of the night air between his body and the one that looked like hers but wasn't.
"She is not a tool,” he repeated flatly. “I will not use her without her consent. I won’t.”
The green-gold light in the avatar's eyes wavered as the ancient consciousness radiated a profound, resonant frustration that made the leaves on the surrounding hawthorns tremble.
"The wound must be purged," it insisted, its voice losing its melodic quality and taking on a hard, mineral edge. It took another step forward, raising both hands. Fine tendrils began to seep from its fingertips, coalescing in the air and drifting toward Splice.
Splice stood his ground, anchoring his newfound will against the siren song of his core programming. “Then we will find another way.”
For a breathless moment, silence rippled outward, strange and waiting. The Grove Core studied Splice as if he were a riddle carved in flesh.
“Fascinating,” it murmured, its voice shedding the weight of command. “You resist your own design. This is… unexpected.”
The words curled through him, and the avatar’s gaze lingered, intrigued, as if testing the shape of him. Then, as though satisfied with the taste, the presence began to ebb.
“When you are ready to choose, Thornfather’s graft,” it whispered, “the path will be open.”
The green-gold light guttered away as the avatar withdrew from Goldie’s body, leaving the human woman suddenly limp and swaying. Splice caught her before she fell, folding her into his arms as he sank to his knees on the damp earth.
