His hand rose, palm smoothing over her cheek. “For now,” he murmured, his voice ragged with exhaustion.
Her breath caught. She stared up at him, the words landing heavy in her chest.
“For now?What do you mean,for now?We just had the most intense, god-saving sex in the history of… well,ever.” She gave him a theatrical little pout. “That should count for something permanent.”
A faint, weary smile curved Splice’s lips. “It did. It was. a balm. It soothed the fever. But the infection remains.”
Goldie groaned and flung her hands over her face. “You have got to be kidding me. So, what? You’re saying we have to do it again? Is this officially amore sex will solve itkind of problem?”
Her tone was flippant, threaded with weary humor, but her body gave a happy little hum at the idea.
Splice’s hand skimmed down her side, resting heavy and warm on her hip. “Goldie, I would happily take you again, every moment until the sun rises. But this sickness runs deeper than our actions can purge.”
He leaned down and gave her a soft, lingering kiss.
As his lips touched hers, the hum of the land pulsed through her veins and something cracked, like a door creaking open in the dark.
For a heartbeat, Goldie wasn’t in the atrium at all. Cold earth pressed against her knees. A circle of salt burned in the dirt. Shadows crowded close—seven figures, indistinct, their faces smudged like wet ink. Then came the scream—raw, human, terrified—and the world cracked with it.
Goldie tore back with a gasp. The vision broke apart, leaving only the taste of ash and the echo of that scream ringing in her chest.
Splice’s pupils were blown wide, his expression tight with alarm. “You saw that, too.”
She nodded, throat dry. “That… that was the memory from the bead. Wasn’t it?”
“Whatever we did, it pulled the memory closer,” Splice said quietly, as if listening for something she couldn’t hear. “To us. Through Mycor.”
The air shifted, thickening. The moss under them shivered. Goldie felt it even as she felt something vast and buried move within her.
Witch.The Grove’s Core brushed Goldie’s mind, faint but stronger now, amplified by their ritual.My roots are poisoned. My soil fouled.
The words vibrated through her bones, and she drew a sharp breath, tasting ash and green on her tongue. Splice’s vines flexed restlessly, but he didn’t stop her as she untangled herself from him and rose.
She knelt beside the Thornfather’s vast form, her hand hovering over the ridged bark of his forearm. The air between them vibrated, humming with pressure and promise.
Goldie drew a steadying breath and closed the gap.
The moment her palm met the god’s skin, the world fractured. The atrium dissolved like glass under flame, and the vision slammed through her, through Splice, through the Thornfather in one blinding rush.
The Green Holdings. The Grove Core. Dark, humid, alive with chant.
Candles guttered in iron sconces driven into the trunks of sentinel oaks, their flames casting writhing shadows across faces half-hidden by deep hoods. The Grove Core was a cathedral of living darkness.
A figure in green robes stooped over the chalk lines of a circle, tracing them with salt that hissed as if poured on flame. The salt burned where it touched the earth, as though the very ground recoiled from it. Seven silhouettes loomed around the perimeter, indistinct but terrible in their certainty.
At the circle's heart was a young man, bound hand and foot. His eyes were wide, terrified, catching the faint glow of candlelight. His blond hair was slick with sweat, and his blue eyes darted frantically between his captors, searching for mercy.
A dark, gleaming bead passed from hand to hand.
"This binds us," a man's voice muttered. "If any of you falter, if any of you tell, the bead will remember. Evidence, if betrayal comes."
A woman's voice, sneering: "Why would we betray? There's no profit in that."
"Plenty of profit in this, though," rumbled another male voice, and several of them laughed—harsh, nervous sounds that the Grove Core swallowed without echo.
"Thanks for getting us the sacrifice, Marlow. How'd you pull that off?"
The bead paused in young Marlow Truckenham's hand. His face was sharp with satisfaction rather than fear, his features coming into focus with startling clarity in the flickering candlelight, even as the others’ remained hazy. "Easier than you'd think. Told him I had a job for him. Construction work, cash under the table." He hefted the bead, watching it catch the light. "Poor bastard actually thanked me for the opportunity."
