Amma would grow weary of being kept, of being a pet with no true choices, and she would want to leave him too, eventually. Especially when she learned how he felt—how he had been so relieved when she’d chosen to remain with the talisman inside her even though he knew the alternative was no real choice either—she wouldn’t have wanted to stay with the vampires, to have that cold, undead existence for eternity, out of the sun and away from the trees she loved best. It was a game, a deception, the illusion of a choice. And soon she would want a real option. Soon she would be faced with something that would work, that would finally free her of him, and what would he do then?
He ripped himself away from the tree, stalking back the way he’d come, escaping the ring of darkness he’d created. Just passing out of it brought a lightness to his chest. He took a deep breath, eyes lifting up to the sky. The moons were there, both of them, the moving one passing ever closer to the static one. Those lights had not been visible before, but his own darkness had ripped down enough of the forest to uncover them.
But he was free of that now, and in his limbs and fingers there crackled a renewed energy. Whatever had been lost in the expulsion of arcana, he had regained. He could breathe, he could see, he could think. He was himself again, whoever in the Abyss that was, and he would have to return as if none of it had happened.
CHAPTER 19
ON FINDING AND BEING FOUND
Amma had known it was a mistake the moment it left her mouth, but Damien had asked, and it felt worse to not tell him the truth when he had seemed so desperate for her thoughts about his father. She hadn’t gone after him despite wanting to, but she’d sat up, waiting, staring into the dark, afraid he’d never come back. When he finally did, even the shadows couldn’t hide the exhaustion on his face, and without a word he’d fallen into sleep. She’d only dozed off herself when she could hear his heavy breathing, assured he wouldn’t traipse into the woods again and disappear.
The next day, though, Damien acted as if the conversation about his mother and father had not happened and seemed happy enough to answer her questions about the Innomina Wildwood instead. Of course, Damien didn’t know the names of most of the plants, but he did his best to describe them. After he’d told her about a flower as large as a man that could cloak itself to match its surroundings, and she asked why the region was so different than Eiren despite being so close, he dropped his voice lower. “The Innomina Wildwood is untouched in a way your realm or even places like Aszath Koth aren’t. Arcana has been left here on its own for far longer, and that sometimes manifests in gateways to other planes, the magic there leaking out. This is the only place I’ve ever been able to access The Everdarque.”
Dread knocked on the back of her spine at that. “The Everdark?”
“No, the Everdarque,” he repeated, slowly.
“Yeah, that’s what I said. You’ve been there?”
“Unfortunately. To collect components to make that thing you’ve got inside you.”
Amma touched her chest, shivering. “There are fae components inside me?”
“Yes, and it’s a bloody nightmare getting them back to this plane without disintegrating.” He seemed quite annoyed with the idea. “Turns out, you have to intend to take the thing back with you, not just assume it will come.”
“Damien, you stole from the fae?”
“It was just a bit of sand.” He shrugged. “It’s not as if they count every grain, trust me, they’re quite busy with other, equally pointless things. But you know, you’re the baroness of a place called Faebarrow, after all.”
“Well, it’s not like we have any fae there, it’s just named that because there were all these little mounds spread out over the place that’s the liathau orchard now, and long ago the people used to think fae lived inside them who blessed the earth and helped the trees flourish.”
“I thought the trees were a gift from your goddess?”
“Well?” Amma tapped her chin in thought. “Yes, Sestoth gave them to us, but the stories are kind of convoluted. Something like, she had good fae working for her, you know?”
“Good fae?” He scoffed quietly. “That doesn’t sound like a thing fae would do, not without a cost anyway.”
Amma swallowed, not wanting to ask what he thought the price might be. Stories were told about the Everdark, some of them lighthearted warnings, others horrific and nightmare inducing. None had the same elements—sometimes they were about winged beings who spirited off children, sometimes about creatures made of sagging skin and twisted bones that ate the hearts out of cattle and left the rest—but they shared one theme: no one went to the Everdark and came back whole because going there at all was not something one was meant to do.
But Damien, apparently, had. And of course he’d found it simply annoying.
“I guess you don’t like them very much, but you also probably don’t think they’re very frightening, huh?”
“Frightening? They’re all childish, petulant creatures with too much power and too little appreciation for death. But they’re not our concern, just a thing that should be avoided if you come across any strange doorways or tempting food sitting out in a place it ought not be. Anyway…” Damien blew out a long, fraught sigh. “Oh, the Wildwood is also home to these very small, yellow frogs with blue bumps all over their backs that are—”
“Delicious!” injected Kaz.
“I was going to say hallucinogenic, so they shouldn’t be touched.” Damien laughed from the back of his throat and actually grinned at the imp. “See, aren’t you looking forward to this detour?”
As Kaz debated the importance of edible amphibians versus serving his master, Amma was filled suddenly with a tickle that worked its way from her toes up to her nose in a flash. It came up on her all at once, and she squeezed her eyes shut, threw a hand over her mouth, and sneezed.
When she opened her eyes again, the old, barely-visible path they’d been following was gone, the ground covered in sprawling ferns in all directions. The trees had changed into thicker, foreign species, and they were covered in ropy vines and colorful flowers. A bird was calling out from the much higher canopy in a rapid succession of the same, low noise, and an insect buzzed past Amma’s face making her pull back from the size of it.
“We are…here,” said Damien about as helpfully as she supposed he could. They hadn’t found the Innomina Wildwood, it had found them.
The horses came to a stop, and Amma slid off of her mare to alight the ground, spongy beneath her boots. As she took a few steps deeper, sounds filtered in around her, birdsong calling out and echoing back in bizarre tunes, the unbroken buzz of insects, water dripping from somewhere unseen. Ahead, light broke through the trees in hazy patches, glowing orange over beds of brightly-colored flowers amongst the warmer greens of the flat-leafed plants that covered the forest’s floor. It was autumn in the realm, trees were losing their leaves and creatures were gorging themselves and slowing down as the world greyed around them, but here summer was still in bloom.
Amma breathed in deeply, misty warmth settling in her chest. A breeze blew up from behind her, on it the pungent scent of decaying forest, of rich soil, of things fresh and ancient all at once, and she wondered if she had ever really taken a full breath before in her life. Nudged gently forward, Amma reached out to caress the spread of a leaf wider than both of her hands and banded with maroon stripes. Smoother than silk under her fingers, she wanted to feel more, to run hands over the roughness of the bark the plant twisted around, to pull off her boots and sink into the dampness of the earth, to shed all of her clothes and absorb the pulsing heat from what was decaying to become new again in the shadows below the flora. With another breath, the urge to run forward filled her lungs, her stomach, her veins.
