I lay Auren down on the cloak, the faintest traces of rotten lines stretching up the veins in her neck. Her hair is spilled in a halo around her, somehow gleaming even in the darkness. She looks so small with my cloak tucked around her, so lifeless.
I kneel over her, immediately focusing as I snap my eyes closed. My magic is there, clinging to her prone form like a poison. Unnatural decay is slogging through her veins and withering the heart in her chest. It’s slinking up her deteriorating throat, barred by her unmoving lips.
Tension rolls through me. Instinctually, I want to yank the magic out of her as quickly as possible, but I’ve found pulling it out too fast is like ripping a blade from a wound. I don’t want to do any more damage than I’ve already done.
Carefully, I call the power back inch by inch so as not to shock her system. Behind me, I can hear the murmured words of the rest of my Wrath, uncertain footsteps shifting in the snow, timberwings chuffing at one another, and thunder from the clouds we just departed signaling a cold front blowing in.
I shove all of that away and keep my awareness on the magic coursing through her. Like the roots of a weed, I drag it out as gently as I can manage. Fingers dig through soil, removing the rotten stasis I buried her in, letting her body reacclimate. I’m meticulous, lifting each bit of corrupted patches like drying clay, ridding it piece by cracked piece.
Despite the biting air, sweat beads at my temples. My teeth clench as I pull the power back to me, back to the recesses carved from my veins to simmer in my own spoils. I get it all out of her, until there’s just one single fragment left. One seed left buried in the center of her chest.
Yet when I call to it, try to unearth it from her depths, I find resistance. Instead of withdrawing like the rest, this piece sinks in its thorns as if it’s trying to stay.
As if it’s trying tokeepher in its clutches.
My brow furrows and my hands shake, while the rotted roots on my skin stretch down the length of my arms. It slinks past my palms and cloys beneath my fingertips, the dark lines rubbing me raw from the inside out, threatening to pierce through my very skin.
A war of confusion and fear jumps in my jaw.
Never has my rot been so reluctant. Never has it been so persistent instaying.I haven’t struggled with controlling it like this for years, not since I was a boy. I had to learn very early on how to handle the malodorous magic before it destroyed everything, including myself.
So what the fuck is happening?
Frantically, I check over the rest of her, but there’s no other blight in her, not a single other part besmirched. The rest of the rot is gone, leaving her as she was before, so why won’t this last piece leave?
“Let go.” My tongue is heavy with the taste of unrelenting toxins. “Let go of her.”
It writhes in reply, like brambles twisting around her chest, like it wants to root inside of her. Panic slices through me like the sharpest blade.
“Get the fuck out of her!”
Magic and might unleash from me, stronger than the torrent of the storm trying to rend from the sky. With a crack that splits the air and clangs my teeth, I give one massivetug.
The force of my violent pull sends me flying back, while Auren’s entire spine bows up from the ground like an arcing wave.
“Rip!”
I lie stunned and out of breath, eyes locked on the shadowed outline of clouds covering the night sky above me. Snow flies up from the impact of Lu’s knees as she hits the ground next to me, eyes wide with worry. “Are you okay?”
“What the fuck just happened?” Osrik demands.
I hear Judd let out a whistle... “Your roots...”
My eyes drop, gaze falling to where the veins in my hands are writhing and snapping angrily. I can feel everyone’s gaze lift to my neck and face, but I don’t need them to say anything, because I canfeelthe lined roots beneath my skin. Fucking everywhere. As if I haven’t used my power in months, as if it’s pent up inside of me to an unstable magnitude.
But it doesn’t matter, because I just ripped that last bit of rot out of her, so everything will be okay.
Lu tries to help me sit up, but I push her fretting hands away, a pained groan escaping me. I quickly lean over Auren again, but the moment I see her face, I realize that she’s still not awake.
She’s still not moving.
My panic stems and swells.
Rot bleeds into the ground, shooting into the depths of the earth just as thoroughly and as violently as my stomach falls straight through into my feet.
What did I do?
Fingers dig into the snow, rotted mulch spreading from my touch, corrupting the ground with putrid lines. I don’t just feel it spreading into the snow—I feel it wrapping around my heart, squeezing, crumbling, making it wither right here in my chest.
