I looked up. All I could see was another branch—smaller than the ones beneath our feet, and strung with lanterns that swayed with the trembling of the tree.
Octavian apparently understood his brother’s meaning without another word passing between them.
“Marigold,” he rumbled, “I need you to climb up on my shoulders.” He was already kneeling down.
I glanced up again, understanding. “You want me to climb up there?” It would get me off the platform, but it wouldn’t accomplish much else, as far as I could see. I’d just be even higher in a tree that was threatening to split apart beneath us.
“Once you’re up, follow the branch all the way to the trunk,” Alastor said. His eyes flicked down to where I still hugged the deathless rose to my chest, and then he reached out and plucked the small plant from my grasp.
“I’ll keep it safe,” he promised before tucking the plant into an interior pocket of his gray coat. “You’ll need both hands.”
“What am I supposed to do once I reach the trunk?” I asked as I climbed onto Octavian’s back, slipping a leg over each of his shoulders.
His big, warm hands closed over each of my legs just below the knee. “Hold on. And wait for us.”
He stood, and despite his firm grip on my legs, I found myself grabbing at the collar of his shirt, bracing for the world to shake again. The branch was lower than I'd realized from below, and all I had to do was reach up over my head and I could grab it.
“Climb up,” Octavian said. “I’ve got you.”
He helped me scramble up from my seat on his shoulders—I ignored the heat of his fingers as they touched half a dozen places on my legs in the process—and I got my arms fully around the branch. After one failed attempt, I managed to swing a leg over, too, then hauled myself up.
By now, the people around us had noticed what we were doing. A tall man with a pale green coat jumped up, his fingers grasping for the edges of my skirt, but he fell short.
“Go!” Octavian said to me. “Now!”
Easier said than done. Growing up, I’d never been the sort of kid who climbed trees—I was much more likely to be the one curled up beneath them with a book. Scrambling along a branch seemed simple enough in theory, but as I sat up fully, my stomach flip-flopped.
The branch was only about a foot across—technically wide enough for me to walk, if I could get myself to a standing position, but I didn’t trust my balance. Not up here, with everything snapping and shaking around me.
As if in response to that thought, theshiverbeneath my skin flared again, and another great jolt shook the tree. I hugged the branch as the tree shuddered and the leaves rattled around me. Somewhere off to the right, there was asnapas another branch gave way, and a fresh wave of screams tumbled away to the ground.
I have to move. Now.
I couldn’t stand, but I could crawl, dragging myself toward the trunk with my legs to either side of the branch. It was slow going. The floaty fabric of my dress snagged on the rough bark again and again, and my skirts rode up enough that the insides of my thighs were soon scraped and raw. But I kept moving.
The branch shook beneath me again, and I flattened myself against it, gripping tight. But it was only Alastor hauling himself up behind me.
“Keep going,” he called to me above the shouts from below.
Around us, other people had started to follow suit, grasping and climbing for the higher branches—anything to get off the platforms below.
Our branch shook again, and this time it was Octavian. He hauled himself up with a grunt.
And I pushed myself back up and kept moving, using everything I had in me to get to the trunk.
Theshiverrose beneath my skin again, burning and tingling up my spine.
“Hold on!” I called back to the brothers.
No sooner had the words left my mouth than the tree quaked, and another deafeningCRACKsplit the air.
It was the branch below us. It groaned, and I watched everything happen as if in slow motion—watched the platform beneath us tilt again, watched the boards start to break apart, watched the crowd fall in every direction, some surging forward, some tumbling back, grasping at anything they could reach. Men and women and—oh god—children, clawing at anything, everything, desperate for a lifeline—
But there was nothing for them to grab except each other. Or the pieces of the platform, even as they fell apart. A dozen people clung to one of the ropes that had once supported the suspension bridge between two platforms. Others grabbed for the trunk of the tree, trying to find a grip in the bark as the walkway crumbled.
Just beneath me, on a section of platform threatening to buckle any second, a child was sobbing. He couldn’t have been more than five or so. His father was holding him up, begging him to look up, to grab onto the branch, but the child was too terrified to even move.
I leaned down.
