Because she had always known what had pursued her so long ago, and in every nightmare since. She had always known the face. It was always a face she loved turned against her. Changed and transformed.
And it was always her fault.
She didn’t know how she found the clearing. She couldn’t have been going in the right direction, because she had no idea what direction she was going in. The wind buffeted her and turned her around and there were trees where they shouldn’t have been. The screaming in the undergrowth sent her scrambling backwards and then she fell in between the standing stones.
And everything went suddenly still and silent. The wind stopped and raindrops hung in the air around her like diamonds.
‘Well,’ said a familiar voice. ‘You really butchered that, Lex. And you were so close.’
Theo sat on the ground, cross-legged, his hands folded in his lap like he was fucking meditating at a yoga class or something. Moonlight fell around him, through him, illuminating him. Vines twisted around his body, coiling about his arms and legs, leaves shifting beneath his skin. Living, growing, unnatural natural shapes and things that made him appear here before her.
Alex pushed herself up from the earth and grass, tried to shove her soaked hair out of her face and left a trail of mud up her cheek like a smear of war paint.
‘Theo?’
Her voice was just a strangled sob.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Or at least, what’s left of me. What I gave to the woods.’
‘The woods killed you.’
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t quite work like that. Not if you’re willing. It’s a sacrifice, Alex. A gift. Nick did it, a hundred years ago. I had to do the same. Take his place maybe. And by becoming part of it, I saved myself. It was the only way.’
‘You and Sally…’
‘Yes,’ and he smiled, a beatific smile. ‘She’s safe now, as long as the woods are safe. You called the woods, Alex, and now youhave to give yourself up to them. Wildewood always demands a price from us. All of us.’
‘Are you…are you telling me to sacrifice myself? To Crom?’
He laughed. He actually laughed. And, oh God, it was a sound she had longed to hear again. His laughter. It was like birdsong, like the sounds she’d heard in the woods when she got lost there. That was why it had felt so familiar. It made her heart ache with loss and regret. So many years of regret. Whatever he was now, he was still her brother.
‘No, never to him. To this.’ He spread his arms wide and flowers fell between his fingers. ‘Sally and I tried to stop Crom. We did everything and we failed. We even made Nick the guardian and gave him Maeve to protect because we thought?—’
‘Wait, yougavehim Maeve?’
Theo smiled. He always had such a secretive, knowing smile, like a naughty child who thought he had got away with something and had just been caught.
‘What did you do?’ she hissed, but Theo didn’t answer that.
‘And now Crom has him. You have to kill him. It’s only because the god of the hungry grass still wants you, the last of the de Wildes, that he’s still here. Otherwise, he’d just walk out of his prison.’
‘I am not killing anyone, you idiot. Especially not Nick.’
‘He’s of the forest, Alex. Part of this. He died more than a hundred years ago, part of a group of men who wanted to burn the house and free Crom, whether they knew it or not. But the woods weren’t having that. Sally called him out of the wild wood, a changeling created in the original Nick Walker’s image, from his essence and that of the wild, to protect Maeve until she came of age, in case I couldn’t. And I couldn’t, could I?’
There were oak leaves curling through his hair, and the curls were dotted with small, blue flowers, like a crown.
‘Why would you—?’ Alex stared at him, and understanding dawned on her. ‘Goddamnit, Theo, what did youdo?’
‘What I had to,’ he told her, still smiling. ‘It doesn’t change what you must do, Lex. Let the wild have you both. It’s the only way. It’s too late to try anything else. Kill him, destroy Crom. Whatever it takes.’
‘You’re mad,’ she snarled at her brother.
Theo just reached out, fast as a robin darting after an insect, and pressed his fingertips to her forehead. ‘Remember,’ he told her.
And years of barriers fell away, all the methods by which her mind had tried to protect her. Everything that had said nightmare, or hallucination, or childhood terrors, all fell away like dead leaves in autumn.
Her memories, herrealmemories, thudded through her consciousness, as if she was being repeatedly slapped across the face. Sobbing, she tried to escape, but there was nowhere to go. Not from this.
