I was made of rot and moss and endless things. I was not made to wield a Sky-Sword.
I glanced down at the veins embroidering green lace beneath my skin. The tiny colorful flowers showering my black gown and dark hair with iridescent petals. The thorns spiking my wrists and shoulders like armor. The shimmering, pulsing stone throbbing against my palm.
A heart is powerful magic.
I lifted the black blade from Irian’s neck. I hefted it, slid my blood-slick palm over its hilt until I held it backhanded in front of me. Hesitated one last, longing moment.
I wanted to live. I wanted to love. But more than anything, I wanted to be where I was always meant to be.
I wanted to go home.
I bent the edge of the Sky-Sword to my chest.
A moment too late, Irian realized what I was doing. He stumbled to his feet, lunged for me. But I was too fast. I danced out of his reach, my mouth moving over words I’d never spoken, only heard.
Ancient words. Powerful words. Magic words.
They ripped out of me, an oath I’d always been meant to make. A vow I was destined to fulfill.
“By fire and by sky, by fast water and by ancient tree, I promise my willing heart to thee… O Heartwood.”
I plunged the blade into my own chest.
Chapter Fifty
Agony tore through me as the impossibly sharp blade shattered my ribs and wrung a scream from my tattered throat. But even as I twisted forward over the blade splitting me in two, the pain ebbed away, lapping like quiet waves against a pebbled shore until it simply… vanished. Time stuttered, slowed, and then stopped.
I wrenched my eyes open. Irian was gone. The forest was gone. The distant sounds of the Folk-revel-turned-battle were gone.
I was alone with the ancient singing tree.
My chest was torn open but unbleeding. The blade in my hand was the razored edge of a palm frond. My heart, when I pulled it from the branches of my rib cage, was hard and glossy as a river stone. No—itwasa river stone. It pulsed blue-green in my palms. The crack down its middle shimmered silver in the moonlight.
A great crash stole my gaze. Before me, the Heartwood began to split in two, birthing a figure from the ancient, gnarled trunk.
Theywaited for me, as I somehow knew they would. I knew them now—I knew their breadth and their height, the sinew roping their muscled limbs. The burnished fur slicking their shoulder blades was leaf mulch on a forest path; the planes of their goldentorso were the smooth bark of an ancient oak. Their face was the dimming closeness of a shaded wood. Antlers pierced the sky and smeared blood against the blue.
He—she—theybeckoned me. This time, I didn’t hesitate. I stepped close.
“It’syou,” I said, wondering. Because theywere. They were the fierce hunt and the wild rut. They were Corra whizzing gleefully between carven faces. They were my garden, growing hungry and fervent over the fertile earth. They were the faces staring from the wood. They were the singing core of the ancient Heartwood.
They were the wild magic of the earth itself. They were… the forest.
“We are one, and we are none, and we are everything together.” The voice was the rustle of alder leaves and the chattering of streams and the cawing of rooks. “You have offered your willing heart. We accept. Only, you must choose. What is the tithe for? Where do you seek balance?”
I stared down at my ruined chest. The cool, cracked stone throbbed heavy in my palm. I reached for the steady knowledge growing roots inside me: the ending I had always known but not always wanted to accept.
For so long, I believed my story was tethered in the human realm. The love of a mother, the companionship of a prince, the salvation of a realm. But the mother had not loved me—she had loved only what I could do. The prince might have loved me, but only for what I had been, and not what I was becoming. And the realm—how could I save a kingdom that was forever at war with itself?
There was another story. A story where I could have love, even if it was brief and star-crossed. A story where I could have great magic, even if that magic did not suit me. A story where my fate might achieve something greater than myself. Not just a fate, but adestiny.
Cathair’s creeping voice echoed from far away.
A willing heart can do almost anything. Steal magic. Create new worlds. Save doomed men.
Both the men I loved were doomed. One had his will subsumed by another, his future bent to her schemes. The other had no future at all. My heart would buy only one of their lives.
You’ll have to decide which of them you want to save.
