“We only have an hour and seven minutes, so this will be a very abridged version of the tale. It might help you to know how we got into this mess.” Will deflated and sank onto the bed beside the pile of cracked leather books and crumbling parchment. “It started with our ancestor Jan Jarngren. He left Sweden to make his fortune in the New World in 1640. From what I understand, he had been a minor noble, a man gifted in magic but not money, but he wanted to change that. When he came to New Sweden, he brought with him a god from the old world, the Lady, and replanted her in what would become Aldorhaven. He prayed to her and worshipped her, and eventually, she came to him. A god who has had no worship for a thousand years must be hungry for it because she made a pact with him. If he and his descendants worshipped her as their ancestors did, she would bring them safety and prosperity by providing iron and wood in exchange for adulation and sacrifices befitting her station. For two hundred and twenty years, the Jarngrens lived, died, worshipped, and prospered. That is, until your father died. That was when things started going wrong, but I don’t know why.”
Oliver’s mouth went dry. A god? His foolish ancestors had made a deal with a demon. God, demon, devil, otherworldly creature; it didn’t matter. Oliver resisted the urge to run his hand through his hair andtug at it in frustration. His ancestor had used his descendants as collateral for greed and conquest.
“How do you know Stephen’s death caused these problems?” Gwen asked with a raised brow as she batted dead leaves off her seat.
“Because I have my grandfather’s journals, and I can see when the change happened. The man wrote down everything that happened in the family along with meticulous records of how much wood and iron came out of the Dysterwood. They were consistently getting more from the Lady each year until 1860.”
Oliver opened his mouth to speak when Gwen added, “And when you say sacrifices, you’re being literal, aren’t you?”
Will looked away and said nothing, his mouth tightening into a hard line. Oliver’s heart pounded in his ears as his lover’s hand brushed his in a quick embrace.Humansacrifices to an old god.
Gwen sucked her teeth. “So that’s why there’s only one mausoleum for such a big family.”
“Yes, they take the bodies into the woods and give them to the Lady after they die or right before… if they can time it right. Or sometimes they take them there and—”
“My mother reanimated my father,” Oliver blurted before his cousin could finish. He couldn’t let him finish. Will cocked his head owlishly and stared at him as if waiting for more. “She was a necromancer. She thought keeping him alive until I was born was the only way to protect me and her from your family. When you reanimate someone, you use up the rest of their magic or spirit, however you want to put it. They become inert after. If the Lady uses dead Jarngrens to sustain herself, then giving her a body that’s been reanimated would be like offering her an oyster and giving her an empty shell.”
Snatching up one of the books, Will flipped to a blank page and jotted that down with shaking hands. “That would explain the entry about the spirit bells.”
“Spirit bells?” Felipe asked, though Oliver knew he knew what they were.
“In my grandfather’s diary about amonth or so before Stephen died, he mentions the spirit bells went off, but when they went to check on Stephen, he was fine. He had assumed it was a misfire. What I don’t understand is whythisevent caused so many problems. I mean, Stephen not being properly sacrificed should have been a hiccup until someone else died. That should have put things to right. It couldn’t have been the first time she didn’t get a dead Jarngren. There had to be something else. We have fifty-six minutes to figure out what.”
Without looking up from the papers laid across the bed, Will waved them closer. Oliver stood over Gwen and Felipe’s shoulders as they stared down at the map of the town. The drawing looked to be at least fifty years out of date. There were houses missing along with multiple buildings Oliver knew he had passed on Main Street, like the pharmacy, but what drew his eye was the spiral of ink that encircled most of the town, drawing incrementally closer to the center like the rings on a tree. Squinting, Oliver could make out minute notations of the year beside them. In pencil, the spiral continued into the road beside the Allen Inn with today’s date beside it. The woods had encroached around the road but never touched it until now.
“So the Dysterwood didn’t start getting closer to the town until 1860?” Felipe asked.
“As far as I know. All the land surveys before 1860 are nearly the same, give or take a few feet. I was helping my father look over them years ago when I noticed the town shrinking.Iam the one who convinced him to order yearly surveys.Iam the one who has been charting these things.Itried to warn my aunt and uncle that something was going on, that something like this was going to happen. I told them what they were doing wasn’t working. I brought evidence, and I pushed. And this,” he gestured to the cramped room, “was what it got me. Will’s overwrought. Will can’t be trusted. Don’t listen to Will; he has a nervous condition. Yes, Will has a nervous condition because no one will listen to him. I am the Cassandra of Aldorhaven, and my family thinks the best solution is to lock me up and drug me into silence. Even Lucien tells me to forget about all of this because it makes me so unhappy. How can I forget? I can’t un-know things are going wrong.”Cupping the sides of his face, Will jerked and curled in on himself. “And now, I know too much. I knowtoo much. He’s the heir, and I’m only the spare, after all. At some point, they’ll—”
Will’s throat worked and his lip trembled, but the words died on his tongue. Oliver wanted to comfort him. He wanted to do something, but he didn’t know what wouldn’t make things worse. Gwen gave Oliver a pointed look and jerked her chin toward his cousin. Oliver took a cautious step forward only to be blocked by a fern hanging from the rafters. All around them the plants stirred, drawing toward Will like sunlight. Gently pushing the fern out of the way, Oliver knelt beside Will the way Felipe often did for him when he was overwhelmed. He couldn’t rescue him or fix things, but sometimes, all people needed was someone to listen and tell them they weren’t exaggerating or making things up.
“I—Webelieve you,” Oliver said softly, glancing toward Gwen and Felipe, “and I think Lewis Allen does too. You aren’t alone in this anymore. And you aren’t the ‘spare.’ There are three Jarngren boys left, and with me, Gwen, Felipe, and Lewis Allen on your side, I bet we could make the others listen.”
“Little good it would do,” Will whispered flatly. “They won’t do anything.”
“Then, we’ll do it ourselves. That’s why you invited us here.” Turning to the map beside Will, Oliver pointed to the blocked road. “It looks like the Dysterwood has been encroaching around the road into town for years.”
“It has. The growth point is right there. It grows clockwise and then counterclockwise around that spot. Until today.”
“Do you think the road is blocked because I entered the Dysterwood?”
Will nodded bleakly, not meeting Oliver’s gaze. “You’re the only new factor. Maybe, it wants to keep you here too, and this is the only way.”
“Do you think it could be because I took this from the Dysterwood?”
***
Felipe watched Will’s reaction as Oliver unhooked the silver chain around his neck and dangled the gold signet ring in front of him. There was no hunger in his eyes or urgency in his fingers as he brought the ring closer to his face. When Oliver had first shown the ring to him under the storm-blackened sky, it had been nearly impossible to make out any details even with his night vision. At first, all he could tell was that the ring was gold and topped with a red-brown stone. The metal was old and soft, and the signet worn down with use, but when Felipe had inspected it beside a lamp, he could just make out a barred knight’s helmet with an arrow or javelin piercing through it and what looked like leaves and a six-pointed star on either side. It was so old and lopsided with use that it would have looked at home in a display case at the museum. As with so many objects imbued with magic, it looked terribly mundane and kind of ugly.
Will frowned at the ring and let it drop on its chain before digging through the pile of books at his elbow. Flipping one upside down, he shook it until a letter slipped from between the pages. He held the paper and the ring’s flattened face side-by-side and studied it for a long moment before letting the ring go.
Looking up at Oliver with a curious frown, he said, “You found this in the Dysterwood? Did the Lady give it to you?”
“No, I don’t think so. Then again, I don’t know what the Lady looks like.”
“If it was her, you would know. I’ve caught her watching me more than once when I went into the Dysterwood. She’s…” Will swallowed hard. “She’s not something you forget. I try not to go too deep into the woods to avoid attracting her attention.”
Felipe suppressed a shudder, but his feelings must have sluiced across the tether because Oliver’s eyes immediately leapt to his face.The whispers in the woods and the flash of white he had seen when they first arrivedhadn’tbeen figments of his imagination or his sanity slipping. There truly was a sentient creature watching and waiting for them to make a mistake. The Lady had tried calling him into the Dysterwood. Had she been trying to use him to lure Oliver to her or had she simply been a predator testing their new prey?
