“I never wanted that,” Ivy said. “I only wanted a place that loved me. Something you could never provide.”
The plants around Christopher’s neck tightened. His eyes bulged and turned bloodshot, his face flushing dangerously red as he choked.
“You…” Christopher fixed his red-spotted eyes on Ivy. “Y-you can’t kill me. You don’t have it in you.”
Ivy’s jaw tensed, but her hand loosened.
“No,” she said softly as her uncle wheezed. “I don’t.”
Vale watched her expectantly. His body was withering along with his void. But he stayed on his feet, his claws ready. He had a promise to keep.
Sure enough, Ivy looked up at him, his once-timid offering turned otherworldly and fierce.
“Buthecan.”
Nineteen
Ivy’s uncle died in the middle of a scream.
Ivy watched his body fall to the forest floor and waited to feel something. Sorrow, or even regret. But all she could muster was weariness as she let her magic go, her plants stilling over her uncle’s body.
“It is done,” Vale announced, flexing the hand he had used to snap her uncle’s neck. “Let us…”
He trailed off. He swayed, falling to his knees yet again.
Ivy stumbled toward him, wiping the blood off her face. The void magic had taken much from her, but she could still walk. She fell to Vale’s side, ignoring the horrified stares from the people she used to call her own.
“Vale,” Ivy said. “We can go now! Look, I’ll get the antidote.”
She reached through the vines clustered over her uncle’s robes and pulled the vial out of his pocket, holding it in front of Vale’s drooping eyes.
“Look,” she repeated. “I have it! Everything will be okay. We just need to get…”
She looked around wildly. The crack they had used to emerge into this realm had vanished, and the tree was simply a treeagain. But they still had the circle where he had emerged so many times before. Even if the circle of blood above the stone slab was lost to time, there had to be remnants.
“To the door you carried me through that very first time,” Ivy finished. “Okay? Just keep walking toward that.”
She tugged on his arm. Vale grunted, then reached back to yank the malblossom-tipped arrow from his leg. His hand smoked as he clutched it. But it still took him a moment to gather the strength to throw it down.
Dread washed over Ivy in an overwhelming wave. This was no battle injury; this was the wilderness void dying and dragging its Skullstalker guardian down with it.
“Vale,” Ivy whispered. “Are you going to walk to the door with me, or do I have to conjure some vines to drag you?”
Vale growled a strained laugh. Then he stood, legs quivering under him, fangs gritted.
Ivy put an arm around as much of his waist as she could manage. She could not catch him if he fell. But she could let him know she was here.
“Zax,” she called. “Don’t eat anyone else.”
Zax’s head shot up. He was sitting on his haunches, about to pounce on a man who was walking away a little too fast.
“But they trapped me,” Zax complained.
Ivy winced. They had broken his horn and might have blinded him in one eye, not to mention the burns all over his body. But she also knew whatshewould have done a month ago. And she would not have helped him.
“I know,” Ivy said, pushing Vale forward as he staggered toward the stone slab. “Leave them be.”
Zax chirped mournfully. “Okay. But if they run, Iwillchase.”
