Just like that first time under the moonlight in the coven circle, he dug his hands as deep as they would go, reaching through his body into the forest that lived at his core. The beloved, familiar forest he could finally feel again. Adrian had barely opened his fingers in request when the Blackwood responded, digging out its own roots and placing them in the cup of Adrian’s palms.
When he finally removed his white-bloody hands from his chest, Adrian was holding a piece of two worlds: a human heart wrapped in roots and fungus, the living proof that the heart of a witch was the forest, and the heart of the forest was a witch. He’d never realized the old adage could be so macabrely literal, but witchcraft was an ancient magic born from the cycles of life itself, and life was never clean. It was bloody, dirty, and beautifully biological, the exact opposite of everythingGilgamesh had made his Heaven to be, and it was with great satisfaction that Adrian Blackwood took his filthy, blood-smeared, root-infested heart and buried it in the ground. He buried it deep, tucking the vital organ he shared with his forest around his aunt’s acorn, the symbol of all their futures. When it was all bound together in a bloodsoaked mess, he bent his head lower still, pressing his face into the damp earth he’d crafted to whisper his wish once more.
“Grow.”
The tremor that followed the word this time put everything before it to shame, because Adrian was no longer speaking sorcery. This was something new and uniquely his, a hybrid just like Adrian himself. Every time the heart he shared with his forest beat, more white blood poured out of him, but Adrian no longer cared. He could finally see the whole picture, the reason all of this had to happen. For the first time in his entire life, he understood the shape of the plan his coven had been nurturing for centuries. He could even feel them reaching back, a thousand generations of witches all speaking with him in one voice as Adrian shouted the most forbidden word in Heaven at the top of his lungs.
“Grow!” he bellowed, tilting his sundered chest so that the liquid quintessence Gilgamesh had poured into him would flow down his arms to water the seed Adrian’s coven had bet everything on. “Grow!”
His Blackwood heart thundered in response. The oak sapling was already shriveling, crushed under Heaven’s oppressive aura of stillness and death, but Adrian’s heart was different. Gilgamesh had already filled it with the power he’d stolen from the gods. The same quintessence that made Adrian a prince also allowed his heart to flourish here, and the tree that grew out of it wasn’t white or sickly or even an oak.
It was a Douglas fir, a beautiful deep-green offshoot of his original heart tree. It burst out of the dirt he’d made like an exploding bomb, shattering the road Adrian was kneeling on along with the buildings beside it. It broke everything it touched, leaving the orderly White City in ruins as the Great Blackwood, the oldest forest that connected all forests, crashed its way into Gilgamesh’s Heaven.
The rest of the woodland followed right behind. Within seconds, the empty white plaza surrounding the black cube that marked the entrance to the Hells was covered with bright-green flowering grass. Streams of clear water filled with fish and frog spawn poured from the windows of the root-tilted apartment blocks and pooled in the new cracks on the ground. Trees of every sort—conifers, hardwoods, softwoods, and evergreens—sprouted wherever their roots found purchase, transforming the dry, blindingly white City of Heaven into a wet and shady grotto filled with singing birds.
It was the most beautiful thing Adrian had ever seen. Sadly, it was probably also the last thing he was ever going to see. His aunt’s acorn had gotten it started, but this forest was a Blackwood grown directly from his heart and fueled by his white blood. Considering how many barrels of quintessence Gilgamesh had dumped into him, Adrian thought he’d never run dry, but by the time the new trees’ roots were deep enough to hold the trunk upright, his reservoir was tapped. He didn’t even have enough strength left to push back when the roots of his new tree pulled him into the mound where he’d buried his heart.
It was what his forest always did when he was wounded, but Adrian didn’t think he’d be digging himself back out this time. He couldn’t bring himself to regret it, though. He’d just grown a witch’s forest in the center of Heaven itself! Not even the Old Wives could have managed that. And since he’d grown them out of his own heart, the new trees counted as an officialgrove of the Blackwood, which meant the rest of his coven could connect to them through the main forest and give Bex’s demons a way out.
That was the best outcome he could’ve hoped for. Adrian would still rather have done it without killing himself, but if everyone else got out alive, he wasn’t going to complain. He just wished he could’ve seen Bex and Boston one last time to say goodbye. He was probing his new heart tree to see if he couldn’t leave them a letter on a leaf or something when three strong hands reached up through the roots to grab him.
“Not yet!” cried a voice that was actually three voices blended into one. “You’re not done yet!”
Adrian begged to differ. The only reason he was still conscious was because he shared a soul with his forest. He’d used up every drop of his white blood to pull this off. No human, not even a prince, could survive total exsanguination. His physical body was already starting to break down. But just as Adrian was about to pass into the grove of his ancestors, the huge force of witchcraft he’d felt rising to meet him when he told the forest to grow hit him again, knocking him out of death and into something that felt like a boiling cauldron.
CHAPTER 3
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Five minutes earlier.
BEX STOOD AT THEedge of the square, clutching Boston like a lifeline. She could hear a crowd of curious demons gathering behind them, but for once, Bex’s people were not her first concern. The demons were fine, or at least not in immediate danger, but she couldn’t say the same for Adrian. He didn’t seem to be doing anything but kneeling in front of a pile of dirt with his eyes closed, but she could feel sorcery rising like a knife in the air.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose at the same time. She tried reminding herself that it was Adrian’s sorcery and he was using it to save them, but five thousand years of threat response wasn’t something that could be overcome with logic. Bex might not remember her previous one hundred and ninety-eight lives, but she knew she’d fought sorcerers in all of them. It was a good thing Drox was still asleep on her finger, because the urge to pull her sword and start swinging was overwhelming. She was keeping her eyes on Adrian and telling herself to just breathe through it when the acorn he’d buried suddenly shot out of the dirt to stab him through the chest.
No logic or breathing could stop her after that. Bex dropped Boston and charged, hand already stretching out to yank Adrian off the spear his father’s faithless magic had turned on him. She was less than a foot away when something grabbed her leg and yanked her back.
Bex stumbled with a gasp and looked down to see Boston in his big form with his teeth wrapped around her calf and his claws digging into the white-paved road. He knocked her off balance next, taking advantage of her shock to fling her to the ground and leap on top of her, pinning her with his huge furry paws as Bex flailed beneath his weight.
“What are you doing?” she screamed.
“What Adrian told me to!” Boston snarled back, his growling voice terrified but resolute. “He ordered us not to touch him for any reason!”
“But he’sdying!” Bex cried, whipping her head back to Adrian, who was now covered in the prince’s unnatural white blood. The overwhelming scent of it filled her with so much fear that Bex couldn’t have called her fire if she’d tried. She didn’t know what had gone wrong, if his witchcraft had failed or if Gilgamesh had deliberately turned his sorcery against him, but his face was blank with shock and pain.
That wasn’t the face Adrian made when things were going right. Shehadto get to him, but Boston was putting up a surprisingly good fight. If she’d still had her old strength, she would’ve tossed him into the sky, but while Bex’s fire was back, she was still hornless and weakened. It wasn’t much, but between her fear, her faded strength, and her reluctance to hurt Adrian’s cat, Boston had the edge he needed to stay on top.
“Would youstop it?” he yelled, slamming a paw the size of a dinner plate onto Bex’s back to shove her down.
“Bex!” a different voice shouted at the same time right before Iggs ran up beside her. Her demon was still looking frantically between Boston and his queen when Adrian’s familiar lost what was left of his patience.
“I know it’s not your strong suit, but I need all of you to calm down and act rationally,” he ordered, keeping his full weight on Bex while his green eyes glared at Iggs and the smallarmy of demons who’d run over to defend their queen that were standing behind him. “I know things look bad right now, but that’s exactly why Adrian warned us ahead of time not to touch him. Great acts of witchcraft always require sacrifice. Have you forgotten everything you saw in his grove?”
“This is different!” Bex yelled as she squirmed against the hard, spotlessly clean white pavement. “We’re not in Adrian’s forest, and that isnothis magic!”
Bex was no witch, but that was a hill she would die on. Adrian’s magic smelled like a summer forest. It was warm and rich and beautiful, and while it could definitely be scary, it still always felt like him. This didn’t. The white blood pouring out of his sundered chest smelled like dust and death. It was the same overwhelming scent she remembered from Enki’s tomb, and while the look on Adrian’s face had gone from shock to intensely focused concentration, that could just be him trying to save his life. Nothing good came from Gilgamesh’s magic, but when she tried again to grab him, Boston slammed the full weight of his now lion-sized body down on top of her.
“Please,” he begged, retracting his claws so he could grip her shoulders without hurting her. “I don’t know what’s going on either, but I’m certain that Adrian’s the only one who can fix it now. I might not always agree with my witch’s risk assessment, but I trust his skill with my life. More importantly, I trust it withhislife. He knows what he’s doing, but he can’t succeed if you’re pulling him down!”
