“Naturally,” Agatha replied, her voice no longer motherly or laughing but as hard and sharp as the pain of the present. “Using what’s around you is the foundation of all witchcraft. Themoment I saw Adrian grow his first seedling as a child, I knew I’d finally found the thing Gilgamesh desired most. The fact that Adrian also wanted to become a witch made things easier, but I don’t deny what I did. I used Adrian the same way as I’ve used every son I’ve had with Gilgamesh: as a weapon to preserve the Blackwood and a step toward his eventual demise.”
She said all of this openly and honestly, but the fact that she didn’t seem the least bit remorseful sent Bex’s fire roaring up to Adrian’s beautifully carved rafters.
“How could you?” she demanded. “He was your son, yourchild, and you turned him into a weapon!”
“I could say the same about you,” Agatha replied, staring into Bex’s flames with blue eyes that were as calm as a frozen lake. “You’ve been a child nearly two hundred times now, and every one of those little girls was forged into a Blade of Ishtar.”
“That’s different,” Bex insisted. “I chose to fight!”
The witch shook her head. “Duty isn’t the same as choice. This isn’t the first time our paths have crossed, Bex of the Bonfire. I’ve met many of your lives over the years, and in every one of them, you were fighting for your people because there was no one else who could. That makes you noble, but it does not make you free.”
She stepped closer to the bubbling cauldron. “We’ve all done what was necessary to save the things we care about, and our sacrifices were not in vain. You were absolutely right when you accused me of setting this up, but you and Adrian were still the ones making the decisions.Youfought the battlesyouchose to fight. All Muriel and I did was nudge you toward the choices that had the best outcomes.”
“Best outcome for who?” Bex snarled.
“All of us,” the witch replied, her ageless face lighting up with a lovely smile. “You especially should rejoice at our foresight. If my baby sister hadn’t known this day was comingtwo hundred years ago, we would not have started working on the spell Adrian just brought to fruition. Had things been even a hair out of place, my son, your beloved, would not have survived.”
Bex supposed she had to give her that one. She’d seen how much blood Adrian had spilled on the ground. If his coven hadn’t been ready to catch him, he definitely would have died today. That didn’t excuse the way his family had used him his entire life, but knowing he would live calmed Bex’s anger enough that she could finally pay attention to other things.
“What do you mean you’ve been planning this day for two hundred years?”
“Exactly what it sounds like,” Agatha replied, waving her hand at the cabin windows that looked as dark as midnight thanks to the pitch-black interior of the fir tree. “Do you really think one prince’s worth of quintessence was enough to do all of this? Absolutely not. My sisters and I started growing these trees centuries ago in preparation for the day Heaven’s defenses cracked.”
She nodded at the pot her son was still stewing in. “One of the reasons I hid Adrian from Gilgamesh as long as I did was to make sure the forest was well rooted in his heart before his father took him. I’m sure Gilgamesh saw the risk the moment Adrian showed him his forest, but by that point it was already too late. Gilgamesh has always been a greedy, egotistical king. If he sees something he wants, he always tries to take it. That said, he’s also a bit of a coward. He never makes a move unless he’s certain he has an overwhelming advantage, which is why we went to Adrian’s forest to stop him even though we knew perfectly well it was already too late. We had to make sure Gilgamesh believed he was stealing Adrian away from us.”
“I get it,” Bex said, leaning against the fire-warmed hearthstones. “You played him.”
“Men are always weakest in their moment of victory,” Agatha agreed with a smile. “Gilgamesh was so confident he was about to get everything he wanted that he left Adrian to his own devices, and we all know how dangerousthatcan be.” Her grin got wider. “In many ways, the King of Uruk is the cleverest man I’ve ever met, but in this one aspect, he has always been a fool. Despite centering his life around his hatred of the gods, he constantly repeats their mistakes. He sincerely believes that if he just gets enough power, he can control the uncontrollable. That with the right leverage, he could bring a wild thistle into his garden and turn it into a daisy.”
The witch cackled. “How foolish! Howkingly! There are no reins on the Great Cycles, and there is no controlling a witch. My sisters and I have always understood that, which is why we only gave Adrian commands when we wanted him to disobey. We trusted him to follow his own headstrong, rebellious nature, and when my son did what he always does, we made sure we were waiting with an arsenal full of the one weapon Gilgamesh has no defense against.”
“Trees?” Bex guessed.
“Life,” Agatha replied, adding another log to the fire that was burning merrily under Adrian’s cauldron. “Paradise has always been an artificial construct, because life and death were never meant to be separate things.” She snorted. “Gilgamesh knows that perfectly well. He’s the one who’s always going on about the illusion of separation, but he only listens to his own wisdom when it suits him. The moment he has to admit that the same logic means his own goals are flawed, suddenly we’re all ignorant heathens.”
Bex gave the witch a flat look. “Sounds like you know him well.”
“I have borne him nearly a hundred children,” Agatha reminded her. “It’s hard not to know a man after that.” Shechuckled for a moment, and then her face fell. “There was a time once when I thought I could bring him around. He was actually quite open-minded when we first met, but his resolve and frustration hardened as he got older, and eventually there were no paths left but this.”
She waved at the boiling cauldron, but Bex didn’t understand.
“Resolve to do what?” she asked. “What is Gilgamesh working on in there?”
“The same thing he’s been working on since the original Rebexa slew his best friend at Ishtar’s behest,” Agatha replied. “Complete and total conquest. His tactics have changed, but Gilgamesh is still fighting the same war he’s been waging for five thousand years. That’s why we had to wait so long to do this. It wasn’t until the end was in sight that he finally did something reckless enough to give us an opening.”
“So what do we do with it?” Bex demanded. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m super happy you had a forest ready to save Adrian, but trees aren’t going to break the shield around Gilgamesh’s palace. I’m assuming this is just the first stage of your plan, so what comes next? Do you have a big spell or a final curse or something that will take him out?”
Shereallyhoped it was a curse. Bex could think of nothing more satisfying than Gilgamesh rolling around on the ground in agony from the same magic Adrian had used to finish off the Spider. It probably wouldn’t be that easy, but she was sure the witches had to havesomething, which was why she was so confused when Agatha shook her head.
“If the Blackwood had magic that could kill Gilgamesh, we would have used it eons ago. Unfortunately, since we’re his oldest and most respected enemy, the Eternal King has invested a great deal of effort into countering our witchcraft. He’s immune to even more poisons than Adrian at this point,but there is one weapon he’s always dismissed, and thanks to the excellent planning of the Witch of the Future, she’s standing right in front of me.”
Agatha finished with a dazzling smile, but Bex dropped her eyes.
“If you’re counting on me to kill Gilgamesh, I’m afraid your sister’s plans didn’t work out so well,” she grumbled. “I might’ve gotten my bonfire back, but my horns are still locked inside the palace. I’m pretty sure Drox could cut the barrier—he can cut anything—but I can’t draw him without my name, and Nemini’s sword is broken, so that won’t work, either. There’s a chance one of my other sisters could do it, but none of them have woken up yet.”
Her spirits sank lower with every word. Bex had been pushing so hard to keep ahead of the ax that she hadn’t allowed herself to stop and take stock of how much had already been chopped off. She finally had another queen to help her, but it was Nemini, who didn’t want the job and didn’t have a sword. She’d finally rescued her sisters, but they were all lost in their own minds and didn’t have swords either.
It felt like every win she’d scored recently came with a loss. At this point, Bex was ready to settle for getting her people out alive. She was about to ask Agatha if the refugees from the Hells could use the new forest to escape back to Earth without the chains when the witch said, “There’s another way.”
