“I know that’s not true, but thank you,” Bex said, wrapping her arms around her tattered jacket as the storm of nerves she’d been desperately holding back finally shook through her. “Have you been able to reach anyone on the comms yet?”
“No,” Nemini said. “But I saw Leander teleport out with Adrian while we were falling, so I’m sure they’re working on it.”
Bex heaved a relieved sigh. Leander was still a question mark, but if there was anyone she trusted to rescue them, it was Adrian. Her clever witch always found a way. She just had to be patient and wait, so that was exactly what Bex did, sitting down next to her sister on the doorstep of Uruk’s ancient palace while the Bull of Ishtar continued his happy, ground-shaking dance on the dark road in front of them.
CHAPTER 13
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ADRIAN HAD NEVER WORKEDso hard to sink into his forest.
Merging with his Blackwood was normally like sinking into water, but he wasn’t on a prepared bed beneath his heart tree. He was on Gilgamesh’s palace floor. A hard stone floor built to reject every aspect of life. Adrian’s vines had already wrapped all the way around the building, but like every other part of the Blackwood except for himself and Boston, they couldn’t cross the threshold into the actual palace. He was still technically inside his forest because he had plants surrounding him, but Gilgamesh’s fortress was like a burn zone where nothing could grow.
That severely limited what Adrian was able to do, but ingenuity was the soul of witchcraft, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t have a good foundation to work from. His heart was pumping at the base of the biggest tree he’d ever grown. His body might be just a tendril pushing into the wasteland of Gilgamesh’s control, but his roots ran all the way back to the land of the living. He just needed to—
His progress was interrupted by a loudbashright next to his head. The hit cracked the stone cocoon of the Seven Walled City like an eggshell before Leander, who’d been standing over Adrian like a guard this whole time, muttered something under his breath. The walls pulled themselves back together a second later, and his sorcerer brother let out a sigh of relief.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’ve reinforced the outer rings, though if you could work faster, that would be good.”
Adrian nodded and lay back on the ground again, closing his mind against the increasingly violent banging coming from the Prince of Envy to focus on his pulse. He could feel it strong and steady despite his heart not being inside his body, and Adrian threw himself into its waves like a harbor seal, diving down, down, down as fast as he could away from this dead land to the place where life still thrived.
There was a lot of it to choose from. Adrian had been growing trees since he was seven, but he’d never been plugged straight into the Great Cycles like he was now. No wonder his mother had been able to move their entire coven through his roots. Between the ocean of quintessence he’d poured in from his end and the centuries-long witchcraft the Blackwood Coven had prepared to meet it, the taproot of his new heart tree went all the way to the roots of the Great Blackwood itself.
He’d always felt the Great Forest at the edge of his consciousness. Now that he’d dived in headfirst, though, Adrian was suddenly swimming through primordial magic. He swore he could feel the Great Cycles turning around him, which was terrifying because they had no care for him. The engine of life was bigger than any individual soul, and it rolled over him like a boulder down a hill. It would crush his soul to pulp if he wasn’t careful, but Adrian had always been quick on his feet, and he knew exactly where he was going.
Faster than he’d ever moved in his life, Adrian darted through the enormousness of the living world’s magic for the little patch of green that belonged to him. This was why it was always best to grow good roots from the start. Despite being poisoned with quintessence and having its heart tree ripped out and moved to the land of the dead, Adrian’s forest on Bainbridge Island was still right where he’d left it.
He could feel the roots of his witchwood as they slumbered in their seasonal hibernation, feel the cold water of the famous winter rains that had finally arrived in Seattle. He couldn’t feel his cottage since his mother had picked it up and stuck it in his new branches like a birdhouse, but his garden was still there. The beds were dead and neglected, but the soil was rich and would be ready for planting again in the spring. And hidden in that soil, buried under the large stone that used to serve as the step for his back door, was the treasure he was searching for.
Adrian snatched it up like a hunting hawk. The wrapped object was small and compact, but while he had no problem carrying it with him through the roots, getting it back to his physical body proved much more challenging. His heart might be woven into the tapestry of the Great Forest, but the vines he’d wrapped around Gilgamesh’s palace were simply too small and young to transport an object of that size. No matter which direction Adrian turned it, the wrapped package kept getting stuck. He was starting to feel really frantic when a voice he’d completely forgotten about suddenly spoke in his ear.
“You guys still okay in there?” Iggs whispered over the comm. “I’m hearing some pretty scary noises.”
“Iggs!” Adrian cried, snapping out of his delve into the forest to grab the plastic speaker in his ear. “Fantastic timing! Put Boston on.”
Anyone else would’ve been insulted by the idea of being passed over for a cat, but Iggs had always understood witches the best of any of Bex’s demons. He handed the comm over immediately, and Adrian heaved a sigh of relief as Boston’s voice came over the speaker.
“So I just push down on this button when I want to talk?”
“Boston!” Adrian cried, yelling over Iggs’s hasty explanation. “I need you to go to the front door of the palace and grab something from the vines. You don’t have to bring it allthe way to me, and don’t unwrap it. Just run it to the top of the staircase we went down and toss it in.”
“Don’t unwrap—” Boston repeated in confusion, then his voice grew furious. “Wait a minute. I know what you’re doing! Adrian, that’s very dangerous. Are you sure you want to—”
“Dead sure,” Adrian said, glancing up at the cracks that were forming in the stone walls faster than Leander’s now-constant stream of sorcery could repair. “Do it quickly, we’re almost dead.”
Those must’ve been the magic words, because the next thing Adrian heard was thethunkof the comm hitting the floor as Boston darted away.
“Were you just talking to your cat?” Leander asked tersely.
“Yes,” Adrian said as he stood back up as much as he could inside their shelter, which was now very small. “Don’t worry. Help is on the way.”
Leander stopped straining long enough to give him a scathing look. “Help from your cat?”
“Boston is a fully initiated member of the Blackwood coven,” Adrian informed him proudly. “He’s also got my broom, so he should be—”
The rest of his assurances were knocked out of his head when something hit Leander’s sorcery hard enough to shatter all seven walls. His brother was sent flying, but Adrian managed to hold his ground, staring defiantly into the cracked, dirty face of the sneering Princess of Envy.
“Well done,” her prince said as the princess lowered the fist she’d just used to crack open Leander’s Seven Walled City. “Now that the insects are out from under their rock, this should be quick.”
