“And then?” Boston demanded.
“And then I’ll put my faith in the Witch of the Future,” Adrian replied as he picked his coat up off the street. “You’re the one who’s always telling me to trust the Old Wives, aren’t you?”
Boston gave him a furious scowl, and Adrian reached out to rub his hand over his familiar’s flattened ears.
“You worry too much,” he chided. “Yes, there’s risk involved, but it’s like I told you when we got on the plane to go to Seattle: If I’m not willing to jump, I’ll never get out of the hole.”
“I’m still not convinced our move to Seattle was a good idea,” Boston replied grumpily. “You’ve had more near-death disasters in the last six months than in all the rest of your life combined. As your familiar, it’s my job to give you good advice, which I interpret as advice that will keep youalive.” His ears pressed even flatter against his skull. “What am I going to do if you die?”
“If I don’t pull this off, there’s a good chance we’ll all die,” Adrian reminded him, pulling his hand back. “I’m not stepping off this cliff for no reason, Boston. We’ve all put our lives on the line to get here.Youput your fur in the fire when you came to the Hells to rescue me. Now it’s my turn to return the favor, and while I know our position looks weak at the moment, Aunt Muriel wouldn’t have sent me that acorn if she didn’t think I could do it.”
“I don’t think someone as bad at divination as yourself should be trying to predict the Witch of the Future’s motives,” his cat pointed out. “But it is a familiar’s duty to support his witch, so if this isreallywhat you want to do…”
He looked up at Adrian with pleading green eyes. When Adrian didn’t cave, the familiar heaved a long sigh.
“Let’s get it over with, then,” Boston said, trotting over to the edge of the dirt pile. “I presume you’ll need me to reach the Blackwood again, since Gilgamesh’s seal is still over your heart?”
Adrian shook his head. “I can’t. This isn’t a little corpse-finding charm. The amount of magic I’m planning on moving this time will kill you. Don’t worry, though. I’ve got it covered.”
Boston lookedcriticallyworried. It was a familiar’s job to fret, though, so Adrian didn’t tell him to stop. He just scooped him off the ground and handed him to Bex, who also looked anxious enough to have a heart attack.
“I’ll befine,” he insisted as he deposited the cat in her arms. “Just keep the road clear and make sure no one interrupts me after I start. That’s the most important part. Whatever happens, whatever I do, don’t let anybody touch me until I’m finished, okay?”
“Okay,” Bex whispered, squeezing Boston to her chest. “Be careful.”
“I’ll do my best,” Adrian promised, giving Boston one last pet before he turned on his heel and strode up to the pile of soil he’d just spent the last hour making.
“All right,” he said as he got down on his knees again. “Let’s do some gardening.”
Before he could lose his nerve, Adrian reached into his jacket pocket and took out the acorn his aunt had sent to him through Bex. He rubbed it briefly between his palms to get a feel for the seed inside the hard shell, and then he stuck it into the dirt he’d made.
When the acorn was buried nice and deep, Adrian placed the little wooden cat he’d used to locate Nemini on top of it. The finding charm was long spent, but the cat-hair-covered statuette was still the closest link he had to the Blackwood that didn’t involve Boston or Bran. It was also something he’d made in the past, a critical element for any witchcraft. Finally, Adrian reached into his pocket and pulled out the golden woodworking knife he’d stolen from the workshop where his father had locked him up. The ostentatious tool was nothing like the comfortable, practical blades he used at home, but it got the job done, slicing his finger just enough to let five drops of his new white blood fall on top of the pile.
That last element was the most critical of all. Even though it was basically pure quintessence now, his blood was still his blood. Just as his spit had been the catalyst for turning crackers and bedsheets into soil, blood was also a transformative element. By adding a piece of himself to the pile, Adrian changed what was otherwise an unremarkable mound of improvised dirt into flesh of his flesh.
That was how he thought of it, anyway. There was no visible reaction, but as Gilgamesh had told him back when Adrian still trusted him enough to listen, sorcery was all about perspective and creativity. Because Adrian was a Witch of the Flesh, his magic was innately biological. Gilgamesh had built his Heaven to be a sterile prison, but so long as his city was home to living humans who ran on human biology, life was inescapable. It was in the food they ate and the bacteria they carried inside their bodies, in the clothes they wore and the microbes that lived on their hair. Even the sheets he’d composted had been taken from beds, not closets, specifically to preserve the skin cells and oils trapped in the fibers.
Every one of those biological elements was vulnerability. By bringing his human army into the Land of the Dead, Gilgamesh had undermined his own defenses. Even when the gaps were too small to be seen with the naked eye, they were there. It was the flaw in Heaven’s perfection, the chink in the Holy City’s white armor, and Adrian wedged his magic into it like a crowbar, throwing all the quintessence his father had dumped over his unconscious body into a single, simple wish.
“Grow.”
He spoke the command in a whisper, but it came out in a roar, shaking through the ground like an earthquake as the demons in the square behind him cried out in fear. This was the biggest act of sorcery he’d ever attempted, but Adrian wasn’t cocky enough to think he could actually break Heaven.Quintessence sorcery was Gilgamesh’s invention. No matter how good Adrian got at it, he’d never be able to beat his father, which was why he didn’t try. He didn’t push against the white walls or fight the overwhelming command that constantly told all life here to shrivel and stop. He didn’t bother with any of that. Instead, Adrian focused all of his magic on the pile of soilhehad made. The cauldron of decomposition he’d created to hold a spell from his past, blood from his present, and the acorn that would become his future.
“You are no longer a part of Gilgamesh’s Heaven,” he whispered as he dug his bare hands deep into the hot, humid soil. “You are not white or stone or dead. You are the living body of the Great Blackwood, a grove bound to me by flesh, bones, and soul. By the decay that created you and the roots you will nurture, I ask you to grow. Grow and return us both to our rightful place in the Great Cycle that connects all living things.”
The words were a variation of the spell he’d spoken the very first time he’d dug out his heart and buried it beneath the forest for the ceremony that had bound him as a witch of the Blackwood Coven. But while his request this time was slightly different, the feeling was exactly the same, because even though his father had replaced his blood, blocked his heart, and removed his body from the land of the living, Adrian had never stopped being a witch. That title was something that could never be stolen, because it had never belonged to Adrian in the first place. He belonged to the Blackwood, not the other way around. That was the entire point of the coven initiation, and the moment Adrian pulled on that connection, the acorn that represented the future—his future, his aunt’s future, the future of all witches who offered their hearts, bones, and souls to the Great Blackwood—burst out of the mounded dirt.
Adrian had grown more trees in his life than he could count. They’d always sprouted quickly, but even the hundred-foot hardwoods he’d grown in an hour to test his new blend of sorcery and witchcraft hadn’t grown this fast. The seedling shot out of the soil like a spear, but not toward Heaven’s sunless sky. This sapling grew straight up the arms Adrian had pressed in the soil, using his limbs like guide poles to stab him in the chest.
Adrian jerked with a silent gasp, his voice choked by the white blood that was suddenly bubbling out of his mouth. That wasn’t what he’d expected to happen. He’d thought the tree would explode into the air and break though Heaven’s protective shell, not break thoughhim. From the amount of white blood pouring onto the sapling’s roots, though, Adrian was starting to worry that he’d grossly misread the situation. Maybe Bex had been right all along. Maybe thiswasactually a plan to use his quintessence blood as fuel for a Heaven-destroying bomb.
It wouldn’t be the first time his family had traded his life for the forest’s safety. Given how high a wall they were all up against, though, Adrian couldn’t bring himself to be mad. He was far more worried about Bex and the others getting caught in the blast. But just as he’d made peace with the idea that his family had used him to enact a properly witchy vengeance on Gilgamesh by turning the son he’d stolen into the tool of his own destruction, Adrian realized he wasn’t dying.
That couldn’t be right. A tree was growing straight through his chest. Even with the copious amount of magic involved, there should be no way he could survive, and yet here he was. He wasn’t even in that much pain, because aside from the initial entry wound, the sapling wasn’t digging into his flesh. It was digging into his father’s seal—the hard, lion-toothed wall of magic that Gilgamesh had placed over his heart to block Adrian’s connection to the Blackwood.
The moment he realized that, Adrian’s entire demeanor changed. He stopped waiting for death and lurched forward, stabbing his fingers into his chest to widen the wound so thesapling would have more room to work. Just like every time he’d tried to break it himself, the lion-headed magic roared and fought back. It shredded the sapling with its claws and teeth, filling Adrian’s chest cavity with splintered greenwood, but the shoot of the Blackwood didn’t give up. Every time Gilgamesh’s lion tore the young tree apart, it grew back and tried a different direction, attacking the seal with a thousand little tendrils, until, like an ancient citadel consumed by the forest, the lump of hardened sorcery fell apart, shaken to pieces by the thunder of Adrian’s own heartbeat.
It was the first time he’d felt his pulse as anything more than a distant echo since Gilgamesh had brought him here. Each contraction hurt so much it brought tears to his eyes, but Adrian had never been so happy to be in pain. The sapling’s supple branches were still lodged inside his chest, but he didn’t bother trying to dig them out. He pushed his own hands deeper instead, reaching through his rib cage into the empty hole left by the organ he’d surrendered the night he first became a witch.
