“I’m so sorry,” I say. “For everything.”
Without a final glance back, without a second thought of stopping, I turn to my parents and hold out the bell.
thirty-one
There are monsters in the rowan wood, and I am one of them. I feel it in the way my skin burns the nearer I get to Death, the way it aches to become just like him. A Reaper of souls, a dealer of deals. Father’s eyes glint while I close the gap between us, my heart thrumming wildly in my ears.
Let it. Let it beat like a wild, untethered thing. Let it set me free.
“Addie, stop.” It is Bram’s voice at my back, brimming with fear, confusion, the knowledge it is all slipping from his hands. Every spilled drop of blood will vanish.
I pause before Ransom. The skin of his face knits back together, the façade I thought I cared for, assumed I knew, drawing back, as it always should have been. Untouched by Mother’s magic, the deadness of it all.
I ignore Bram and drink in the sight of Ransom, the man I once thought broken, hoped I could mend. The man I now realize has torn himself to pieces and sewn new ones over the old scars. To be kept hidden.
I reach forward and brush a pale curl from Ransom’s face.
“I think there were parts of us that knew each other,” I say, voice quiet. “I think there was something in me that knew something in you that first day we met out at the water. A kind of lodestone, two opposite ends of a terrible future. I even think you might have loved me—or, perhaps, theideaof me.”
His face softens the more I speak, becoming every inch the man who kissed me in the confessional. The man I thought was home.
“And for all that, I am so sorry.”
His face morphs like wind on a pond. I take no further time.
Squeezing the last remaining bitterbloom between my fingers, I allow the sap’s warmth to course through my veins, then press my lips against his.
Something breaks in the room. A tension that weighs heavy. Sick air.
Ransom tastes of salt, the first bite of frost. Bile rises in my throat when Bram cries out, the betrayal in his voice a knife at my back. But I press the kiss deeper, willing the life coursing through me to leak from my mouth and slip into the chasm of Ransom’s soul. He chokes, pulls away, sap dripping from his decaying lips. Ransom wipes at it, scowls at me through darkened brows.
“What…what have you done?” And then he is sent sprawling, shadows leaching from his skin, his screams like a tortured beast.
I don’t waste time.
Turning to my father, I rip the pin from off his cloak. His darkness swirls, Mother’s mouth opening in a shrill scream. But they are too late. I hold the clapper bead between two fingers, threading it with the slender strip of metal from the pin.
The warmth is still inside me, the power of so many lives. So many lives that were not mine yet were given to me freely. Heat floods my body, and when I turn to Bram, there is recognition on his face.
The metal clicks into place, the full power of the bell filling me up, like so much summer light. My father turns gray, skin like stone. He opens his mouth, teeth spindly and long, but his jaw freezes. There is pain in his eyes. Betrayal.
“What…what are you?” he struggles out between his hissing teeth.
Days ago, I would have said nothing. I amnothing. Nothing but wickedness and weakness. A woman with a heart that refuses to heed. And then I learned the truth, that I was a Reaper, a collector of souls. But now I know what I really am.WhoI really am.
I turn to Bram, to Clara, to Rascal.
“I will never be like you, Father,” I say, each word a cut across my wrist.“I will never be like you or like Mother. Because I amalive, and I hold both shadow and light.”
I lift the bell and listen while it rings pure and true and whole. Father’s body seizes, shadows wisping, flinging out around us. He opens his mouth, bloody screams ripping from his throat.
Ransom is on his hands and knees, vomiting poison, but his face is breaking. The skin tears apart at the seams.
“Addie.” His voice is weak, thin. On the floor, his body convulses, lines of darkness seeping from between the ripping black thread. The sound makes me queasy.
I take a few steps back from him, the bell still bright and warm in my palm. The wool of my dress sticks to my flesh.
“I’m so sorry, Ransom.” Bram’s hand is once more at my back, and I lean into it. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you.”
