“What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Ring it.”
There is no time for arguing, even though the command seems foolish. Too simple. Father’s footfalls are crisp on the frost outside. My mouth sours with panic.
Ransom’s fingers sink into my arm, sharp as steel. In the corner of my eye, I see a wisp of smoke. Blinding white against the darkness. The souls are already here.
Father screams my name, over and over. A bloody, panicked cry. My fingers shake.
Let him wake the village. Let them all watch the miracle about to occur. The vicar’s daughter, the woman who wields the power of life and death, all at the ring of a bell.
Ransom’s fingers brush over mine, sending cinnamon sparking up my skin. My palms skim with sweat.
Father is near the riverbank now. So close, so close.
“Thorn.” Ransom’s voice is thin at my neck, pricking the little hairs.
“I know,” I hiss. “I’m working on it.”
There will be a price for this, I know it. And I’m terrified what that price will be. I can’t think about what I will leave behind, who I might become if I ring the bell. Enter into this bargain of blood and bone and souls stolen. Damnation tastes bitter in my mouth. Images of tail-swallowing snakesdrawn in blood come into my mind. Ransom’s father holding communion with ghosts—demons. Erybrus laying claim to my own soul.
I am painfully aware that ringing the bell is a place I may never come back from. But it is too late for that now. The wood towers above us, seems to shiver with anticipation.
Come inside. Taste what it’s like to feel death.
Father’s boots squelch in the river muck, splash into the water. His silver eyes glint in the candlelight.
“Adelaide!” he roars, his face hardening to glass when he notices the bell in my hand.
Faces beneath a hood. One, a fool. Two, a thief. Three, a Reaper of Erybrus.
I turn back to the quivering trees, the white smoke, the dark nothingness of it all laughing in my face.
“Ring it.” There is an urgency to Ransom’s voice matching the untethered beating to my own heart.
But I do as I am told.
I lift the bell and give it one, gentle ring.
The note fills the air like honey. Like the first crisp call of birdsong in autumn. It cascades around my ears, filling and clearing them all at the same time. My father’s cries fade to silence while the note swells.
And then the trees seem to grow. Reaching up, up, up, turning silver, sharp, and almost liquid in the moonlight. The two closest to us part, and a path appears. Gravel white as snow.
Ransom grabs my hand when red light pours against us, his mouth a grim line. “Come on.”
My name is a scream on Father’s lips, but I don’t turn back. I move forward, skin swimming crimson when I leave the world of the living behind.
Into the rowan wood.
twelve
When I was little, my mother spoke of ravens taunting the skies with their crooked cries. But my mother is dead, and wherever it is I have come to find her lies silent. My boots crack against roots and leaves, and I blink twice before the world around me clears.
Trees stand dusted with crimson leaves, their trunks like polished iron. The sky too—if it can even be called that—drips like blood down black canvas. A white moon beats high above, its surface pocked with hollows.
I shiver, panic tightening my limbs, and pull myself up to my feet. When I turn around, I search the wood for signs of Father, but there is nothing.
I am alone.
