I lower the bell, my jaw going slack at the sight of my bare skin. The delicate bones of my wrists are smeared in dark liquid. I hold up an arm, the light from the sky glowing red in the wetness.
Blood.
And yet, not blood. It runs warm, but the smell is something else. I gag, retching dryly, while the scent floods my nose. Bitter. Lemons and wormwood. Wet soil. Farther up my flesh, past the freckles dotting my forearm, something like coiled rope spills and curves.
Vines.
My lungs squeeze.
“What is this?” Father’s voice—the one I know—filters through the glade. When I look up at him, he is all flashing eyes and pointed teeth. And I see it, there in the black pits above his hollow nose.
Fear. For the first time, Vicar Thorn, Death himself, is afraid.
Beneath me, the ground sways, and Clara falls to her knees behind me. But I cannot turn around. Something holds me tight. I lift my skirts and find the cause.
All the creeping vines of bitterbloom.
They twist up from the ground, wrapping about my ankles, skimming the soft skin of my stomach, looping around my chest to spill along my arms. Sap drips ruby-red down my wrists, and my stomach roils. Sap that kills. One taste and the heart will spasm and still forever.
I raise a shaking hand toward my father, and a hundred blooms burst on my skin. Each one as delicate as a snowflake and as hot as fire.
He steps closer, the shadows pouring out behind him like raven feathers. “I asked you a question.”
The sap seeps into the creasing of my palms. I should be afraid. An odd feeling coats me like a waterfall. Peace, calm, surety. A smile slithers across my lips. “I made a deal, Father. He asked me to kill you. Didn’t give me a reason. I’ve learned not to ask questions in the wood.”
I lift a palm, and vines thread out between my fingers, reaching toward Death, each one so green the air smells of spring. They wrap through his shadows, bursting with white blossoms.
The bitterbloom.
What Mother used for death, I now use for life. My life.
Father opens his mouth, his teeth like crooked tombstones, and a root spins flaxen from my fingers. It stretches out, long and lithe, before it takes hold and flowers bud on my father’s tongue, slip down his throat.
He screams. It is an unholy and spine-cracking sound, bubbling from him while my knees hit the ground.
Something splinters along my bones, my heart bursting against bone when the vines crumble from my skin and turn to dust. I scramble back, not meaning, not wishing, to hurt him, but there is no strength left in me. All I smell is the leftover remains of lemons.
The bitterbloom.
“Adelaide.” My name is sharp in the Reaper’s mouth. “Give me the bell.”
Something inside me hardens to ice, and somewhere, in the darkness, Rascal gives a low growl. The sound alone gives me courage, and I step forward, the bell once again outstretched.
“I will not give it to you.”
The scent of iron fills my nose, chokes my throat. I fall to my knees, sick with the stench, and darkness swirls around me. Agony, like nothing I have felt before, ripples through my body. The shadow grows teeth, sinks them into my flesh, and I open my mouth to scream, but the sounds turn to decay on my lips. I stagger but keep a hold of the bell.
“I will not give it to you.”
Every word is forced between my teeth while I gasp for breath. Father’s magic whirls stronger, quicker, until I am completely cut off from the light. It descends, pressing me to the forest floor until my hands are etched in dirt. A great weight blooms along my shoulders, my spine, the back of my skull.
Through the black mist, Clara shouts my name, but Death is descending. White petals rain on me, kissing my brow like snow while the darkness grows.
Twigs cut lines into my cheek, and my chest seizes like cords around my heart. Is this how it ends? Devoured by the thing I once called Father?
And then a horrible shriek floods the air.
Rascal howls, gnashes his teeth. The sounds shatter the mist, distort the air around me. But when I unfold myself from the ground, I smell the blood. Thick and tainted.
