“Because you’re all possessed!” Oleander cried out. “This is the netherdemons working through you. First they poison our woods, now they’re trying tokill us, too. I won’t tolerate another one of you near my coven. A black moon is coming. You will all be exorcized then.”
Gasps and cries echoed. Asphodel gaped at her sister, uttering a low, “But exorcism is as good as a death sentence.”
Oleander squared her shoulders. “We do what we must to protect our coven.”
“We used to be part of your coven before you cast us aside.” The older witch’s voice wobbled. “We have loved ones still in your midst. You cannot mean to—”
“That was before you tried to kill two of our own. You are no one to us now.”
“Oleander,” Asphodel said softly, turning pleading eyes to her twin. “Can’t you see this isn’t their fault? They’re not themselves, but we can help them instead of—of sentencing them. Cornelius has a plan to lead us all to salvation. It’s why I must leave. And once we heal the rotting woods, the netherdemons will return to the underworld and the hellwraiths will be saved.”
Oleander didn’t look convinced, her eyes pinning Clover with a hard stare. “I don’t trust him.”
“I do.” Asphodel gathered her twin’s hands in hers. “Trust in me, if nothing else.”
Clover watched this exchange with quiet anticipation, like the director of a play waiting to see the scene he’d envisioned play out exactly the way he meant it to.
This was all his doing, Kai suspected. The vines coiling around those two witches. The hellwraiths summoned to the estate in the middle of the night, their apparent possession. Netherdemons did not exist. But a Tidecaller with the power to manipulate the earth and to Glamour whoever he wanted—with magic that went beyond even that, and a penchant for theatrics…
As Oleander agreed to let the hellwraiths go free—too easy, too pliant—Clover caught Kai’s eye, and it was all Kai needed to confirm his suspicions.
Clover had manipulated all of this. As if he’d known Oleander wouldn’t have let her twin leave without this final push, this last performance where Clover got to be the hero, cementing his role as the only one capable of stopping the very real rot and the entirely fabricated netherdemons.
“It had to be done,” Clover whispered to Kai as they set off toward the door at last, the first light of dawn guiding their way. Asphodel and Luce walked a few paces away, out of earshot.
“Those two witches nearly died,” Kai pointed out. “And who’s to say Oleander won’t decide to go after the hellwraiths once we’re gone? Their deaths will be on your hands, just like—”
But the names that had been on his lips vanished from memory. Clover hadn’t killed anyone, had he?
Baz’s words echoed in his ears.I think you were right not to trust Clover.
Except… why was that again? Misremembered thoughts swamin Kai’s mind once more. Of all the disjointed pieces of dreamlike memory he couldn’t make sense of, only two things had always remained clear to him: his feelings for Baz and his distrust of Clover. If this inexplicable instinct was all he had to go on, surely he had to trust it. And yet.
Kai shook away his confusion, angry at his own inability to know what was real. “All I’m saying is you’d better know what you’re doing.”
Clover gave him a sly smile. “I have all the powers of the moon at my fingertips, Kai, including that of Seers. I always know what I’m doing.”
It was meant to be comforting, most likely. But all it did was set Kai more on edge than ever before.
“How are we meant to open the door?” Luce asked once they reached the caves. “If it required blood in our world, then here…”
“It requires a bone, yes,” Clover said. He drew closer to Asphodel, stroked her face like the tender lover he was pretending to be. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course,” she breathed, eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. “I told you before, how I can feel the way our souls are connected. This song between us.” She looked at Kai and Luce. “Between all of us.”
“Yes.” Clover kissed her hand. “We all have a part to play in what comes next. And your part, dear Asphodel, is larger than you realize.”
The words set off alarm bells in Kai’s mind. He tried to catch Luce’s gaze, but she was focused on the door, brows scrunched up in thought.
“This will be just as we discussed,” Clover said in that lover’s voice, low and soft. Asphodel lay down on a flat surface created by some of the basalt columns, arms at her side and face tiltedtoward Clover. Like she was a sacrifice on the altar of a dark god. “It will hurt,” Clover continued, “and you will feel like you’re dying. But do not be afraid. I’ve got you.”
Kai took a step forward as a dagger flashed in Clover’s hand. “What are you—”
The dagger sliced into Asphodel’s dress, tearing a large cut on her side. On her exposed rib cage was a spiral scar like the one Clover and Luce had on their wrists, marking her as her world’s key. Asphodel met Kai’s eye. “It’s all right, Nightmare Weaver. If my rib bone is needed, then I trust no one more than I do Cornelius to see it done.” She looked at Clover lovingly. “My healer prince.”
Clover stroked her hair, then sliced the dagger along her skin.
Luce turned her face away, squeezing her eyes shut with a low swear as Asphodel screamed. Kai couldn’t turn from the horror. He was transfixed by it, by the utter trust the witch was putting in Clover. More than anything, he wanted to believe that this would work—that Clover would break off one of her ribs and heal her as quickly as it happened. Kai might not like the guy, but there was no denying his power.
