It’s why Winter not only thought she wasn’t an oracle but didn’t believe that her grandmother was either.
As I stare at Briar, still caught in the dance, her eyes open and she looks straight at me.
But it’s not Briar anymore.
I know this the same as I know Ty. As I know myself.
It’s not Briar anymore.
Other things poke at me that feel random, but can’t be. Like all those minions in the lumberyard last night. It seemed like such a funny coincidence that the skirmish was just down the road from Briar’s bar, but was it? And how effective was Savi’s privacy bubble while we were talking about tonight, anyway?
It makes me wonder about Savi’s ward on the three of us.
I try to shout. I try to warn the others. I try todosomething, but the snare of this dance and this spin is too tight all around us.
I have the feeling that whatever protection spell Savi did on us no longer applies.
I can’t look away from Briar. I think she knows it. When she smiles, everything in me goes cold and dark. She rips the necklace off her neck and throws it.
Yet I don’t hear it fall.
Because we’re not in Briar’s cottage anymore. We’re not dancing, either.
We’re somewhere cold and dark, and everything around us feels harsh and frigid.
And when the spinning stops, my heart does too, for a second.
Because it’s clear to me immediately that wherever we are, wherever we’ve landed, we’re stuck here.
25.
The dark is oppressive and deep, seeming to actually shove against me like it wants to fight me, but I can feel the moon somewhere in the distance. I can feel her song in me despite the darkness, despite the pressure.
I look up, and there she is, high above me and yet low in the sky. I know that she’s low. I always know exactly where the moon is—the werewolf promise—so I don’t know why it also seems like she’s so high as well.
Though this is only one of a number of things that don’t make sense right now. At least I can think again.
When I pull my gaze away from the moon, Briar has her arms up and she murmurs something.
Just like that, there’s light.
It pours into Briar’s hands from some unseen source, like she’s holding her palms beneath a faucet of white light that only she can see. She cups her hands and then she throws it up into the harsh, hanging darkness.
The light expands and then surrounds us, like a kind of cone.
It’s so bright that my eyes water. It’s so bright that it takes me a moment to see that it’s not just us in the cone.
I feel Winter press against me from the side. I can hear her pulse, too, rapid and wild. Scared. I don’t blame her.
On all sides, surrounding us, there is a sea of red-cloaked acolytes and priests in their darker robes. Savi is pressed in with us, but she looksless taken aback. Or maybe it’s just that she’s looking around already, taking stock.
“We’re in the crater,” she says flatly. “We’re at the very bottom of Crater Lake.”
The dried-out crater where a temple should be, but isn’t. The place no one thought Vinca could be if she had a vessel to take her away.
“Very good,” Briar says, but it doesn’t sound like Briar at all.
As I look at her, no longer wearing that necklace, I can feel that dark, seething black energy pour out of her. I see the vision Winter shared, that cage that turned out to be ribs, and I know exactly what happened to Briar. Why she’s acted the way she has—particularly since the solstice.
