He pants, sweat glistening across his mottled forehead. “It’s calling me,” he moans.
“Baeddan,” Mair soothes. “Baeddan Sayer.”
Slowly, slowly Baeddan’s lips lower over his teeth, and his brow smooths. He blinks again and again, shoulders drooping. “Baeddan Sayer,” he whispers.
Mairwen holds on to his clammy shoulder and checks on Haf.
Her friend’s cheeks are deep pink, but she’s holding herself still.Sorry, she mouths.
“I feel it too,” Rhun says. “Calling me. It wants me back.”
It’s on Mair’s tongue to say she wants to go back inside the forest; maybe they’ll remember if they go back inside.
Mairwen Grace.
Forest daughter.
She grips Baeddan’s hand and sees a vision of Rhun, her Rhun, sliced open and bound to the Bone Tree’s altar, vines piercing his wrists and thighs, twining through his rib cage, transforming him into a devil. It isn’t a memory, but Baeddan moans again, and his hand under hers trembles.
Warmth hugs her wrist, and she sees Rhun’s mouth twitch. Arthur clenches his jaw. They both feel it too, because of the charm binding them together.
She doesn’t know how she made these or how much time they have until the bargain breaks again, and she’s dizzy suddenly. Her collarbone aches, her skull throbs, and blood drags through her veins slow and thick.
If she goes into the forest, all will be well.
Mairwen Grace.
She stands, distancing herself from Baeddan’s touch, from all of them.
“It calls the survivors back,” she whispers. “They leave the valley, maybe, but they come back. And they die. That must be what we realized in the forest. There is no surviving.”
“No hope,” Rhun adds. “I was a saint only to be slaughtered.”
“I will make this right,” Mairwen whispers. “I have to—lie down.” She rushes into her mother’s back bedroom.
Closing the door, she presses her back hard against it and digs her fingers into her chest exactly as Baeddan does. Her breath comes quickly and her collar aches and itches.
Her eyes fly open as her fingers push at the skin over her collarbone. Beneath the skin she feels small bumps, like her collarbone is growing hard boils. She walks her fingers along them, staring straight ahead at the fan of beautiful goose feathers hanging on the wall.
Baeddan has a row of thorns growing in short hooks from his collarbone.
Mairwen holds her hands before her, inspecting them.
The bracelet of hair and bone and thorns twists tightly around her wrist, stinging in a dozen places. But there’s nothing obviously changed about her hands. Her fingernails are ragged and bluer than usual from being cold so many hours. She touches her face and hair, exploring with her fingers everything she can touch. She strips out of the bodice and overskirt, removes her shift and leggings, socks and boots until she’s naked in her mother’s room, shivering and running her hands everywhere, hunting for irregularities. All she finds are scabs and shallow scrapes from the night, mostly on her arms and neck and scalp, tiny bites, and the closing wounds created by invasive trees lifting her off her feet.
At her mother’s trunk, she pulls out a long wool shirt and drags it on. She climbs into her mother’s bed and huddles under the quilt, breathing deep of Aderyn’s flower smell that’s sunk into the pillow and mattress.
•••
MAIRWEN LEAVES A VOID WHENshe departs.
They stare at each other until Haf, very practically, sets more tea to cook and Rhun attacks some mutton, frowning.
Baeddan crouches at the hearthstone, hands dug through his hair and sharp thorns, humming to himself.
Arthur burns to say something to Rhun, to break him out of this dark mood, but Arthur’s never been one for speeches or comfort. Especially not with Haf Lewis and the devil for witnesses. He focuses on not squirming, on staying where he is, when much of him would like to walk out that front door and burn it all down. Make the choice for all of them. Rhun’s right: The bargain is a lie, and it shouldn’t be remade. It should be ended. Three Graces should be forced to wake up.
Rhun says, “I’m going to sleep,” and stands. Before climbing to the loft again, he crouches in front of the devil. “Baeddan, stay here. I don’t know if you’re tired too, but we have to rest. If you sleep, the bargain might—it might heal you too, if you can be healed.”
