“Not like this,” he says with a smile. “Not unless you eat a flower from his heart and take up your power again.”
She shakes her head.
Braith Bowen says, hands in fists at his sides, “Lord Vaughn, I... We came with Rhun because we want to know the truth. We want to be part of the decisions.”
“Yes, we must!” says Bree Lewis from beside John Upjohn’s body; she’s holding on to Lace’s arm.
“Let us all bargain with you,” Nona Sayer demands. She’s flanked by Alis Sayer, Delia Sayer, her husband and a dozen Sayer men and boys.
The devil rolls his shoulders and feathers burst from them, trailing down into massive wings. “Yes,” he says through a mouth of curved fangs, “bargain with me. What would you offer for peace and prosperity in the valley? If not one of your hearts?”
Mairwen crouches, puts her hands to the earth. “Forest,” she whispers. “I need you to wake again in my blood.”
Daughter of the forest. Mairwen Grace.
The ghosts of all the Grace witches appear around the boundary of the grove. Mairwen sucks in a quiet breath just as bird women shriek and the forest denizens leap in to fling rocks at the ghosts, to tear at the skirts and boots of the men and women who do not belong here in the Devil’s Forest.
“Stop!” commands Vaughn, and the goblins, bone monsters, and bird women dart away, dashing and slipping into the shadows again. “Hello, Grace,” he says, turning to the youngest girl, who smiles beneath her veil.
“My heart,”the first Grace says.“It is too long since you visited me here.”
“I could not come back inside once the charm was done, my love.”
“How can you love her?” Mairwen says. “You used her for your freedom.”
“I love herandI used her, little bird. Most things in this world are more than one thing.”
Gasping with understanding, Mairwen stands and goes to the first Grace. “Give me my power back.”
“Take it,” Grace murmurs, lips hardly moving.
A guttural sound distracts her, and Mairwen spins to Rhun just in time to see him cut Baeddan’s throat.
Dust and motes of light splatter from the wound. No blood.
The wound burns in Mair’s gut, as if she had been stabbed. “No,” she says, rushing to the dying devil.
Vines crawl out of Baeddan Sayer’s flesh, pulling him apart, and smoke puffs out of his lips, rises from the corners of his eyes like upside-down tears. He bares his sharp teeth and they’re falling out, spinning as they tumble to the ground. Baeddan continues to laugh, throws back his head and grasps Rhun’s shoulders again. Rhun throws his arms around his cousin, loving him, and afraid.
They collapse together. It smells like fire and sharp metal, and Baeddan crumbles in Rhun’s hands, turning to embers and ash, dirt and cutting brambles, hooked thorns and even flowers, desiccated and colorless.
The vines on the altar twist and tighten, and three more flowers burst open.
Tears fall from Rhun’s eyes.
Mairwen, crying too, kneels beside Rhun and digs into the flowers, into the brittle bones, to find the chunk of thorns that was Baeddan’s heart. She pries the knife from Rhun’s hand. She slices it across her chest and throws it down, then presses the heart to the long, fiery line of blood. It crumbles, and Mairwen licks the ashes from her palm.
Thorns and brambles explode up from the earth, surrounding her in a violent nest.
Rhun stumbles away from the thorns, gasping her name, then runs for the altar.
While most are fumbling back, a few follow Rhun, and the Sayer women surround Vaughn, arrows out like swords, an ax in each of Nona’s hands. The spirit women drift nearer; the first Grace smiles at Vaughn, widening to a grin as the feathers of his wings shrivel to ashes. His life and death cycle begins again.
Inside her cocoon of thorns, Mairwen shivers and cries at the slick, heavy dragging of her blood, as vines and flowers push free, as they knot in her stomach and crack her bones. Her collar burns as thorns grow again, all at once, and her nails darken.
At the altar, Rhun begins sawing at the vines, ripping as best he can. Haf helps, as do his father and Braith. There is Arthur’s throat, and there his mouth, open, flowers spilling out.
“It can’t be too late,” he whispers, touching Arthur’s cheeks, his lips. “Arthur, wake up! Baeddan is dead. You cannot be too.” He kisses Arthur’s eyebrow, as the others continue dragging the vines free. Blood splashes when they cut free the thorny vines about his wrists, tearing them from his flesh.
