He clasped Quint’s hand. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “Just stay awake.”
“Go,” Quint urged.
So he did. Leaping over and ducking under expanding branches, a few smaller ones knocking him, he crossed the room to Nes.
Her eyes were still closed, her body eerily still compared to the commotion surrounding her. The base of the tree sat at her feet, the trunk rising from her back. He blinked. It was no exaggeration. Roots spurted from the cracked rock beneath their feet, but there were others. Other tangles of roots fueling the ever-growing tree that swelled directly out of the smooth skin on Nes’s bare back.
He was going to be sick.
Magic grew on trees. But this, this was a tree growing out of magic. Too strong and too fast for any of them to stop it.
Something hit him on the head, and he glanced up. The tree had hit the ceiling, but it hadn’t stopped. Branches nicked bits of rock away, wood scraping at stone. If he didn’t stop her, this would never end. The tree would keep growing. It would break through rock, shatter the ceiling to reach the world above, and they’d all be buried alive. All except Nes. Who could only die if she drowned.
He wasn’t going to let any of them die. This would not be like Aeos.
He was the chosen Crown. The one who always found a way to get back up. The one the King trusted. Had always trusted. The one who could capture the Witch.
Siren hair in hand, Toran bent down and wrapped his arms around Nes.
42
Nes
There was only the magic. The magic and its wrath. Her wrath.
Nes was lost to it.
Drowning all over again, but this time there was no water, no surface to flounder toward. Her magic was everywhere and in everything. The magic was her but was not her. A presence that had shoved her aside the second she opened the door to it.
She’d known better. And yet she’d still let it out.
Let it out because she’d wanted damage. She’d wanted hurt.She hurt.Her heart was gone, lost to the hole in her chest. There was a chasm inside her now, and she ached with the force of its emptiness.
She watched it all from a corner behind her rage. Watched as Toran was knocked to the ground, as Genna was cut, and Quint pierced through the shoulder. She let her rage take over, let it set her magic loose on the world.
Because the world had failed her.
She always knew it would. But she hadn’t expected the betrayal to feel like this.
It was the nightmare lying in wait. Only worse. Because the magic wasn’t the monster waiting in the shadows.
She was.
Nes was the one with the claws and the fangs and the trails of blood in her wake. Even as she watched, even as she felt the magic wreak havoc on the world that had betrayed her, pride welled at her power. And she grew giddy with it all.
She was all-powerful. She was the one person with magic growing inside her.
She was the Witch.
And she would not hide that truth from the world anymore.
The King had asked for proof. He would regret that request.
Then her magic began to fade. It receded. Like a scolded child, it cowered and tucked itself under her covers.
Nes opened her eyes. Saw the cavern. The blazing torches. Saw the blood and the chaos and the fear. She saw the tree last.
But it was what she felt that mattered most.
