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Twenty feet from her, Harlan Vance stood with a rifle at his shoulder.

He was in khakis and a tactical vest with a wooden cross on a cord. Behind him, three jars sat open on the ground, and each one held a dying firefly with its light guttering. Next to them was a can of kerosene, from the smell—lying tipped on its side. He'd been catching her lights and burning them one by one to draw her out.

"Demon," he was saying, his soft Virginia voice almost conversational. "Abomination. I've read everything written about you. I know silver and iron works because I know what you are."

"You know nothing." Her voice was the wind and the tide and the hull of a ship groaning. "You know what frightened men wrote."

"I know you've been in these islands three hundred years and in all that time not one person has stood up to you. That's not loyalty, that's infection." He adjusted his aim. "After you, the elders, then the Praise Houses, and finally, every family that's ever consorted with you. I'll burn this land clean."

He fired, and she twisted. The bullet tore through the already-damaged wing, and the sound she made was the sound of a ship hitting a glacier.

I was already moving, but Vance heard me. He swung the rifle around, and his eyes found me—tall, dark, coming out of the trees with iron in my hand as satisfaction crossed his face.

"Owusu." He didn't sound surprised. "I told you, they start with the lonely ones." He sighted, aiming the rifle at my chest. "You should have come to the Mills House."

He fired, but I'd already gone low. Rugby gave me muscle memory as I neared the ground, like I was scrimmaging, allowing the round to roll over my body as I tackled him at the knees. We went down in the mud together. He was stronger than he looked for his wiry sixty years. It was as if his righteous certainty was behind every movement. I felt the butt of the rifle crash into my ribs hard enough that I heard something crack, but the adrenaline did nothing to slow me down as I sent my knee crashing into his gut with all my might. He was clawing at my face as his cross swung and hit my cheekbone, and the rifle went spinning into the grass.

"You don't understand," he gasped, fighting for my wrist to grab my knife. "She's evil! She feeds on the innocent—I've seen⁠—"

"You've seen what you wanted to see." I finally got on top of him, gaining the advantage and pinning his arm with my knee. "Thirty-one people in Benin that she never harmed. A village that you slaughtered under the guise of cleansing it from an Adze."

His eyes widened. For one second, under all the self-righteous bullshit, I saw it—the thing he actually was. A man who'd found a story that let him kill and had never once asked whether it was true.

"She feeds on love," I said. The knife was now at his throat. My hands were steady as I applied pressure, drawing blood. "On surrender. On people who choose her. You feed on pride and prejudice and call it God."

"Thrall," he spat. "Slave⁠—"

"Husband."

I drew the blade across his throat, making sure to slice through his internal and external jugular.

My grandmother’s iron used by four generations, forged in Ho for the Adze. It went across clean as I watched his blood come out dark and fast. It spilled into the pluff mud, and the marsh took it the way it had taken the Red Shirts, Klansmen, and every other enemy who threatened the safety of my people here for the last three hundred years. Vance's hands went to his neck as he started to gasp for air. His eyes were wide with fury as I watched the wretched life slip from them with contentment. Even in the end, hate lived deep in his spirit as he took his final breath.

I continued kneeling in the mud over his dead body, breathing hard with watching his blood drain as I wiped my grandmother's knife on my trousers. The fireflies had gone quiet, and the marsh was silent except for the frogs starting back up, one by one.

She came to me in her human form again, or mostly. Her wings vanished and the extra limbs folded into light, until she was my Addie again. She stood there naked and glowing, with a ragged wound across her shoulder blade that was already healing. She knelt in front of me and took my bloody face in her hands.

"You chose," she whispered.

"He was going to kill you and burn everything in his path." My voice shook. "He was torturing you, burning pieces of you one by one.”

"They always have jars." She wiped his toxic blood from my face with my shirt before kissing my forehead, my eyelids, and my lips. "Three hundred years and they always have jars. In three centuries, no one has ever come out of the trees for me." Her black tears were hot on my skin. "Do you understand what you've done? The iron was for me. Your great-grandfather forged it, but your grandmother kept it; she gave it to you knowing⁠—"

"She said iron is for monsters and I knew she meant the monsters filled with hatred for our people." I looked down at Vance. "I was sure."

Addie made a sound that was half laugh and half sob. Then she pulled me to my feet, and together we dragged Vance's body to the edge of the deep channel, where the water ran black, and the gators sunned themselves by day. We rolled him in as the marsh closed over him without a ripple.

She gathered up the jars and freed what was left of her fireflies. Two of them lived. They rose, flickering, and settled in her hair among the cowrie shells.

"Come home," she said, and took my hand. "I need to show you what you are now."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

BACK AT THE PRAISE HOUSE

They came for us at noon the next day, which was how I knew the Gullah already knew. Brother Seabrook was leaning on a sweetgrass cane. Ms. Josephine from the Penn Center, who I’d learned was Yvonne's mother and the keeper of the oral histories before her. Zora, seventy-eight and straight-backed, with eyes that went gold at the edges when she looked at Addie. There were four others I hadn't met, elders from Johns Island, St. Helena, and Wadmalaw, men and women who looked at me the way you look at a newborn—curious, assessing, already deciding what name to call it.

We met in the Praise House where I'd learned to weave. Addie stood at the back by the door with Celeste beside her, both of them barefoot, dressed in white. Addie's shoulder was healed, and her eyes were calm.