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But she’s silent again, and all I know is that the delicate manicured trees inside this perfectly landscaped garden are reaching toward me, and as I lie on my back with the weight of two bodies pressing down on me, my palms are pressed flat against the earth, and the tendrils shoot forth, forming roots that anchor me to the ground.
In the back of my head, there’s a faint rumble.
It grows. Louder and louder.
A little tremor courses through the ground. Through the cold, hard earth under my back, I can feel…
Everything.
The trees…
They start to grow.
Growmight be the wrong word. They explode, trunks groaning and stretching, turning massive in the blink of an eye, branches stretching toward the sky, leaves unfurling in a shock of verdant green. Taller and taller they grow, smashing windows, bending steel frames, cracking the stone walls.
And for the first time, I canfeelthem, as if they were an extension of my very own body.
They feed on my anger; on my despair, on my desperate wanting. Branches and vines grow long and move of their own accord, and I can’t see what’s happened to the undead, but I hear the crunching of bone and flesh, and all of a sudden, the coppery scent of blood is permeating the air, but it’s quickly swallowed by the earthy green scent of spring.
I’m in the earth. I’m in the trees themselves, being encased and lifted by their sentient branches, and Kharuk is being separated from me, and the undead creature is long gone, Goddess rest his soul.
Don’t hurt the guard. He’s a friend. Make sure he lives.
I plead with the trees, even as they grow and grow, and part of me is still tethered to the raw earth below, and I want to submerge in it, because Ineedsomething more.
I’m searching, frantically.
Because a part of me is still missing.
61
CORVAN
We go down several flights of stairs, deeper and deeper into the earth below. The air grows stale and dank. My senses tell me we’re well below the surface of the earth.
Ansar is silent. I stare at his back, wondering about the madness of ambition and all that comes with it. Discordant energy seeps from him.Death Magic. Chaos and corruption.
How in the Goddess’s name did Ansar think he was going to rule over Rahava when he’s likethis?
One can’t rule over the living by raising the dead.
I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’m going to kill him for all of this.
The other one percent thinks that just maybe, Finley’s mother will do the job for me.
I just need to see her—to be able to touch her. She’s been imprisoned for so long—first by Lucar Solisar, then by my father, and now the Talavarras have locked her up in the crypts of Deignar castle.
There are many ways to suppress a magical being.Serpenstone. Dampening irons—ancient and extremely valuable artefacts brought from Batava. Arcane enchantments that can drain a being’s innate magical energy.
I need to be careful here.
Things that are used to suppress something as strong as a dryad can also be used to suppress me.
And yet, I know Aralya’s alive. Without her, Ansar wouldn’t have become so powerful.
Besides, IthinkI can feel her.
The deeper we go, the stronger it becomes. An energy; similar to what I feel from Finley sometimes.
