“And if it means I regain my daughter’s trust, then I must take it,” Bile finished.
Time didn’t so much as flinch, but a great weight seemed to descend over him.
“So mote it be, my ancient friend,” Time murmured, but the words seemed as if they’d been pulled from him against his will.
No sooner had he spoken than the tunnel of whipping, whirling air scooped Zinnia and me up, rolling me head over feet. I shoved the makeshift pouch into a pocket of my robe, terrified that I would lose her.
I was flung haphazardly around, growing dizzy and sick, wishing I could throw my arms out to the side and right myself somehow. But I was too terrified that doing so would risk her safety. So I rolled and tumbled all around, but I kept my hands firmly glued to my pocket.
This time, the vortex of time was far more wild a ride than it had ever been before. The twister abraded any bit of exposed skin, cutting me open just enough that I could feel the slick of blood running down my cheeks and neck. But I closed my eyes and rode it out. I wouldn’t lose her.
I rolled through the vacuum for what felt like an eternity before I was spit out again. I was knocked flat on my back when I was shoved out, the breath literally punched out of me. I stared up at a sky that couldn’t decide whether it was still day or quite night. There was a soft-glowing orb hanging in the heavens, but it wasn’t fully lit yet, just a promising ghost of light that illuminated a few clouds and some flying black birds. Breathing in and out, I thanked my lucky stars that I’d made it through that last jump in one piece.
Beneath my hands, I felt the gentle squirm of my girlfriend. “Holy crap,” I muttered from sheer exhaustion.
When the shock of having landed finally processed through me, I gingerly sat up, feeling new bruises forming in places I’d never had bruises before. Wincing, I grunted as I cautiously worked to my feet.
“Gods,” I groaned because the world had very suddenly decided to go topsy-turvy on me.
Everything was eerily normal-looking and oddly familiar. It looked just like the first place Zinny and I had been dumped in. In fact, when I looked around with a thin-eyed gaze, I was almost positive it was. It was hard to tell exactly because I was surrounded by trees on all sides that looked exactly alike with no distinguishing marks to tell them apart. But I had a gut feeling.
I rotated in a slow circle, looking up and down, side to side, and took in deep breaths of the mountain air. There was a slight mineral scent to it that told me there was water somewhere near. There was also a hint of ripe sweetness, and my stomach grumbled as I realized neither Zinny nor I had eaten much since arriving here.
We’d been sent back in time during our nighttime hours, so though it was dusk here, I knew that in our real world, it had to be day because that was the only time Zinnia’s curse activated. It was very disorienting to travel back and forth through time. It felt like years, but Zinnia’s curse was actually a fantastic way for me to keep a handle on the true length of time we’d been stuck here.
I scratched at my whisker-roughened chin. It took me at least a couple of hours to feel this kind of growth, four or five at least after shaving. A sick feeling slunk through my gut as I wondered how much longer we would be forced to stay in the past. I still didn’t even know at what point in the past I was. But I was pretty sure we weren’t following the normal flow of time because what had happened with Bláth and Bás had to have come before Zinnia and I had first seen her mother, Camillia.
That was my working theory anyway. But what the heck did I know?
I was ninety-nine percent certain I was at the same place where we’d first seen her mother, but was it the same time as the first time we’d come there, or was it a different point in history entirely? I had no idea. Making sure Zinny was still with me, I patted my pocket again.
“I could really use you now, newt,” I whispered tenderly, my heart clenching when I felt her curl into a tight ball. She did not act like the typical genus of her species. Her behavior was very canine-like, but then, she wasn’t a true newt at all.
What would Zinny do now? Before, we’d always had some sort of indication of what was coming, but there was only silence here. What would she tell me to do?
Run. Run for cover, Zane. I heard her voice as clear as a bell in my ears. Zinnia always played it safe. We could not be seen. We could not afford to affect the timeline even one iota, lest we change everything.
When I’d been dumped out of the time tunnel, my hood had been thrown off me. It was a miracle no one had spotted me yet. Yanking it roughly back over my head, I ran for the tree line, hiding behind the trees she and I had hidden behind the first time we’d come there. I held my breath as I waited for the wagon full of her young aunts to appear around the bend.
But after a long stretch of several minutes, I began to worry that maybe something had gone wrong. Usually, something would guide us toward where we were supposed to be, but nothing was showing up for me. I was definitely starting to worry that maybe Time had dumped us off in the wrong place in the past.
I looked around me. Birds were singing in the trees, and I could hear the rustling of woodland creatures scampering through scrub and fallen leaves as they sought out their shelter for the encroaching night. The animals themselves didn’t seem bothered. Life was moving on in a routine of monotonous activity.
What would Zinnia do?
I glanced over to my left and saw a path that would lead to a hut... or should if my hunch was correct.
Stick to the trees but climb the hill, Zane. Slow and steady now, and don’t be seen, dewdropper.
I snorted then chuckled. Now I was hearing her insults too. I didn’t know if I was imagining her voice, if this was magick, or if I’d gone completely insane. But I felt guided by that voice, and figuring I had nothing at all to lose, I followed its commands.
Keeping tight to the tree line, I moved steadily up the meandering trail. Slowly but surely, I began to hear the cadence of voices talking animatedly to one another.
At first, it sounded like nothing but unintelligible mutterings, but as I got closer, I made out words here and there until finally I heard their entire conversation.
“Bairns... cursed... devil take ye!” a female voice snapped, sounding irritable and put out.
It was definitely one of Zinnia’s aunts, though I wasn’t sure which since I was still too far away. I had my cloak fastened tightly around my face. So far, the thing had worked like a charm, but I wasn’t like Zinnia. I’d not been raised to believe in magick and still had a healthy bit of distrust for it. I was concerned that somehow the cloak would stop working or that the wind would rip it off just as it had ripped Zinnia’s pearls off.
I patted my pocket again to feel for her, breathing a heavy sigh when I felt her shift. Still safe.
“Dinna tempt me, witch,” a deep, barrel-chested male voice growled.
I frowned. I knew that voice. I’d heard it many times before.
I neared just a little closer. The sound of a twig snapping beneath my booted foot sounded like gunfire in my ear, and I froze like a deer in headlights, eyes bugging, hands up, and heart pounding out of its cage, waiting to be caught.
The sun was nothing more than a flaming sliver of orange on the horizon, bathing the figures in shadows. Neither of them turned toward me. They were engrossed in one another.
The luscious figure of a female with long, flowing brunette hair stood before the towering figure of Bile, the tree god, whose eyes burned the silver of frost. The woman shifted on her heels as the wind rippled along the hem of her blood-red skirts pooling behind her.
My brows rose high on my forehead. The past version of Violet was not at all what I’d expected. She spoke sharply, with authority, and looked rather intimidating in the way she carried herself.
She was a confident woman and very secure in her own power, so unlike the meek, bubbly personality that I knew today.
Violet and Bile made a striking pair. She was smaller in stature but
brimming over with energy and sex appeal. He was towering and god-like but stared at her in a way that, as a man, I immediately understood.
He was slightly angled, hunched as though curving himself around her. To one not in the know, the stance would look aggressive, posturing, as if he were rearing up to attack. But in truth, it was just the opposite.
His eyes were gleaming and fixed on her. His hands were curled into fists, not to harm her, but to restrain himself from holding on to her. And his posture wasn’t one of aggression but protectiveness.
Bile was guarded, shielding... and that only happened when a man was completely gone on a person. He loved her.
Suddenly, I heard the hiccupping cries of a newborn, two in fact. I looked down at the tiny bundles I hadn’t noticed swaddled at their feet.
I knew the cries instantly. I’d heard Edward do it many nights. I felt a pang in my chest when I thought of my son and remembered all the nights I’d rocked him to sleep, holding him tight while his mama rested.
Violet knelt, cooing to the children and picking up the fussier of the two. She gently patted the child’s back, nuzzling its little face with her nose.
I watched Bile watching her. Pride swelled in his eyes, and his chest heaved with soft and steadying breaths. “They would be safe with ye, Violet,” he murmured tenderly. “Camillia believes there is a way. There must be a way to...”
She sighed deeply, pressing the child’s cheek to her own. Already the babe had settled down. “I ken that ye believe in her words. I love my sister. She is all things to me and the wisest of us, but she also has the softest heart.”
I almost laughed to hear Violet say that because there weren’t many softer than her.
“But I feel the child’s darkness, Bile.” Her words were little more than a haunting whisper. “It is why ye were forced to do as ye did. And I am sorry for it. I can only imagine the depth of yer pain. But ye must do it. For the sake of all that comes, to do otherwise would be price that canna be—”
“I canna,” he rumbled, and the trees around me shuddered with the passion of his plea. “I canna do it. I thought I could. I thought I could kill it, but it is hers. It is Bláth’s blood, and it is mine. I canna end it. Not if the ending of it could in anyway be the end of her too.”
As he spoke, the winds picked up, whipping at the pool of blood red around Violet’s ankles and lifting up the swaddling around the babe’s face. It was a newborn, only hours old. But it opened its eyes and stared directly at me with eyes so green, they looked like emerald ash.
I frowned. Those eyes... there was something about those eyes. I shivered as the child continued to stare straight at me, unblinking and unsmiling.
“The babe must die, Bile. He must. I am sorry to say.”
My eyes cut to Violet, shocked to hear her speak so casually of murder.
The other child cried. Its scream pierced the night. The melody was bitter, haunting, twisting my insides up and bringing a lump to my throat. It was as if the child knew.
Without speaking a word, Bile knelt and brought the other child to his breast that was covered in vines of gnarled roots and glittering ivy. The baby’s sobs instantly ceased.
Bile looked at Violet. “Then ye would condemn the other to a loss so great, it would fade from a broken heart. They are tethered, Violet, heart and soul.”
Violet shuddered, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. “Ye ken the prophecy, King. What the boy will do to the girl. Will do to anything he loves. The darkness is in him, it is in his nature.”
He took a step toward her. “Camillia said there is a way. She is the strongest of ye. If she says ye can do this, then ye can do this.”
Violet hissed, even as she rocked the unnaturally calm child in her arms. “She is a bleeding heart and thinks she can do this, but I have seen—”
Reaching out a hand with nails tipped in blossoms of in shades of pink and red, Bile caressed her cheek, causing her to clamp her lips shut. His touch was familiar, tender, and full of history between them.
Violet shuddered even as she leaned further into to his touch, sighing from deep within. “I hate you,” she squeezed out, but the words were draped in pain and longing so profound, my heart raced in my chest.
“Never, my rose. But ye will do this. Ye must.” His voice sounded as ancient and weathered as the earth itself.
Her nostrils flared. The boy in her arms was still, so unnaturally still. His radiant green eyes stared off toward a spot in the forest, and I shivered, wondering at the strange feeling coursing through me.
I was almost positive that these had to be the children Zinnia and I had seen running around Camillia’s ankles earlier. They’d been older then, but I could recognize similar features in them.
Which meant this had to be a time before that one. It would have been so much easier to make sense of the course of events if we could have at least been shown things in chronological order, but then time wasn’t a linear idea, not truly. It was like the spokes of a wheel, going off in multiple directions all at once but moving concurrently to the other.
Why was Violet alone? Where were the other sisters?
“Ye understand what ye are asking.” As if on cue, a different female voice spoke up from deep within shadow. I turned to look, just as Violet and Bile both did, and saw three independently moving figures separating from their hiding spots.
One was blond, one auburn-haired, and the other with hair a pale shade of blue. It was Hyacinth, Camillia, and Primrose.
They were holding hands and naked from the waist up, with only a small scrap of fabric tied around their waists. Tiny bells jingled as they moved. A wreath of glittering, swirling dragonflies encircled them, and exotic blooms bursting with the richness of flowery perfume were tucked into their thick locks of hair.
Hyacinth’s normally mint-green skin looked almost flesh-toned in the low lighting.
Violet’s nostrils flared, and she looked at Bile with hard, accusing eyes. “Ye said we were to meet alone.”
Bile swallowed and looked away. “Aye, I did, witch. But I had to keep the babes safe, no matter the cost.”
Her jaw thrust out with furious indignation, Violet looked at her sisters. “Ye are making the wrong decision, Cami. Ye know ye are.”
Camillia didn’t respond; she only smiled as she gazed down at the boy with the startling green eyes.
The sisters encircled Violet as Camillia took the boy from her arms. Unwilling though she seemed to give him up, Violet finally released her hold.
Camillia turned, her back strong and straight as she stared unflinchingly at the tree god, and I saw Zinnia in her—in the way she moved and in the confidence of her mannerisms. I knew that Zinnia compared herself to her aunts, always saying how she wasn’t as wise as them or as powerful, but she was young still and learning. What she didn’t see, but what I could as clear as day, was that she already had her mother’s fire and spirit. It was because of Zinnia that we’d even come to the past in the first place. It was her relentless drive to get to the bottom of any problem she set her mind to that had gotten us this far. She was amazing, and I was humbled to see where she’d gotten her spirit.
“Violet worries overmuch. I assure ye, I can save the boy and the girl. But the cost will be steep, and the price that will be paid might not be what ye—”
“Camillia, nay!” Violet whirled on her sister, hands furling and unfurling. “Ye canna do this thing. Ye must tell the tru—”
“Houd yer whist, sister!” Camillia snapped, cutting a hand through the air, a universal gesture for silence. Instantly, Violet’s jaw set into a tense, sharp line that made me pretty sure Camillia had used magick to shut her up.
If Violet had been a chimney, she would have been belching smoke from her ears at that moment.
The king shook his head. “I will bear any price to set right what’s been made wrong. The curse that was placed upon Bláth at birth, she knows not of it. She never has. She did not know what she did when she set her
eyes upon Bás and set the irrevocable course in motion. And perhaps it is my fault. I should have told her when I saw her falling in love with him. But I love my daughter and would give her the world if I could.”
Violet reached out a hand and touched his bark-like arm. His jaw snapped shut, and he looked at her with dread and longing in his eyes.
“It is not ye that would be paying the price, King,” she said softly. “But those who are innocent in all of this. Ye are asking us to strip them of will or choice. Can ye really live with tha’?” She tossed the last question at her sister. Her words were terse and angry.
Camillia looked away.
“Violet, dinna—” Hyacinth started, but Bile shook his head, silencing her admonishments.
“She is a’right, Hyacinth. Yer sister is correct,” he said deeply, sounding weary. “But”—he looked at Violet, and she at him—“she is my daughter.”
And in those words, I knew that what he really meant was that he would burn the entire world down and everything with it if it meant keeping his child safe.
Violet squeezed her eyes shut, looking pained, as if he’d physically struck her. When she opened her eyes again, they shimmered with bitter disappointment. “So mote it be.”
No sooner had she said the words than the world trembled with the violence of that promise. And I didn’t know what promise had just been made, but it felt as if the ground and sky were being driven apart by enormous hands, tearing and clawing with a violence that was astonishing.
Camillia nodded. “Then this is how we do this. I have foreseen a town. Blue Moon Bay, where creatures like us can live and breathe and be. It will be our cover for the boy, for he will have unusual powers. Powers that can be contained for a time, but only so long as ye allow Bás to return and teach him. And we will try, try to save the boy from his fate.”