“That doesn’t mean I’ll talk,” Violet said firmly, and she headed off. But it was far from the last question she got over the next few days. Her classmates wanted to know if Harper had her powers back. If she’d really helped defeat that “insurgency group” that Violet quickly realized was how Augusta had explained away the Church. And even when her classmates gave up on her answering them, they still watched her—not with mistrust, but with something closer to excitement.
Somehow, some way, the town expected her to protect them. Violet didn’t know how to tell them that it was only through her foolishness that they were in danger at all.
Nearly a week after Henrik had fallen ill, she stood in the clearing where she and Isaac had opened the Gray and stared hopelessly at the corrupted trees in front of her.
“It’s getting worse,” she said grimly to her patrol partners—Harper and May.
Beside her, Harper nodded in agreement. The smell was disgusting, but that was just the beginning of their problems. Iridescent gray liquid oozed steadily from the founders’ seal toward the trees around it. The trees looked terrible, veins spiraling around their bark and down their branches. The Carlisles had tried to block off the area with stone bells, but it had done nothing at all.
It was mid-October now, and the girls were dressed for true fall, Violet in a faux-leather jacket, Harper in an oversize green parka and a beanie pulled tight over her dark curls. May looked perfectly pulled together as per usual in a quilted pink vest and fluffy cream-colored earmuffs.
“That’s why we’re here,” she said, her voice high and crisp. “We need to keep track of its advancement.”
“I know why we’re here,” Violet said, more sharply than she’d intended. That was the guilt talking, but knowing why she was being harsh didn’t make her feel better. “You don’t have to treat us like infants just because we’re new to this patrol.”
“Well, you weren’t exactly the most willing patrol partners,” May said dryly. “No offense.”
Since the corruption had spread, Juniper and Augusta had made a patrol schedule together that was supposed to combine experienced and inexperienced founders and minimize danger by sending them out in larger groups. Which was how the three of them had wound up together.
Violet had no good reason to protest it. Technically, she knew she should feel good about this alliance—it had the potential to actually help solve this ever-mounting problem. But she’d already caused so much trouble with the Church and the Beast, and she hated the idea that, once again, everyone else would have to rally to fix something she had broken.
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Harper said as they picked their way through the clearing, staring more closely at the trees. Her hand was constantly hovering over the scabbard at her waist. Dusk had muted the world around them, brushing deep blues and purples over the trees in the final fading light of the sunset. “Not that I can really see much. Why is your mother so determined to do these patrols at night?”
“It’s easier to clean up messes in the dark,” May said, her voice strained. “It does mess with your sleep, though. I recommend bringing coffee next time—it’ll make the next day less horrible.”
Harper snorted. “Is that why Justin takes so many naps in class?”
May laughed, a sound that seemed utterly out of place in front of the decaying trees. “No, he’s just bored. And he knows there isn’t a teacher in this town who would dare to fail him. Well, knew, I guess.”
Her voice faltered, and Violet thought about how much the town’s attitude had changed, not just toward Violet but toward Justin, too. The trust extended to her and the other founders, whether deserved or not, was deliberately being kept away from the town’s former golden boy. He was glared at, whispered about, sometimes even jeered at. Harper had told her that his birthday was coming up, something that had basically been a local holiday the year before and was now clearly a massive source of shame for him. Violet felt for him, for all of them.
To be a founder, it seemed, was to fit whatever role the rest of the town had decided you would play or be discarded completely.
“Ah, shit.” Violet turned and saw Harper shining her flashlight onto a bit of nearby tree trunk. Something was growing from the gleaming, fleshy bark: thin silver strands clumped together. “Is that hair?”
“I think so.” Violet’s stomach churned. She didn’t understand how she’d managed to do this, to unleash something that was twisted and disgusting even by Four Paths’ low standards.
“Oh, gross,” May mumbled from beside her, her face ashen.
“Something has to be causing this,” Harper said. “If the Gray keeps opening and infecting our world like this, in a way the Beast has never done before, there has to be a source point. Some event that started it.”
Violet shifted uncomfortably. She’d hated keeping this from Harper, and she knew that May had clear ties and allegiances that were more important than any bond between the two of them. Harper had been nothing but a good friend to her, and May had given Violet her memories back when she’d had no obligation to do so.
They deserved to know what was happening here before it went any further.
“Harper…” she started. “I have to tell you something. Oh, screw it, both of you. You should both know.”
Once she started talking, it was surprisingly easy to let the words spill out. About the ritual she and Isaac had done about a week and a half ago. How the corruption had clearly emerged from that, how it was her fault again that the entire town was in trouble.
“So I think it’s us,” she finished. “I think we started it, and I feel so useless, because my power can’t even help this time.”
And when she was done, May said the last thing she was expecting.
“You didn’t start the corruption,” she said softly.
Violet’s head spun. All she could manage was “What?”
“Maybe you spread it, that I don’t know,” May said. “But you didn’t start it. Justin and I found the corruption around two weeks ago. When Augusta came back to look at it with her deputies, she insisted it was gone, and she wouldn’t take it seriously. But now it’s back. Which means you couldn’t have summoned it.”
Her relief was immense, titanic; she did not know how to say thank you, and so she settled for a smile instead—one that faded as May’s story sank in.
“You didn’t tell us about it,” Harper said slowly.
May shrugged. “We weren’t really getting along at the time. It’s not as if Violet told us, either.”
“That’s true.” Violet stared at the trees, distress prickling in her chest as she realized that while this absolved her of culpability, it didn’t actually solve anything.
She stepped forward, eyeing the hair growing from the trees with disgust.
“Get back!” Harper’s voice rang out a moment too late as a branch fell from the drooping tree. Pain tore down Violet’s shoulder, throwing her off-balance. She could feel where the branch had gouged through her jacket, biting into her flesh.
Her body hit the ground a moment later with a thud that sent tremors running through her injured shoulder. Her wound throbbed; she could feel a root wriggling beneath the skin and dissolving. It was an awful feeling, like a tiny ball of fire extinguishing inside her arm.