“I need to show you,” Ezra said, twisting his hands together. “Are you up for a walk in the forest?”
“Of course.”
“Splendid.”
“Where are we going?” May asked as she rose to her feet.
“The Sullivan ruins,” Ezra answered mildly as they walked into the woods together. May hadn’t been there in years, since the house had mysteriously collapsed in the dead of night. Nobody said anything, but everybody knew it was Isaac. “The family’s small now, I’ve heard, but also quite powerful. Especially the youngest boy.”
“Isaac’s powerful, sure, but it tortures him.” The words came out harsh, but May didn’t care. Even here, she couldn’t get away from the other founders. “He hates what he can do.”
“That’s a price often paid for strength,” Ezra said. “I believe it takes an exceptionally sound mind to manage the burden the Beast places upon you when you draw on its power.”
“It’s not a burden,” May said sharply. “It’s an honor.”
“You can be honest, May. I watched your mother struggle for years. I know that your powers can be both at once.”
May hesitated. “Maybe sometimes they feel like a burden. But it’s a burden I’m happy to carry, as long as I can help keep Four Paths safe.”
“Of course,” Ezra said as they stepped deeper into the trees. They were in a part of the forest that the corruption had yet to really touch, but even without the familiar smell and sights of the disease, May was still on edge.
Soon, they’d reached the edge of the Sullivan ruins. Nobody was foolish enough to venture here—a few had come to gawk in the early days after its destruction, but Isaac had made sure they were too frightened to ever return. Ezra didn’t know about any of this, of course, so he led them toward what had once been the backyard with no hesitation.
“Here it is,” he said grimly, as the familiar smell of decay washed over them. He grabbed a bandanna from inside his coat and tied it around the lower half of his face. May was glad to see he was protecting himself—the corruption couldn’t hurt her, but it could hurt him.
“I heard reports of strange smoke trails rising over the trees and came to investigate. This is what I found.” His voice was muffled through the fabric.
May’s heart stuttered in her chest as she struggled to process the sight in front of her. Cracked in half and sloped diagonally along the ground was a red-brown slab of stone, far away from the rest of the ruins. Twining around it were roots, dozens of them, iridescent veins shining. She knew where they were: at the Sullivans’ ritual site. But the altar, an ugly reminder of that family’s history, did not distress her nearly as much as the trees that loomed around it.
Hair hung from their branches in matted gray clumps, like the corrupted trees she’d seen on patrol with Harper and Violet. But there was something new about these. Something descended from the branches, buds made of strange gray petals that each folded inward to a glimmering, iridescent point. They were large and ungainly, each one at least six inches long, and the petals were long and skinny, twined together in a way that felt grotesquely familiar.
May stepped closer, nausea welling up in her as she realized what they reminded her of: human hands, the five fingers elongated and fused together. Her eyes roamed across the clearing, counting—there were nearly a dozen.
“What are they?” she whispered, turning around.
“Some sort of growth,” Ezra said, his voice muffled through the bandanna. He gestured to the tree closest to the altar. May watched, horrified, as a wisp of gray smoke leaked out of the tip and dissipated into the air, iridescent flecks swirling in the autumn sunshine.
“It’s spreading the corruption,” she gasped.
Ezra nodded grimly. “I believe so. While doing my research, I discovered more oblique references to the corruption we’re dealing with now. It would seem that what the founders trapped in the Gray was not just the Beast—it was the powers it possessed when it was roaming Four Paths, and those powers are leaking outward through the Gray and into town, hurting us.”
“But they don’t hurt the founders,” May said.
“I’ve noticed that, and I have a theory. I believe it’s because you are, essentially, already corrupted.”
May raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“It’s the equivalent of a vaccination,” Ezra said. “You’ve already been exposed to the pathogen in a contained environment when you completed your ritual with the Beast. The rest of the town, however, has not, and therefore they remain highly susceptible.”
“But what about a founder who failed their ritual?” she asked slowly, thinking of Justin.
Ezra hesitated. “If they were still exposed to it and survived… that theoretically means they could still be immune.”
May thought about this. Direct contact with the Beast leading to a later immunity would include Justin, but she was still a little concerned about the possibility of contamination.
“Either way, you don’t have immunity,” May said. “So be careful, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” Ezra said, gesturing to his gloves, his steel-toed boots, the bandanna. May realized that he had as little skin exposed as possible without wearing a hazmat suit. “It spreads through direct contact—for now.”
“For now?”
“These growths concern me,” Ezra said frankly. “The corruption comes from the Gray, so when it opens, it emerges in its raw form, which seems to dissipate fairly quickly on its own. But when it finds a host to infect, it clings to it, festering and growing, turning its victims into vessels for the Beast. That’s how it spreads: Hosts come into direct contact with other hosts, which allows you to monitor and halt the spread with relative ease as we search for a cure. But these growths seem as though they emit a constant stream of raw corruption—as if they’ve taken it from the Gray and channeled it into Four Paths. They’re still dissipating fairly quickly, but if they spread, it will be immeasurably more difficult to stop the corruption. People will potentially be infected simply by getting too close and breathing it in.”
May struggled to let the true magnitude of this sink in. If these buds bloomed, it would be impossible to stop the corruption from spreading more quickly. All their containment efforts would be for nothing. The thought made her want to rip each of the buds off with her bare hands and stomp on them, but she couldn’t do something that rash. Maybe all that would do was release it earlier.
“You’re familiar with the other founders’ powers, yes?” Ezra asked. May nodded. “I believe a team-up of the Saunders girl, the Carlisle who can petrify things, and the Sullivan destruction is our best chance to stop this. Their powers are uniquely suited to this situation.”
A flash of jealousy hit May. She was almost as useless as Justin when faced with such practical, easily applicable powers.
But they can’t do what you can, a voice whispered in the back of May’s mind.
Her powers were her responsibility. Her birthright. Her gift. What good was that gift if she could not use that to protect anyone?
“Their powers aren’t the only ones that might be able to help here,” May said slowly.