Well, most of her family.
“I must say,” mused Ezra from beside her. “That was deeply unpleasant.”
“I can’t believe she threatened you with the dogs,” May muttered angrily. “She had no right—”
“It is her choice to decide not to take my help,” Ezra said. “I wish she were capable of changing her patterns, but both Augusta and your brother are unfortunately set in their ways.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” May shoved down the awful things she’d said to them, the guilt she felt. She was tired of feeling like she would never be enough. There was someone who valued her abilities, who actually believed in nurturing her powers instead of suppressing them. That felt like a far healthier thing to focus on. “So. About this plan…”
“Ah. Yes.” Ezra brightened up visibly behind his glasses. “As I said before, May, it would have been lovely to have their help, but they aren’t necessary. The only part of this that’s required is you.”
“But I failed,” May said softly. “When I tried to change the future, the cards went blank. And the corruption got worse.”
Augusta taking the cards away stung more than anything else. She was disarmed. Declawed. But refusing would have been worse—would have felt like a different kind of loss.
“That’s because we both miscalculated how strong the corruption would be,” Ezra said. “You’re strong too, but it will require more ability than you currently possess to destroy it. This ritual will grant you the power you need.”
“But I don’t have the cards. How can I—”
“Don’t worry.” Ezra’s voice was soothing. “We won’t need them.”
The Sullivan ruins crested the horizon a moment later. May could barely see them through the haze of twilight and the smoke of the airborne corruption.
“Be careful,” she told her father, handing him a cloth to wrap around his face. “I know you said you’re safe, but I don’t want you getting corrupted.”
“Very thoughtful of you, May.” He tied it around the bottom of his face and led her forward, into the thickening mist.
“Where are we going?” she said.
Ezra’s gaze went solemn behind his glasses. Again, his words were muffled by the fabric. “In order to do this right, May, we must bind you more closely to the Beast. And we can only do that from inside the Gray.”
Inside the Gray. May’s heartbeat sped up at the thought, but they were out of other options. She would have to go through with this, however risky it was.
Whatever mist was pouring out of the corrupted flowers had thinned the walls between Four Paths and the Gray until it was as easily ripped apart as paper. Isaac had already warned them that it would be easy to stumble through at the founders’ ritual sites, but May supposed that right now stumbling through was the plan. She stared, horrified, at the way the world shifted and changed between the trees, flickering back and forth between her world and the Beast’s prison. All around her, flower petals twisted and twitched, a slight discoloration at their edges that reminded May of fingernails.
“Stick with me,” she told Ezra, grasping for his arm in the darkness as they headed for the center of the churning fog. “Most humans don’t do too well in the Gray.”
May did her best to keep up the pretense of bravery as the fog engulfed them a moment later, but it wavered when a familiar voice rang out inside her head.
Fog rushed around them a moment later. Seven of Branches, it hissed, Seven of Branches—but May pushed it down. The fog thickened as they stumbled forward, and then May felt the world change around them in the matter of a single heartbeat. It was frightening to her, how easily they had stepped through a hole in the world. The fog cleared, and May blinked into the flat, surreal brightness of the Gray’s staticky sky.
The first thing May noticed was that the corruption was even worse here than it was in Four Paths. They were near the Sullivan estate, which was still intact here, a small cabin that looked nothing like the mansion May had known before Isaac had destroyed it. May inspected the tree nearest to her, her stomach churning as she tracked the silvery veins running beneath the places where the bark had peeled back. The tree looked far too much like human skin, but skin leached of all color, gray and bloated as a corpse.
Seven of Branches, the voice snarled in the back of her mind. Don’t—
She pushed it down.
“Where should we do the ritual?” she asked, turning to Ezra. Her voice rasped out a second later than her lips moved—it was disorienting. “Here?”
“No.” To her surprise, he didn’t seem frightened of the Gray at all. She supposed he’d probably heard a lot about it before—maybe he knew what to expect. “There’s a place that’s more important to the founders than this. It’s a direct conduit to the Beast, and it will allow you to channel it more quickly.”
May understood immediately. “The founders’ seal.”
“Exactly.”
“Why didn’t we just go into the Gray there?”
“The walls aren’t thinned like they are here, in the places where the corruption has already eaten them away,” Ezra said, shrugging. “This was our gate. Now come on. Let’s get going.”
A copse of trees grew around the founders’ seal. They were corrupted at a level May had not yet seen. Hanks of human hair grew from the branches in knotted, tangled clumps. Corrupted flowers bloomed across their branches, waving in a grotesque parody of human arms. And beneath their silver veins, pulsating gently inside each of the trees, was the thin, glowing outline of a human heart.
“Holy shit,” May whispered, the words echoing a second too late as she watched the heart move.
She remembered with a sickening rush how many times she had felt the hawthorn tree’s deep, steady heartbeat over the years. The dull thudding of these trees’ heartbeats coursed through her, sluggish and strange. All of it was wrong on a level May could barely conceptualize: a forest of flesh, as if the trees were doing their best to become human but did not know how to put all the pieces together.
She needed to stop this now.
In the center of the founders’ seal was a tree stump. Silvery veins radiated out from it, climbing over the seal. Inside the bark, spilling over the edges, was a boiling cauldron of iridescent gray liquid. Noxious smoke rose from it and wafted through the air. It was identical to the smoke pouring out of the flowers.
“What is this?” May gasped, turning to look at her father.
You know what it is, hissed the voice, so familiar, too familiar. You know, you know, you know—
“It’s the center of town.” Ezra was standing beside her now. May felt a slight rush of wooziness as she turned to look at him. “This stump contains the closest thing Four Paths has to the glue that binds it together. It’s the place the founders did their ritual to create the Gray and bind the beast. It will allow you to strengthen your own bond.”
“How?”
“By drinking from it.”
“You’ve got to be joking.” May’s stomach churned. “I am not drinking that.”
“It will strengthen your bond,” Ezra said calmly. “Desperate times call for—”