She wanted a world where girls did not need to grow a spine of steel just to survive. Where they could be as soft and silly as they wanted. Where they could walk into a room full of new people and see endless possibilities instead of potential threats.
“No, we shouldn’t,” Violet said. “But we’re cut off from everyone else, and we’re the only four people with some idea of what’s going on. That means we’re the only ones who have a real chance of stopping Richard Sullivan before he gets even more powerful.”
“How do we do that?” Isaac asked.
Violet twisted a lock of crimson hair around her finger, shadows flickering across her face in the candlelight. “The story Juniper told me was missing a piece. The founders’ ritual to stop the corruption didn’t fail because they did it wrong. It failed because Richard murdered them. Which means if we finish the job the founders tried to do, we can fix this.”
“But how can we figure out what the founders did?” Isaac asked.
And then came a soft, gentle voice from the last person Harper expected.
“I have an idea,” Justin said.
May woke up with the taste of guilt and bile in her mouth. Everything hurt; her limbs and torso ached in a way that felt soul-deep, as if she’d been ripped apart and sewn crudely back together.
She didn’t want to open her eyes. She was too frightened of what she would see: the corrupted trees in the Gray, Justin’s veins bulging out in his neck, the bubbling cauldron she’d been forced to drink from, or—worst of all—her father’s sick, smiling face.
But when she finally forced herself to look, she was no longer in the Gray.
Instead, she was lying in the same place she’d seen at Justin’s birthday party: fog drifting around her, branches knitting together above her head. Roots spiraled below her body like a bed, and through it all thumped a heartbeat, slow and steady, one May knew as well as her own. She rolled over and braced her hands against the roots, realizing as she sat up that she recognized where she was. Beneath the roots was the smooth gray stone of the founders’ seal, but she was no longer here with her father, and that horrible cauldron of a tree stump was gone. Instead, she was alone in the center of another vision.
She should have been terrified. And yet on some bone-deep level she felt safe. No harm would come to her from this place. The only thing she had to fear was Ezra—no, Richard.
“What’s going on?” she murmured, the words echoing through the drifting mist. And then came the last thing she expected: a response.
You asked for help, said a voice inside her mind, a little tinny and unfocused around the edges, like a radio with bad reception. I’m afraid I could not protect you from Richard, but—The words cut out and she heard hissing, spitting static instead.
“I’m sorry,” she said, frowning. “I can’t hear you.”
The cards! cried the voice. Use the cards—And then it cut out again.
May had been forced to leave the Deck of Omens at home. And yet when she looked to her left, she saw a small box sitting on the roots with an all-seeing eye carved into the top.
A shiver ran down her spine.
She flipped open the box, drew out the cards. They felt real as ever between her fingers as she began to shuffle them, comforting and solid. Like home.
“What are you trying to tell me?” she asked aloud, and to her great relief she felt the question course through her, a tether of power that had come back to her once again. The cards began to disappear in her hands a moment later, until only five were left.
She laid out the first one—the Seven of Branches, her card—and felt the connection in her mind click back into place.
There you are, the voice whispered in her mind, sounding relieved. Hello, Seven of Branches.
“Hello,” May said softly, feeling raw inside. “Beast.”
So you’ve finally figured it out.
“Yes.” Some part of her had known before her father had said it aloud, but it was undeniable now. With a surge of shame, May thought of all the things the Beast knew about her. It had seen so many of her ugliest, pettiest desires; in some ways, it understood her better than her own family did. “Is it true? That my power has just been… talking to you, all this time?”
Yes and no. The Beast’s voice was deep and mournful. She could hear more clearly now that it was not one voice, but several speaking in unison. Richard did not lie to you. He created you in an attempt to destroy me.
“Destroy you?” May fought back a hysterical surge of laughter. That certainly would have solved a lot of Four Paths’ problems. “I don’t understand.”
You will, it said. Now that you’re listening. Keep going, Seven of Branches.
May flipped the second card over. It was the Six of Branches, her mother’s card—and a moment later a vision of Augusta Hawthorne appeared in front of her, cross-legged and thoughtful, her eyes hooded with disapproval.
May gasped and scrambled backward. “Mom?”
My apologies. Augusta’s head rose; her eyes met May’s, and she realized that they were flat and lifeless instead of icy blue, that this Augusta was a little wispy and indistinct around the edges, like she was imperfectly formed. I wasn’t certain how I would appear to you, but I suppose this makes sense.
“It’s messed up.” May forced her voice not to shake. “Talking to me through her like that.”
Your mind chose her, the Beast said. I do not pretend to understand the intricacies inherent in each of the founders’ minds, only that you are all terribly unique and exhausting, and keeping up with your entanglements has frankly been impossible.
“I feel the same way half the time.” May sighed. And then she remembered what she was actually talking to, and she met her mother’s lifeless gaze again. “What do you actually look like? What are you?”
That, the Beast said, is rather complicated.
“This isn’t the time to be vague,” she said as she flipped the third card over. “I need to understand.” The art painted on the Deck of Omens revealed the Crusader. The sight of her father’s card made her hands shake, her stomach churn.
Augusta’s face twisted with regret. When the founders came to Four Paths, they didn’t find a monster. They found a forest with power, and they took it for their own. They did not understand then that they were never meant to bind themselves to this magic. They were not prepared for the way their humanity changed the forest, nor the way the forest changed their humanity. It created a grotesque problem—a plague, of sorts, spreading through the town and the trees.
“So the picture Richard showed me wasn’t a lie either,” she said slowly. “The founders did know about the corruption. It goes back that far.”
They did. And the more they used their powers, the worse it became. Desperate, they decided to try to give their powers back, to fix it.
“But Richard betrayed them?”
Yes. He believed he could sacrifice them to the forest and steal their powers. But the founders refused to yield to him as they died, and instead they created a shield, something that would lock Richard out. A world he could not access. Powers he could not reach.
“The Gray,” May said slowly.
Not just the Gray, Augusta said. They created me. I am the forest you live in, Seven of Branches, I am the town you love so much. I am your home. And I am the people who gave their lives so long ago, the gods you worshipped, and now the demon you wish to kill.