They had a plan, more or less, although in Isaac’s opinion it was not a very good one. Their first priority was rescuing May. Justin had told them where Richard was in the Gray—perhaps it was naive to think he would still be there, but it was their best chance of finding him. She would be wherever he was, and then they’d have to see if the three of them were actually strong enough to take him down.
Isaac’s palms burned in anticipation of what he was about to do as they reached the edge of the town square. The copse of trees here had grown wild and impassable, pulsating and writhing. Opening the Gray would be the easy part. The airborne corruption had thinned the veil to the point of rupture, and he could feel dozens of potential gateways all around him. All he had to do was find one and pull it open.
Isaac took a deep breath. His hands began to shimmer, and he opened them wide, ripping a hole in the world.
The guardians filed into the Gray at Harper’s command. She walked through after them, looking fierce and unflappable with her sword. Violet went next, pausing at the edge of the portal for a moment.
“Hey,” Isaac said softly. “You’re not doing it alone this time.”
She flashed him a grin. “I know.”
And then she was gone.
Isaac followed a moment later. It was distressingly easy—no strain on his muscles or his powers the way it had always been before, as if he’d merely had to unlock a door this time instead of make it himself and pull it open.
When he entered the Gray, he landed in a standoff.
Richard Sullivan stood at the edge of the town square, his hands raised, roots coiling at his beck and call from the forest that stretched behind him. Above his head was a broken white-and-gray sky, clouds roiling and clashing together like a thunderstorm.
“Well,” he said. “You three aren’t what I was expecting. A splintered bone, a tarnished dagger, and a stone with a sword of all things.”
Isaac realized, dread coursing through him, that his words had come out normally in the Gray, that the sound of their feet was not delayed a moment. If he looked to the horizon on all sides, he could see the world coming undone, the sharp outline of trees fading into mist. This place was falling apart at the seams, and they were at the center of its unraveling.
“Where’s May?” he called out, trying to focus.
“Oh, so she didn’t send you herself?” Richard said. “Disappointing.”
Isaac didn’t believe him. Richard wouldn’t let her go that easily.
“Don’t pretend,” Violet snapped. “We know you have her.”
“You’re in such a rush to die,” Richard said, sighing. “Well. Let’s get on with it, then.”
And the battle began.
Harper raised her hand, and her army of stone animals rushed toward Richard. He countered with the ground itself. Corrupted roots sliced up from the dirt, coiling around red-brown stone. Isaac stared into the maelstrom, his mind churning.
This was the man all his troubles came from. His selfishness had created the cycle of brutality that had made Isaac’s life a living hell. He was the reason why Caleb and Isaiah were dead, why his mother was dying, why he and Gabriel had been broken apart. All for this. All for power.
This was his chance to end this cycle once and for all.
He would make Richard Sullivan regret the day he’d turned on the other founders. And he would show him the boy who had survived his ancestor’s brutal ritual. Heat burned through him as he focused on the trees nearest to him, and then his fury surged outward, his hand brushing against the nearest trunk, which disintegrated to ash. Roots coiled around his legs, but they sloughed off into ash wherever they touched bare skin. He was on fire; he was a Sullivan, through and through, and if he could only use his power to destroy, well, then he would destroy this.
“Not bad,” Richard said, catching his eye from across the clearing. Beside him, Harper hacked off the edge of a root that was trying to snake around her limb. They froze when they touched her, too, in a different way—crystallizing into red-brown stone. “It’s interesting to me that our kin chose you as a sacrifice. They must not have seen your potential.”
“Nobody deserves to be sacrificed,” Isaac said flatly, locking eyes with him.
He heard what happened next before he saw it. The ground began to shiver, stone animals jolting off-balance, and a great rushing sound emerged from behind him. Something was waking.
The roots Richard had been wielding went limp on the ground, and all around them, surging up from the dirt, came the desiccated remnants of the woods he had tried to destroy. Roots clawed their way free of the dirt and raced toward him, taking an entire tree with them. Its branches clawed at the air as they reached for Richard. Violet was in the center of it all, her red hair whipping across her face. Her arms were outstretched, her companion at her side.
She was radiant and terrifying, impossible to look away from. Isaac watched, his heart thumping in his chest, as she walked slowly toward Richard.
“You’re not the only one who can handle the dead,” she said, and Isaac felt it again, a pull so powerful that she might as well have twined those roots around him, too.
“All three of you are strong,” Richard said thoughtfully as Violet advanced on him. “I’ll give you that.”
Violet flicked her wrist, and the tree branches whipped toward Richard’s torso. His own palms shot out, and a moment before they could touch him, they froze.
“But,” he continued, a vicious grin growing on his face, “I’m stronger.”
He opened his arms wide, and the roots at his feet surged up again, faster than Isaac could process. They sped forward, slicing through the air, and impaled themselves in Violet’s torso. Her body arched forward, and her scream split Isaac’s world in two.
Suddenly Isaac was back on the altar again, listening to Caleb’s and Isaiah’s wails, his body convulsing as he struggled to burn through his restraints. Reality flickered in and out—he saw his feet moving; heard his voice roaring; saw a flash of Harper in his peripheral vision, her army swarming toward Richard in a red-brown wave.
He struggled forward, gasping for air, until he reached Violet’s body. The roots had released her, dumped her carelessly on the ground. She lay on her side, too still, crimson leaking across her shirt. Orpheus meowed anxiously beside her, butting his head against her cheek.
“Violet,” he breathed, kneeling beside her. “Violet, please—”
Her eyes fluttered open, and her hands moved weakly, scrabbling across the dirt until she could push herself up into a sitting position. He let out a deep sigh of relief to see her moving—and then he saw the blood trickling down her chin.
“Isaac,” she croaked, lifting herself up. “It hurts.”
“I know,” he said. Behind them, Harper sent another wave of stone animals Richard’s way, but he knew she couldn’t hold him off forever. None of them were strong enough to do that on their own. “We’re going to get you help, okay?”
Violet let out a choking sound. More blood dribbled from her lips, and Isaac realized she was trying to laugh.
“I know what death looks like,” she said. “I’m not the only Saunders. You can still finish this—”