“No,” Juniper said. “You can’t.”
“We do need someone from every family,” May said. “And if she can’t fight, she’ll be safer in there than she is out here.”
“See?” Violet pushed Gabriel’s hands away, ignoring his noises of protest, and laboriously sat up. “I’ll be fine.”
May wasn’t sure that was true, but they had no time to argue about it.
“Can you use your powers?” she asked.
Violet paused, then shook her head, panic dawning on her face.
“Not without hurting myself more,” she said, looking even paler than usual.
“That’s okay,” May said, mentally readjusting her plan. They could still do this without Violet’s Saunders abilities, but it would be a little tougher. “You won’t need them, but you should probably leave your companion behind.”
Violet nodded with understanding and gave Orpheus a quiet, knowing look.
“Keep Mom safe, all right?” she said to the cat, scratching him between the ears. “And, Mom—I promise, I’m coming back out.”
May wasn’t sure that was true either, for any of them, but she didn’t say so. Instead, she reached out a hand and helped Violet to her feet.
Harper approached the trees growing thickly around the seal, her heart pounding in her chest. Behind them, the battle raged; she could hear Richard yelling and cursing at her siblings. Their goal, May explained, was to drive the girl’s father away from the seal so that they could find a way through the trees to do the ritual inside. They had enough obstacles already without factoring in Richard’s powers. It was working for now, but Harper had no idea how long they had until their reinforcements failed.
She turned around one final time and caught Mitzi’s gaze. Her sister looked at her, fierce and determined, and Harper felt a tangled mixture of regret and pride for all they had endured. Her siblings were survivors, she realized, just like her. And if she could finish this, they would find a way to heal together.
Beside her, May and Isaac supported Violet as Harper walked up to the nearest tree trunk. All the trees were rippled and bloated, the clear outlines of iridescent hearts beating within their chests. Hair hung in great clumps from their branches, which crooked and wriggled like beckoning fingers. Human hands pounded against the trees from the inside out. It was an orchard of flesh, an image that Harper knew would be stamped indelibly on her brain for the rest of her life.
“This place radiates a deeply cursed energy,” Violet murmured, her voice a little loopy.
“That’s because it’s literally cursed,” May said, sighing. “Get it together, Saunders.”
“That’s no way to talk to a girl who almost died—”
“Stop it,” Harper said quietly, drawing her sword. “Let’s go.”
The moment she swung the blade forward, branches shot out toward them, twisting, grasping. May jumped back, yanking Violet with her. Harper reacted on instinct, spinning and slicing through the branches. They fell to the ground, wriggling, as Isaac knelt down and pressed his hands into the dirt.
“Stand back,” he growled, a moment before another shock wave emanated from him, just like the one he’d used to attack Richard earlier. The effect was immediate: a line of trees collapsed into a path, sinking, writhing, their trunks bubbling grotesquely as they disintegrated. Harper rushed forward, her sword at the ready. She sliced and hacked at branches as they reached for her, refusing to let her guard down. Every moment of her training had been for this: an army that she’d never expected yet knew exactly how to fight.
Together, they rushed through the tiny path they had made, one that was already closing behind them. Harper saw a great, writhing mass of roots over the town seal that extended up into a tree stump, a cauldron boiling with liquid. Already, the iridescent puddles they had left behind were writhing and foaming, new saplings rising from the ashes.
May walked toward the cauldron, her blond hair streaked with grime, and spread her arms wide.
“This is it,” she whispered. “This is where we end it.”
The founders’ seal had grown markedly more corrupted since Richard had forced May to drink, the branches twining thickly above her head, nearly blocking out the light, the roots growing just as tightly along the ground.
All around them, the hearts illuminated in the trees beat in tandem, their thump, thump, thump loud enough to drown out the rhythm in May’s own chest. May knew she should feel scared, but she felt strong instead. She could feel the Beast’s presence swirling around her—what was left of it, anyway. Feel its panic pulsating at the edge of her consciousness, whining in the back of her mind. It was dying, but what power it had remaining was centered here.
The others looked just as disturbed as she did. May had no idea how Violet was even standing, her shirt caked in blood, her face flushed with the clear effort of every step she took. She swayed, then sank to her knees, panting. Isaac knelt gently beside her, gesturing for May to continue.
Beneath the membranous skin of the trees, forms stirred, vaguely humanoid. They pressed themselves against the edges of the trunks, reaching toward them but unable to break through. May gasped and stepped backward as a handprint appeared on the nearest chestnut oak, bulging outward. A familiar face appeared a moment later, then another, both of them baring iridescent teeth.
May’s stomach dropped as she gazed at Caleb and Isaiah Sullivan.
Isaac’s voice rang out a moment later. “No,” he murmured. “No…”
Violet, who was leaning on his arm, let out a noise of recognition. May turned her head to see that Daria Saunders’s wizened face had appeared across the clearing.
She whirled around, staring at faces she remembered from obituaries and so many others she did not. Each of these figures stirring in the forest was a life the Gray had taken to hold back the corruption, to satisfy its appetites. It didn’t matter that she knew they were merely echoes, that the souls in each of them had long since departed the earth. They still shook her to her core.
May fell to her knees, her breaths coming too quickly, the world around her spinning. A moment later, a figure appeared in front of her—not an apparition or a grotesque reimagination of the dead, but Harper Carlisle, grime and iridescence smudged on her cheeks, her mouth a thin, determined slash.
May swallowed, tears brimming at the corners of her eyes. “It’s all our fault,” she whispered. “All of this… all of them…”
“Don’t break on me, Hawthorne.” Harper’s voice was soft and steady. “Not now. Not when you know that this is his fault, not yours.”
She held out her hand. May grasped it, and together, they rose to their feet. Across the clearing, Isaac and Violet still knelt together, transfixed and trembling. Wordlessly, they walked up to them; wordlessly, Isaac and Violet turned.
“We can’t let him win,” Harper said.
Violet snapped out of it first. She placed a hand on Isaac’s shoulder, and he nodded, leaning into her touch, his eyes fluttering shut for one short, pained moment before they opened again, blazing with determination.
“Let’s do this ritual, then,” he said. “Now.”
The roots grew wild and free, coiling across the founders’ seal. May knelt in the center of the stone and yanked them away just as she had in her vision.