“You have been running for a long time,” Hetty Hawthorne snarled. “But not anymore, Richard. This ends here.”
They advanced, and he ran, scrambling back toward the edge of the clearing. But they were far faster than anything living, and the moment they reached him, their hands grasping at his flesh, Richard began to scream.
He fell to his knees, writhing and twisting. May gasped as she realized that his hair was turning from blond to gray to snow-white, thinning across his scalp, his flesh puckering and changing as his magic seeped away.
His body turned ashen; his spine twisted and spasmed just as the founders’ had in the memory Richard had shown May. Just as the body had in that vision the Beast had shown her.
Around her, the others bowed their heads, unable to watch. But May did not look away as her father’s flesh disintegrated. As roots spiraled down his arms and legs and his eyes faded to white. Soon there was nothing left of him but iridescent dust spread across the edge of the founders’ seal.
May got to her feet, shuddering not with pity, but relief.
Richard Sullivan was the only real monster in Four Paths. And this death, at the hands of those he’d wronged, was exactly what he deserved.
She blinked again, and the founders were gone, their bodies dissolved into a mist that coiled in gray ropes around the seal. The Beast’s voice murmured wordlessly in her ear, fading in and out of focus. Wind whipped through May’s hair; the mist spun, and she tipped her head back, gasping as a great crack appeared in the center of the Gray’s off-white sky.
A wave of light-headedness washed over her, and she beckoned the others. They crouched together at the edge of the shaking seal, their arms wrapped around one another as the world broke apart.
The Beast’s voice sang inside her mind, and May knew with everything in her that this was the last time she would hear it.
Thank you, it whispered, and then a roar of screaming, howling wind swept it away.
When May opened her eyes again, the four of them were crouched in the center of the town square, their bodies braced against a storm that had finally passed.
They moved apart from one another, all staring with wide, silent eyes at the world around them.
The tree stump was gone. The sky was cloudy and beautiful above their heads, and the air was brisk and fresh, the smell of decay nowhere to be found.
May got to her feet and stared at the trees that still coiled around the seal, at the silver veins already beginning to wink out of view.
Something drifted down from the air above, a single fleck of white. May reached her hand out automatically to catch it, gasping as it dissolved on her palm, wet and cold. And then the relief came, the understanding that it was truly over, it was done.
Because it was not ash falling from the sky. It was snow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It surprised Violet more than anything else how quickly people came back. She’d wondered if the evacuation would be enough to turn Four Paths into a permanent ghost town, but it wasn’t. People were stubborn about things like home, even when home was a place where the trees still looked a bit too much like flesh from the right angles and the smell of rot sometimes wafted mysteriously across the town square.
It surprised her, too, how much she missed her powers. They had only been part of her life for a few months, but she’d grown used to them, and although she’d never asked for them, she still felt their absence. Much like everything else in Four Paths, they’d grown on her.
Four Paths High School opened again within a week, as did all the businesses on Main Street. And the corrupted people got better, even Justin. Violet was well acquainted with everyone’s progress due to her own elongated stay at the county hospital, where a seemingly endless string of medical professionals commented on how strange it was that two such brutal puncture wounds hadn’t done more damage to her vital organs. Violet just smiled and nodded.
She had visitors—Justin, who was also in the hospital and extremely bored, and Harper, May, and Isaac, who all talked over each other to update her on what was happening in town.
But it was Juniper’s visits that mattered the most. When Violet had awoken in the hospital for the first time, the sight of her mother sitting at her bedside, her face creased with concern, had been a massive relief.
“I’m sorry about our argument,” Juniper said after she updated Violet on everyone else; Juniper, Augusta, Gabriel, and Harper’s siblings had been incapacitated by Richard during the battle, but he had not done any lasting damage. Violet understood the thinly veiled panic in her mother’s voice now. Their reconciliation was so recent—it was hard for her to fight with Juniper and not worry that it would return them to the way things had been before. “And I’m so glad you’re safe. I nearly turned back from the Hawthorne house to go look for you when I realized how dangerous it was outside.”
“The same thing happened to me,” Violet said, remembering Harper and Isaac refusing to let her charge into danger. “I’m sorry, too. About the way I reacted. It was just hard, knowing there was something so massive you hadn’t told me about Four Paths.”
“I wish I had been brave enough to tell you the truth a little earlier,” Juniper said. “But it’s all done now.”
Violet hesitated. “Not quite.”
The hospital stay had given her time to think this through. The Beast was gone, and so was Richard. The truth Juniper had kept hidden for so long could fade away if they let it, crumble as easily as a bit of iridescent ash.
But Violet had learned by now that the most dangerous thing in Four Paths had never been the Beast, or the Gray. It had been everyone’s secrets.
“How?” Juniper asked.
“I want us to tell the town the truth they’ve always deserved,” she said. “About what really happened with the founders.”
“Violet.” Juniper’s lips pursed. “You know we can’t do that.”
“Why not?” Violet asked.
“Because someone else might try to do what our ancestors did,” her mother said. “You four were altruistic enough to give it up. But the world isn’t like that.”
“I know it isn’t,” Violet said. “But we have to be. We’ve always been meant to guard the forest, right? I don’t see why that has to change. But we can’t guard it by lying about it. We guard it by being honest about how our ancestors messed up. Even if it makes us look bad. Even if they can’t forgive us.”
Because Juniper was right that there would be more people like Richard. More people like the Church of the Four Deities. But there would be more people like Violet and Isaac and May and Harper and Justin, too, she hoped. If they told the story right.
“It isn’t going to be easy,” Violet continued, squeezing her mother’s hand. “But even if they hate us, if it means this never happens again, it’s worth it.”
“I don’t know where you get that bravery from, Violet.”
“I do,” Violet said softly, the wounds in her stomach aching as she stared at the woman who had somehow walked through hell and come out the other side.
Violet spent three days being treated for her wounds and another night under observation before they let her go home. To her surprise, Augusta Hawthorne had taken to Violet’s proposal more easily than Juniper had. By the time Violet went back to school, Augusta had issued a public statement describing the facts of what had occurred, then promptly tendered her resignation as sheriff of Four Paths.