“You really think so?”
Violet smiled at her. “I know so. You were strong enough to turn him down. That means you’re strong enough to get over him, too.”
Harper leaned her head against Violet’s shoulder, fighting back tears. But they were not the tears she’d come here to cry.
Violet was right, she realized. She was Harper Carlisle. The girl who’d raised a stone army. The girl who had helped save them all. The girl who could finally go home, the girl who was soft and strong and a little bit older than she’d been a few months ago.
And there was a future spiraling wide in front of her, filled to the brim with endless possibilities.
The mausoleum was quiet. Isaac stood in the shadow of his family’s ashes, staring at the plaques that reached up to the ceiling, and felt the full weight of the last few years bear down upon his shoulders.
“I think it should be you,” Gabriel said from beside him.
Isaac turned. They’d both dressed up for this, ties and sport coats that didn’t fit either of them right, and it was hard not to feel like they were both wearing a costume. Kids playing at adulthood, grasping at something they were never quite going to be ready for. He’d left his collar open deliberately, the slash of his scar worn not proudly, but honestly.
“Are you sure?” Isaac asked, the words echoing off the walls. His hands no longer sparked with power now, and although he’d expected to feel nothing but relief when it was gone, the truth was that he missed it a little. But it had been worth giving it up for this, for peace. It was the only good sacrifice his family had ever made.
“Yeah,” Gabriel said, handing him the small, unmarked urn that contained their mother’s ashes. “I’m sure.”
The decision to take Maya Sullivan off life support had not been an easy one. But it had been easier to make in the aftermath of all of this, with the full knowledge that no one would ever have to suffer the same way she had again. The truth was, she had died on Isaac’s ritual day, but only now was he ready or able to admit that to himself. It hadn’t been her in that hospital bed anymore, nor was it truly her inside that urn, and yet Isaac still grieved anyway.
One more loss for him to bear. But at least he did not need to bear it alone.
Isaac swallowed hard and lifted Maya’s urn into the drawer beside his brothers, then slid it carefully shut. A shiny new plaque winked beside Caleb’s and Isaiah’s.
MAYA SULLIVAN
He’d wondered if it was right, burying her here, but it felt good to know they were all next to each other in some way. His eyes slid to the top of the mausoleum, where they’d removed Richard Sullivan’s plaque.
“What an asshole,” he muttered, staring at it.
“Tell me about it,” Gabriel said grimly. Isaac had only found out after the dust had settled that Richard was the one behind Gabriel’s sudden need to run away. He’d cornered him at the Pathways Inn and told him that Juniper and Augusta were lying about the truth behind Four Paths, that there was no way to fix the corruption. Gabriel, panicked, had listened—he’d recognized Richard as Justin and May’s father and figured he knew the truth. Isaac understood why Gabriel had bolted. Growth was hard. What mattered was that he’d come back.
It was Richard’s bloodthirst that had started all of this. Isaac knew that now. But against all odds, they had ended it.
“I miss her.” It was the only eulogy he could muster. “I miss all of them.”
“So do I,” Gabriel said. “But I think they’d be proud of us.”
His brother’s arm slid around his shoulder, and as they stood together, inside a monument to false gods and imaginary monsters, Isaac felt a bone-deep sense of relief.
All four of them were waiting for Isaac and Gabriel in his apartment. Harper nosing through his books, May organizing his kitchen, and Justin and Violet sitting on the couch, clearly in the middle of some kind of argument as he swung open the door.
“I told you this wasn’t necessary,” Isaac protested weakly, unsure which of them he was talking to. They’d understood when he explained that he just wanted the funeral to be him and Gabriel, but all of them had insisted they help out afterward, and they knew Isaac too well for him to effectively disagree. It was highly annoying.
“We’re your friends,” May said acridly, sticking her head out of the kitchen. “Now come on. We’re kidnapping you both.”
“I’m not sure it’s kidnapping if you tell someone you’re doing it first,” Harper said mildly. “Or if they agreed to it beforehand.”
“Also,” Violet said, jabbing a thumb at Gabriel, “I’m pretty sure he could take all of us if he wanted to.”
“Hey!” Justin said, while Gabriel simultaneously said, “I absolutely could.”
“Semantics,” May said, marching past them all and flinging open the door.
It was freezing cold outside—December in upstate New York was not exactly beach weather—but the exercise made it a little easier to bear. Perhaps it was overkill, to destroy the altar his family had kept in their backyard. But Isaac did not care. First they crushed it with a sledgehammer, smashing it one by one as the others cheered until there was nothing left but bits of crumbled stone. To celebrate, they carted over some kindling from the formerly corrupted trees and made a bonfire in the ashes of his family home. It was undoubtedly dangerous, but Isaac couldn’t find it in him to be concerned.
He watched the flames crackling and exhaled slowly, his breath visible in the air for a brief moment before it vanished into the column of smoke heading up toward the sky.
“I kind of get it now,” Violet said thoughtfully from beside him. “Property destruction is deeply cathartic.”
Isaac couldn’t hold back his laugh. “I can’t do it with just my hands anymore, unfortunately.”
“Somehow I think you’ll endure,” Violet said, knocking her shoulder against his.
Isaac snaked an arm around her back, and she leaned into him, her head nestled against his shoulder. “Somehow, I think I will.”
“I can feel you smiling,” her voice said, muffled. “You really are soft, huh?”
“You can’t feel someone smiling.”
“Aren’t you, though?”
He laughed, and after a moment she joined in too.
Four Paths had done its best to break him, but he was still here. And he would make the most of this chance he’d been given. The brother who’d come back, the friends who’d stuck around, the girl beside him, just as warm and comforting as the bonfire that flickered around the ashes of his past.
He would never forget what had happened to him here. But it did not control him any longer.
He would heal, and he would grow, and he would live.
EPILOGUE
There is something in the forest.
It has been there for May Hawthorne’s entire life, but things have changed. She and her family still guard it. Always have, always will. But what they guard it from now are people like Richard Sullivan. People like their ancestors.
People who would seek to take the forest’s power and bend it to their will.
The story the founders tell is simple. There was a monster, and now there isn’t anymore. Everyone is fine. Everyone is safe.