And in the center of this desolation sits Kestra.
Even from a distance, the wrongness of her is apparent. When I knew her before, she was a vibrant green, her form graceful and fluid like a willow in the wind. The being before us is a twisted parody of that memory, with gnarled dark wood and thorns, her once-beautiful face split and raw like the heartwood of a lightning-struck oak.
I feel June’s sharp intake of breath. “Oh my god,” she whispers.
“Stay on my back,” I murmur. “If I tell you to run, you run. Understood?”
“But—”
“Understood?” I repeat, more firmly.
She sighs. “Understood.”
I approach slowly, each step deliberate. Kestra doesn’t move, but I know she’s aware of us. The air around her pulses with a dull, aching energy, the remnants of her power.
“Kestra,” I call when we’re twenty feet away. “I come without hostility.”
Her head turns with an audible creaking sound, like branches straining in high wind. Her eyes—once the clear green of new leaves—are now black and viscous, weeping a sap-like substance down her ravaged cheeks.
“Riven.” Her voice is barely recognizable, a rasping scratch like dead leaves across stone. “The mountain’s watcher.”
“I’ve come to speak with you,” I reply evenly. “About the damage to the mountain. About the threats to those below.”
She laughs, a sound like breaking branches. “Damage? You speak of damage?” She gestures around at the wasteland. “This was my heart. My soul. My child of three thousand years. And they took saws to her. They turned her into paper and furniture and toothpicks.”
I feel June trembling slightly against my back. Not from fear, I realize, but from empathy. Her heart rate has increased, but in the distinctive pattern I’ve come to associate with her emotional responses rather than terror.
“What happened was unforgivable,” I acknowledge. “But the humans you’re targeting now aren’t the ones responsible.”
“All humans are responsible!” Kestra shrieks, rising suddenly to her full height, nearly fifteen feet of twisted, thorny wood. The ground beneath us trembles. “They take and take and take without thought, without care!”
I remain still, though every predatory instinct screams to either attack or retreat with my mate to safety. “The mudslide,” I say instead. “The one that nearly killed June, my mate. That was your doing.”
“The human female who carries your scent all over my mountain?” Kestra’s head tilts at an unnatural angle. “Yes. A warning. One you clearly ignored.”
June shifts on my back, and before I can stop her, she speaks. “I understand you’re in pain—”
“You understand nothing!” Kestra howls, and the remaining stumps around us creak ominously. “What could a human possibly understand about watching your very soul be dismembered for the profit of others?”
“I understand loss,” June says, her voice steady despite the danger. “Not the same as yours, but I know what it’s like to have something precious taken before its time.”
Something flashes across Kestra’s twisted features—surprise, perhaps even recognition.
“Pretty words,” she finally says. “But words won’t bring back what was stolen.”
“No,” I agree. “Nothing will. But vengeance won’t heal you either, Kestra. It will only spread your pain to others who don’t deserve it.”
“Deserve?” She laughs again, more bitterly. “Who decides what humans deserve, Riven? You? You who hid in your caves while my child screamed? You who now takes a human mate while wearing the scars of their rejection?”
I feel June’s questioning gaze, but keep my focus on Kestra. “The sabotage must stop,” I say firmly. “The mountain can’t withstand your rage much longer.”
“The mountain,” Kestra says, suddenly quiet, “is dying anyway. Inch by inch, year by year. They will never stop taking until there is nothing left.”
She steps forward, and I tense, ready to defend June with my life if necessary.
“If they want to take the mountain from me,” Kestra continues in a deadly whisper, “then I will take the valley from them.”
Before I can respond, she begins to sink into the earth, her form dissolving into a tangle of roots and dark soil. The ground shudders violently, nearly throwing June from my back.
