Jonah’s lips twitched unhappily. He finally looked up, sorrow flickering in his expression as rose from the southern marker. “I suppose I owe you that much,” he murmured, moving over to Goldie’s side. His hand lifted and brushed a curl away from her face with unsettling tenderness.
Splice growled again, his gaze fixed on Jonah like twin blades.
Goldie didn’t move. Her pulse hammered so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
“We can’t let you do your ritual to heal the land,” Jonah said quietly. “Everything has to break first, because only then can we avenge my brother’s murder.”
Goldie blinked, the words scraping against her brain. “Your brother?” she managed. “Marlow Truckenham?”
Tamsin barked a short, humorless laugh that cut through the clearing like glass.
Jonah shook his head. His voice came rough, unraveling. “No. Elijah. He was killed here, thirty-three years ago.”
Goldie’s mind reeled back to the vision: the boy in the circle, blond hair, blue eyes wide with terror. The same faded blue as the man standing before her now.
Her throat constricted. “You knew about the ritual. How?”
Tamsin’s smirk sharpened. “Because I told him.”
Goldie whipped her head toward her. “But how? I didn’t see you in the memory. You weren’t there. You’re not even on the Land Trust! I thought it was the original signatories who did all this.”
Tamsin’s sighed. “No, dear, I wasn’t there. But I was the one who found the spell. I gave them the words, the cutting, the bind.”
She paced the salt circle as she spoke, each step deliberate, each syllable measured. “Marlow wanted his name on the papers; I preferred mine off them. He took the glory, I took the power. I stayed unseen and reaped the rewards.”
Her expression softened, briefly, something wistful flickering in her expression. “We were lovers once, you know. Marlow and I. That’s why I helped him. At first.” She let the silence linger, then shook her head. “For years, it worked, even after Marlow and I went our separate ways. Until he decided he wanted to sell the Holdings. He had the majority share, you see. He could force the sale and cut me out entirely.”
She brushed an invisible speck of dust from her sleeve. “I didn’t want him to sell, of course. To lose part of Bellwether to some soulless corporate machine? Unthinkable.” A faint, cold smile curved her lips. “For all my sins, I do love this city.”
Her laugh cracked through the clearing, sharp and brittle as ice. “So when the Ashenvale talks began, I started to pry. Ilooked back into the ritual. And in doing so, I found the boy’s brother.”
Her hand lifted, elegant and unhurried, resting lightly on Jonah’s arm. “He was living in Chicago, working some dreary little job, wasting what little spark he had. It didn’t take much to draw him in. I offered him a position that suited his talents—and his grief. And once I had him, I fed him the truth, one piece at a time.”
She sighed, a delicate sound of practiced regret. “And then it was time to use the leverage I’d kept all these years.” Her gaze slid toward Goldie, sharp as a knife. “What you unfortunately found, dear. The bead.”
Goldie’s breath caught, but Tamsin was already smiling again. “My insurance. My contingency for helping them perform the rite. No one but Marlow ever knew I was the architect, and that suited me just fine. He hated that I kept it, but it was a small price for my participation, and he knew it. That knowledge gnawed at him for decades: the simple truth that while it was in my hand, he could never quite move against me.”
Her voice smoothed back into calm precision. “All I had to do then was arrange the handoff. A generous slice of the Ashenvale deal in exchange for the bead.” She spread her hands, as if describing a minor business negotiation. “Marlow came to the Grove Core for the exchange. Jonah stepped out of the shadows and shot him.”
Tamsin’s expression flickered. “We didn’t mean to lose the bead,” she admitted. “In the chaos, it fell and disappeared into the earth.”
“Into the earth?” Goldie whispered, the memory snapping into place: the way the soil had shifted, the bead rising from the dirt and rolling to her hand.
“Yes.” Tamsin’s voice thinned, annoyance bleeding through her composure. “That was an unexpected complication, but notenough to change my plans. You see, the bead is keyed to the original ritual’s signature, so it can’t be opened without an original participant or someone who can speak the land.” She made a faintly disgusted face. “Like your Thornfather, apparently.”
Goldie stared at Jonah, searching his face for some trace of the man she’d once met. The one who’d brought her coffee, who’d smiled easily, who’d seemedkind.
But the man before her was pale and trembling, his jaw locked, eyes darting anywhere but hers.
“Jonah,” she said finally, her voice raw and incredulous. “Why? I get wanting to kill your brother’s murderer, butshewas part of it. Why go along with this? Why not expose them?”
A short, humorless laugh broke from Jonah. He met her eyes at last, and she saw not a confident killer but a man already hollowed out. “Expose them? You think anyone would’ve listened? Me, a nobody, a transplant, against Marlow Truckenham and the entire Land Trust? They’d have buried me so deep my ghost wouldn’t find daylight.”
He looked away, voice tightening to a brittle edge. “Tamsin promised me something no one else would. She’ll make sure Elijah is remembered. She’ll tell his story.”
“And, of course, the money didn’t hurt either,” Tamsin added brightly. “Justice is so much more satisfying when it comes with a dividend.” She placed a crystal at the northern point of the circle, her fingers steady and precise.
Goldie’s chest burned. “Then why stop us?” she blurted, voice raw. “Why block the ritual? We can fix this. We can heal the land.”
