“Careful what you wish for,” Goldie sang, hair whipping wild in the wind. The city dropped away beneath them, and all she could do was laugh.
Chapter
Ten
It happened almost instantaneously. One moment, the pulse of his god was steady. The next, pain tore through Splice like lightning striking a tree.
His breath seized. He staggered mid-step, bracing a palm to the atrium wall as the Thornfather convulsed beside him, bark splitting with a sound like rafters giving way.
Color drained from Mycor’s skin in an instant—green bleaching to gray, edges curling brown.
“Mycor,” Splice gasped.
The god’s answering cry was not word and not groan, but a seismic crack that rattled Splice’s chest hollow. Through their link, the pain surged sharp and mineral, scraping his marrow like stone on stone.
Splice dropped to his knees at Mycor’s side, hands frantic against bark and vine as if he could hold the wound shut by will alone. “What is it? What’s happened?”
The atrium lurched, shadows bleeding outward like spilled ink. When the Thornfather’s eyes opened, they gleamed with molten gold, shot through with threads of rot-black. His voice came raw, jagged—the sound of roots splitting stone.
“Blood wets the soil. I taste the break. Bones… bound… beneath. Roots choking. Rot rising. The land…”
The words broke into a bellow as Mycor’s body convulsed, vines lashing the marble floor. Splice felt the tether strain, rot gnawing through it, dragging them both toward collapse.
“No.” His throat filled with soil and panic. He pressed his hands to Mycor’s chest and reached inward, down into his own heartwood. Fingers of will closed around the green thread of his core. It shivered, resisting. He tore it free anyway.
Agony ripped through him, clean and white. A cry tore loose as he bent over the god, forcing the bleeding shoot of his own vitality into the cracked bark.
“Mycor,” he rasped. “Take it. Hold fast.”
The god shuddered, light and shadow writhing, then steadied. The storm didn’t pass, but its teeth dulled. Mycor drank. The bark flushed faintly with reluctant light.
Splice sagged. His chest burned, his ribs wet with green fire. The floor pitched. Vision tunneled to the glow of his god’s chest.
And then the dark took him.
When Splice clawed back to waking, the atrium lay hushed in the gray pallor of early morning. Light slanted through the skylight, thin and cold, dust drifting in its beam. His body felt leaden, every joint raw, every breath scraped thin.
The Thornfather slumped against the marble, vast shoulders heaving, each exhale shuddered with tremor.
“The Green Holdings writhe,” the god rasped. “The land chokes. Unless…” His chest seized; the last word bled out in a whisper. “…the snare is undone.”
Splice’s mind reeled. He had walked the Holdings mere days ago: unstable, fractured, restless—but not like this. Not enough to hollow a god. Something had shifted. Something had been triggered.
“I’ll find it,” Splice swore, his hoarse voice tasting of earth and iron. “I’ll fix it.”
The Thornfather’s gaze flickered, then dimmed, his frame sagging back against the stone.
Splice pushed to his feet. The halls of Greymarket pitched and breathed as he staggered into them, every step an effort, every wall bending close as if listening. The Thornfather’s pain still echoed faintly in his bones. The tether between them was frayed but intact, and the god’s words—snare, blood, bones—rattled in his mind like stones in a jar.
He stumbled out of the building and turned, blind to everything but the pull. He couldn’t remember choosing the direction; only that it dragged at something older than his limbs, older than thought.
Outside, Bellwether was just beginning to stir. Morning mist clung to the cobbles. Market tents slouched half-raised along the square, and the scent of bread ovens drifted from alleys where witches chalked sigils in flour dust. He drew strength from none of it. His own rhythm faltered, his roots aching with every pace.
Still, he moved forward. The Grove Core called.
By the time he reached the outer ring of the Green Holdings, his stride had evened, though weakness still shadowed each breath. Volunteers milled near the gate, shoulders bowed beneath armfuls of bunting and charms. One started at the sight of him, clipboard clutched like a shield. Another stepped forward as if to ask his business, then thought better of it and backed away. He passed through without a word.
The Grove Core’s breath struck him the moment he crossed the threshold. Wrong. Uneven. A stagger where there should have been a steady pulse. It slammed into his chest hard enough to buckle his knees. He caught himself on a root-snarled post, breath ragged, vision swimming.
