He pressed forward, deeper.
The light here was off—green too bright in some places, shadows pooling too thick in others. Roots twitched in the soil as though trying to crawl free. The Grove Core’s pulse battered against him, jagged and violent.
And then he saw her. Kneeling in the moss, still as an idol, eyes wide and unfocused. For one impossible heartbeat he thought the Grove Core’s sickness had rooted itself in her, climbing her bones, silencing her shine. Something sharp and irrational cut through his exhaustion, and he lurched forward, laying a hand on her shoulder.
“Marigold?” he breathed.
Chapter
Eleven
Goldie bumped her car onto the gravel access road off Elder’s Crescent. The meadow beyond looked like a dress rehearsal for chaos: volunteers in reflective vests lugging crates of bunting, a cupcake vendor mid-tantrum on the path, and a pair of teens swearing at a half-collapsed charm booth. Mostly, though, it was just piles. Stacked tents. Bundled ribbon. The bones of a festival waiting for flesh.
It was two days before Beltane, and the last several days had been a blur, one long hangover of City Hall drama threaded with group texts, magical checklists, and escalating logistics. Goldie was still annoyed she hadn’t been able to pry those zoning records from the archives, but Tamsin had just sent a breezy text saying,we’ll make sure you have them in hand before Solstice, darling.
She’d consoled herself with drama-scrolling through shaky protest footage, a few arrests, and photos of Marlow Truckenham and Karen Vesuvius. There were even grainy shots of the Ashenvale delegation ducking into their sleek black cars.
Word on the street said the sale discussions had been “paused” until after Beltane. She’d texted Jonah for dirt, but hehadn’t much to offer—just a handful of shrugging emojis and a wink face that still managed to make her grin at the screen.
She’d spent half the night squinting at zoning overlays on Google, trying to trace where the festival’s ward-lines overlapped the Holdings’ messy patchwork of ownership. By the time she crawled into bed, her head was pounding and her eyes were seeing dotted lines everywhere.
But today and tomorrow would be a circus of last-minute Beltane prep, which was why she was here now with a trunk full of charms, arms full of errands, and a to-do list longer than the vendor path.
Goldie rounded a bend in the path and spotted a volunteer hunched over a clipboard, his antlers catching the light like polished pipework.
“Coven Chapter II?” the volunteer asked. His voice had the slightly hollow resonance of something with too many lungs. “I was told you’d be by this morning. Got a cart for you.”
Goldie winked at him. “You’re a gods-send, truly. Where should I haul everything to?”
The volunteer blinked with his two primary eyes, followed swiftly by the third one in the center of his forehead. He turned and pointed toward the mist-swathed copse. “Straight through there. You’ve got the words, right? It’s warded to keep the public out until the bonfire’s lit.”
“Exactly,” Goldie said, lips curling in satisfaction. “Perfect time to stash the good stuff. No one messing with the charm sachets before they’ve had a chance to ripen. They’re really good this year.”
The volunteer grinned. “You witches and your ritual secrets.”
Goldie winked, then turned toward her car. She popped the hatch and hauled out a cedar crate stampedSACRED FLAME COMPONENTS—HANDLE WITH REVERENCE (OR ATLEAST BOTH HANDS).She muscled it onto the cart, rolled her shoulders, and started forward.
As she crossed the boundary, the air buckled—a heat-haze in reverse, cold rushing over her. She stumbled, catching herself, and for an instant the trees seemed to lean closer, listening. A ripple crawled through the clearing, low and deliberate.
Goldie hummed brightly, as though she hadn’t noticed. “Nothing says Beltane like twitchy wards and ominous atmospherics,” she muttered, and kept rolling the cart deeper into the trees.
The path narrowed fast, ancient tree roots shouldering their way through the tidy gravel, the moss swallowing forgotten flagstones. This was the entrance to the Grove Core, the sacred center of the Green Holdings.
The Green Holdings was a beautiful sweep of land; the site of festivals, celebrations, and every kind of civic gathering. But the Grove Core was different. If the Holdings were the body, the Grove Core was the heart—the ancient wellspring everything else grew outward from. Some said the Grove Core held an echo of the city’s first magic, a spark that could take on shape if ever it needed or wanted to.
While the Land Trust had spent thirty years commercializing and taming the surrounding land into a profitable, multi-use zone, the Core remained stubbornly, beautifully wild.
As she walked, Goldie hoped that whatever happened with the sale to Ashenvale, this small, sacred piece of Bellwether would be allowed to remain just as it was: untouched, untamed, and breathing with old magic. Some places simply weren’t meant to be domesticated, no matter how unstabilized they became.
At the place where the ancient tree trunks leaned together to form an arch, she stopped. The air in front of her trembled, cooland slick, like ice beginning to shear. She laid a hand against it and murmured the ritual pass-phrase.
“By root and rind, by spark and spine, grant me passage through the green.”
The trees shuddered, rattling their leaves; then the air peeled back just wide enough for a woman and a cart. Goldie pushed up the sleeves of her hoodie, braced both hands on the cart handle and took stock of her nerves. She’d walked this sacred place during high rites when the place blazed with lanterns and smoke. But now, stripped of ceremony, it felt like a ballroom with the chandeliers unlit.
Focus.She bumped the cart over a lattice of roots. Deliver charms, get out.
But the path kept twisting, every turn a little sharper. Branches leaned, moss blotted out the dirt in bruised swathes. She glanced up. The tree canopy was packed so tight that it darkened the light.
