Splice’s body convulsed once more, then sagged. Goldie’s palm moved slow circles across his back. She didn’t know what the hells was happening, but she knew this much: sometimes you shut up, stay present, and hold on. People cracked. People wept. You couldn’t always fix it, but you stayed.
Silent, stubborn tears soaked hot into her shoulder. They clung, sticky like sap.
“Everything is wrong,” Splice whispered thickly. “Mycor withers. The land keens. And I… I did not mean to hurt you. I never meant…” His breath hitched. “I feel too much. Your light, his pain… it all presses through me. I cannot carry it. I can’t…”
“Shhh.” Goldie cupped the back of his head, rocking side to side in small, instinctive motions, as if she were soothing a child. Her fingers slid into the vinelike strands of his hair, tracing their strange texture. And in the quiet of that motion, she felt the floor beneath them creaking like roots stretching deeper, the air thickening with the faint tang of soil after rain.
Slowly, slowly, the panic ebbed. The tension drained from his body, the storm dragging itself back toward the horizon. Goldie held on until the thread of fear finally slackened, until no more hot tears seeped sticky into her shoulder.
Only then did she ease back carefully, one hand sliding beneath his chin. She lifted it gently, coaxing him to meet her eyes.
Splice’s face was a wreck. His eyes were swollen and glassy, the green fractured through with strange amber streaks. Sap clung tacky at the corners of his eyes, giving his lashes a resinous sheen. Thin veins of vine curled along his jaw, tightening and loosening with each unsteady breath.
Goldie’s lips curled into a small smile. “There you are.”
He blinked hard, then pulled himself out of her arms as if embarrassed. “This display was… inefficient.”
“That’s crying for you,” Goldie said, her voice soft but edged with a smile. “Didn’t know plants could cry, though. That’s new.”
He coughed. “Please don’t call me that. I’m not a plant. I am… only plant-like.”
Goldie tilted her head. “Plant-adjacent. Got it.” She gave him a deliberate wink, all glitter and mischief. “Sounds trendy enough for a dating profile.”
Her gaze dropped back to the tarot spread in front of her, and her shoulders slumped. “Okay, so basically all this means is that everything is super fucky. And we don’t know more than we did ten minutes ago.”
Silence stretched. She looked up and groaned. Splice’s eyes had gone a pale, washed-out white, glowing faintly in the dim light.
“Oh, fantastic. Now you’re doing the weird mind-talky thing again. Between you and Nell and Sig, I’m really starting to feel left out of this whole telepathy club.”
The vine on the windowsill twitched, as if it had overheard.
Splice inhaled sharply. His head tilted, listening to something she couldn’t hear. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, resonant, and threaded with an otherworldly cadence.
“The Thornfather wishes to see you.” Every line of him went taut as he rose to his feet. He held out a hand to her. “Come.”
Goldie recoiled. “Now? Absolutely not. I haven’t eaten, I haven’t showered, I’m in dirty clothes, and I amnotmentally prepared to have a chat with your vine daddy.”
Her voice came out sharp, but her body betrayed her. Heat sparked low in her belly, a pulse that tightened as if the wordThornfatheritself were a touch.
The treacherous thought flickered—does he have vines like Splice?—before she strangled it dead. Still, the air seemed to thrum in answer, vast and faint, brushing at the edges of her awareness.
Splice blinked down at her, baffled, as if she’d just refused gravity itself. “That doesn’t matter. He is requesting your presence.”
Goldie opened her mouth to protest again—I need to brush my teeth and hide the hickey on my neck—when the window behind her pulsed like a heartbeat trapped in glass.
She jerked as the cushion beneath her undulated, giving her a gentle shove upright.
“What the hells, apartment?” she gasped, clapping a hand to the windowsill as if that would steady it.
Maeve gave a sharp, imperious meow. Goldie looked to find the cat tilting her head in a distinctly human gesture, eyes wide and molten, pupils narrowing to slits that shimmered faintly green in the candlelight.
Oberon slunk between her ankles, his fur brushing her calves in a single, unbroken line, like he was tracing a sigil. He sat neatly beside Maeve, tail curling into a perfect question mark, and yawned. When his eyes opened again, they gleamed the same strange green as Maeve’s.
Both cats turned their gaze to Goldie at once. The air thickened as the room held its breath. She felt the vibration of their purrs shift, low and synchronized.
Go to the god.Their combined whisper slipped into her mind.
Goldie’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, absolutely not. No. You two don’t get to start acting like familiarsnow.”
