But I wouldn’t be Orin’s unwitting pawn any longer.
“As vomit-inducing as all this information is,” I said after steeling myself with a breath, “it still doesn’t change anything. I need to heartbond with him.” Rorik opened his mouth to argue, and I shot him a hard glare. “Notbecause I care. But because he has my brothers, and if I’m going to break open their caskets and save their lives, then I need Ever magic.”
Rorik had the good sense to hold back whatever ire-filled retort he had initially prepared. Instead, he ran a hand through his hair, tugging slightly on the ends. “And you think Orin would just let that happen?”
“He won’t have a choice if I destroy his everjewel.”
Silence. Rorik was still, calculating. His tight gaze lingered on my face, as if he were turning over the validity of my words and determining if they had merit. “And you know where he keeps it?”
“Yes.” I’d never forget the sharp bite of ice against my fingers. “But even with his magic, I’m not sure I’d be strong enough to take him down.”
“You wouldn’t.” His brows drew together.
“Normally I would take offense to your obvious slight, but in this case, you’re right.” Slowly, I took a step forward and closed the distance he’d put between us. “But if I release you from the evervow...”
I held my breath as I waited for him to respond. It was one thing to ask him to defy his brother’s wishes, and another thing entirely for me to make a bargain for murder. His eyes filled with a look of pure sadness. “It won’t work. Youneedto find a way out of this place, Edira. If you heartbond with him, you’ll be a Fernglove, which means—”
A harrowing rip split the air like the forceful tearing of a seam. It emanated from the manor and filled the quiet estate, setting the hairs on the back of my neck on end. A mottled scent of decaycarried to us on a chilled breeze, and with it came a deep, knowing sense of wrong. My power erupted from my center without my command. Soft light enveloped Rorik and me as we stood in open-mouthed silence.
Then we pivoted toward the house. I knew this feeling. I’d encountered it three times over. First with my parents, then with Alec.
Death was here.
Twenty-Six
The manor’s glamour was sloughing off like withered, curling wallpaper. Each strip that fell away was an eerie tear on the breeze, and gooseflesh ravaged my skin at the sight.
I’d known they’d magicked their estate to hide all traces of blight, but I hadn’t expected...this. Rotting, putrid vines climbed the walls and tore away at the crumbling facade. Instead of mortar, a bubbling ooze the color of curdled milk dripped from between the bricks. Pools of frothing loam surrounded the building like a moat, eating away at the soft earth and preparing the manor for an early grave. The stench of decay and sour mulch was so thick that I gagged. Without warning, a handful of spores near the grand entrance burst, showering the air around the steps in a fine spray of mustard-yellow particles.
And that was only the manor. The entire state was a putrefied mess as the glamour that had been so painstakingly layered simply dusted away. The grounds were leached of color, the grass beneath our feet now golden brown. The neatly trimmed hedges were nothing more than thorny skeletons where leaves had once thrived. Theflowers? Gone. No blooms. No stalks reaching toward the sun. Just an expanse of decay and disease that unfurled across the lands and into the forest, where the trees had been transformed into barren bones that speared the cloudless sky like knives.
I could barely find my voice. “What’s happening?”
Rorik’s eyes were wild. “I don’t know.”
He bolted toward the manor, leaving me to sprint after him. I tried to force my magic to settle, tried to dampen the power surging through my veins in reaction to the absolute grave that Fernglove had become, but I couldn’t. So I let it pulse from me with every heartbeat, taking what comfort I could in the alabaster light coating my limbs. We didn’t have to go far. The moment Rorik and I burst through the double doors leading to the entry foyer, we found someone crumpled on the floor. She’d folded in on herself, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them tight. Her brittle hair splayed out behind her, and her skin was covered with wounds. Blight festered from every hole and crawled over her entire body. Her fingers twitched. Her breath was a high-pitched, shuddering wheeze.
“Grandmother,” Seville sobbed as she kneeled beside the near-lifeless form.
Mavis. It was Mavis. She was a desiccated shell of the vivacious woman I’d spied in the painting. She had maybe minutes left. With my power fully intact, I could see a solitary thread still attached to her center. There wasn’t an inch of it that wasn’t covered in tar, and already it was hardening to an impenetrable surface. Soon, it would simply dust away.
“She just collapsed. I tried to encase her, but her body rejected it,” Seville said through her tears.
Encase her.Immediately I pictured my brothers in their floating coffins, and I prayed to the gods they were safe, that whatever magic Seville used to try to save Mavis hadn’t affected their barriers.
Seville’s hands aimlessly fluttered around Mavis’s head. Lydia and Clesian were there, too. They’d wrapped their arms around their daughters, pressing their bodies flush to their sides. Amalyss and Tasia stared in wide-eyed, open-mouthed terror.
Rorik swallowed thickly as he set his jaw tight. “Seville, you need to stop siphoning. You’ve already pulled every ounce of magic from the estate. You’ll drain yourself next.”
“No!” she screamed, and she flung herself over Mavis’s trembling form. I hadn’t noticed the aura of magic surrounding her until now. It was the same shade as the caskets housing my brothers, but try as Seville might to direct that green mist to Mavis, nothing stuck. Seville’s power ate away at her glamour—at all their glamours—and suddenly she was laid bare before me. A gasp caught in my chest. Seville had always looked youthful. Flawless. Now, she looked startlingly similar to the dying matriarch in her arms. Full of blight and fear and a heated rage in her stare. I glanced at Rorik and stilled.
Gods. I’d seen some of his magical features before: the glossy wings with the golden underside, the sable horns and pointed fangs. The endless depth of emotion in his ink-black stare. But there was more, so much more, to his being. An iridescent sheen coated his skin like a golden-hued exoskeleton, and he had daggerlike nails that were as dark as his eyes. Blight ate away at the carved muscles along his arms and bloomed against his cheek. Yellow loam and pustules sprouted from beneath his collarbone and spread toward his throat like the limbs of a tree. Seeing Rorik covered in death made my heart tremble.
It wasn’t the fact that he was already drenched in sickness; it was the fact that he didn’t seem to care at all. There was nothing but resignation in his gaze as he stared at his dying grandmother.
A chill swept over my skin. He wanted this. Maybe not for the others, but certainly for himself.
“You,” Seville said, turning her sharp gaze toward me. “Save her. Please.”
