Page 74 of Heartflame

“Let him go,” Aeron’s voice was barely recognizable, distorted with rage and grief and the metal crushing his jaw. “Grandfather, please⁠—”

“Don’t call me that.” Thaddeus’s voice went cold, colder than I’d heard it yet. “You lost the right to call me that the moment you decided a witch was worth more to you than your own bloodline.”

Atlas moved then, a blur of fur and muscle, closing the distance faster than I thought something that large should be able to move. He went for the undead first, tearing through them like they were made of wet paper, clearing a path toward Thaddeus with brutal efficiency. Black ichor sprayed across his fur, but he didn’t slow down.

Caden’s vines erupted from the floor all around Morgana, wrapping around her ankles, her wrists, trying to bind her the way she’d bound Aeron. She screamed in fury, her green magic flaring bright enough to sear through the plant matter, but it bought precious seconds. Seconds where I watched Wild’s eyes flick toward the shattered vial still lying on the floor, its opalescent contents pooling uselessly against the marble.

“That was a nice try,” Wild said, and I realized with a jolt that he was talking to me now, his green eyes finding mine even through the chaos. “Whatever you made. I can feel the magic in it from here. It’s just missing something.”

“What?” I croaked out, the single word costing me more air than I could spare.

“A trigger,” Wild said, already moving, already drawing something bright and gold from the air around him like he was pulling thread from an invisible spool. “Someone to set it off.”

Instead of his magic wrapping around Thaddeus like I expected, it grabbed one of the nearby undead. The corpse was lifted off the ground in spectacular fashion and then slammed against the marble with enough force to cause its body to practically shatter. Bits of rotten flesh, bone, and ichor splattered across the floor, covering the broken glass and shimmering potion. But just as quickly as it was torn apart, the undead began to pull itself back together. Sickly purple magic pulled at the tendons and muscles, trying to draw the body back into its original form. I watched in horror as in the span of a few seconds, the body reconstructed itself enough to stand up once more, the bones cracking ominously.

“You can’t destroy my undead,” Thaddeus laughed. “They feel no pain. They know no hardship. They are indestructible.”

But I wasn’t paying attention to Thaddeus anymore, and neither was Wild. Both of us were staring at the recently reconstructed corpse. It had frozen in place, its body straining against something neither of us could see. At least, not until the fungal filaments began to streak across the surface of its body. The fingers froze up first, then the arms and legs. Soon there were little mushrooms pushing out of its mouth, ears, eyes, and nostrils. They bloomed and died with incredible speed until the body began to collapse beneath them.

In just a matter of seconds, the corpse went from fleshy and wet and upright to being a heap of steaming humus on the ground. The only thing left in its wake was the scent of fresh soil and a cloud of mushroom spores filling the air. As soon as it was gone, another undead took its place, completely unperturbed about its fallen comrade. On the other side of the room, Morgan cried out and cut through all of Caden’s plants, turning them to ash. The undead continued to swarm Atlas, making his advance impossible.

“Pathetic,” Thaddeus hissed. “All that to kill one single undead? And here I thought you were going to be a challenge.”

“One wasn’t the point,” Wild snapped back, and I heard the calm in his voice now. “You should really have learned more about herbalism and chemistry, old man.”

Another undead lurched forward, drawn into the cloud of spores, and the same thing happened. Mushrooms bursting from every orifice, flesh collapsing into soil and a spore cloud in seconds. Then two more. Then four. Then eight. Each one that stumbled too close to the others became a casualty, disintegrating into something so decomposed that even necromantic magic couldn’t reanimate them. The room slowly began to fill up with spores, the very air becoming thick and cloudy. Within thirty seconds, half of the undead in the room were nothing but soil and the Purity Front witches looked ready to bolt.

Thaddeus’s grip on my throat faltered, just slightly, as he watched his army dissolve into steaming compost around him. That was all the opening I needed. I let my body go limp, dead weight, and he dropped me to the floor without a second thought. My body crumpled against the marble and I did everything I could to stay still as I desperately tried to get air back into my body.

“That’s not possible,” he snarled, and for the first time since this whole nightmare started, I heard something that sounded almost like fear creeping into his voice.

“Told you,” Wild said, and the cocky grin was back on his face even as he wove more of that golden thread-magic between his fingers. “That’s what you get for underestimating your grandson’s mate.”

The spore cloud kept spreading, drifting toward the remaining witches now too. I saw one of them clap a hand over her mouth and nose and stumble backward, dragging a companion with her toward the far wall in terror. Atlas took advantage of the confusion, his massive jaws closing around another corpse and flinging it bodily into three more, the impact alone enough to send them all crashing into the growing cloud of my accidental biological weapon.

“Enough,” he growled, and I felt the vibration of it through the floor as he bent down and picked me up by the back of the collar, hauling me up into the air once more. “Morgana. Finish this. Now.”

Across the room, Morgana’s masked face turned toward us, green magic gathering thick and fast around her hands. I couldn’t see her expression, but I felt the intent radiating off her like heat from a furnace.

“No!” Aeron’s roar shook the chandelier overhead, the chains around him groaning as he threw himself against them with everything he had left.

I stared at her, knowing she was about to deal a killing blow. Her hands reached high, magic coalescing around her. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to tell Aeron. But the only thing that slipped out of my mouth was a few whispered words.

“I love you…”

I clenched my eyes shut and waited for the end to come.

Chapter 32

Quill

But the killing blow never came.

After a few seconds, I dared to open my eyes. The moment I did, a gasp tore from my lips. Morgana’s body was no longer surrounded by green magic. In fact, she was no longer moving at all. Her body was covered in tiny white filaments, the fungus racing across her rotted skin. The mushrooms had found her the same way they’d found the other undead, seeping into the cracks of her decayed flesh and taking root. She swayed on her feet, her hands still raised, still crackling with the last dregs of her magic. But her fingers had gone stiff and gray, the white filaments crawling up her wrists like frost spreading across a window.

“What—” Her voice came out garbled now, wet and broken, nothing like the sharp, cutting tone she’d used before. “What is this?”

The mask cracked.