Chapter 26

A weightless sensation buoyed me as I drifted above the pit, the reality of my situation sinking in.

“This is my astral self.” I jerked my hand from Anunit’s mouth. “You ripped out my soul?” Josie must be beside herself. “ You can’t just snatch people out of their bodies.”

“You have proven yourself proficient at astral travel. You will find your way back when we are done.”

Blood soaked the dirt before me—Josie’s—driving home how valuable this bargain was for my sister. “What do I have to do?”

“Just as you did before, you will consume my energies once I return to my grave. You will inherit my gifts, and the guardianship of my people. Then at long last, I will be at peace. I will return to my slumber, to my mate, and I will be done with the greed of this world.”

“I should wait for Kierce.” I balked at the magnitude of the transition. “He can guide me through this.”

“You seek a way out of our bargain.”

“It’s a lot. I’ve barely had time to accept I died. That I’m a demigoddess.” I laughed, and hysteria edged it with a bitter mania. “I’m doing my best. I’m trying to adapt and survive. To move on. But this? This is the kick I don’t need while I’m down. I want time to think it over, but you’ve made certain I don’t have that.”

“I could take your consort’s life as payment—since he holds the final bone—and be done with it.”

“Threats don’t make me trust you more.”

“Merely a counteroffer.”

“Yeah.” I scoffed at her offhand tone. “Right.”

Ears flicking forward, Anunit listened, but I couldn’t pick out anything worth her attention.

“Well?” I held out my arms to my sides. “What are you waiting for?”

Whatever she had in mind, whatever this would cost me, I wanted it finished before Kierce and Josie got here and talked me out of it.

“The rest of you to arrive.”

“The rest of…” I dropped my arms to my sides. “You mean my body?”

“What else would I mean?”

“You could have asked me to meet you here. You didn’t have to soul-snatch me again.”

“I decided this course of action would expedite matters.”

Twenty minutes later, Kierce appeared on the rim of the pit, cradling my body against his chest.

Anunit took one look at him and began to growl. Had I not already agreed, I would have folded like a paper fan. “I said I’ll do it.” I sank my hand into her ruff, as if that would hold her. “Leave him alone.”

“You are certain?” She searched my face. “You will accept this burden?”

“You haven’t left me with much choice.” I sensed she required verbal consent to proceed. Ha . As if I had any say in the matter. “Yes, I accept.”

“Thank you, Frankie Talbot.”

The form under my fingers grew warmer, realer , and I clenched my spectral hand in her soft fur.

“Keep the final bone. A link between us. I will not abandon you before you understand your role.”

Before I could exhale with relief, she clamped her jaw on my shoe. Not my spectral foot. My actual foot. She slung it off while Kierce shielded as much of my body as he could. But Anunit struck fast as a snake, and he couldn’t do more than watch as she sank her teeth into my now-bare foot.

Blood flowed down Kierce’s arm, wetting the soil. I didn’t hurt. Yet. I saw the wound, but it was like I was watching it happen to someone else. “Blood to seal our pact?”

“Yes.” She swallowed once. “And bone to bind it.”

“B-b-bone?” I gaped at her bloody maw then my bloody foot and understood. “You bit off my toe?”

My toe .

She hadn’t even let me choose which one I wanted to lose. She went straight for the pinky. My favorite.

Okay, so I didn’t have a favorite, but still.

She could have asked before hobbling me for life.

“I would recommend not going into shock away from your body,” she counseled. “It is simply a toe.”

“Kierce was right.” I did my best to steady my thudding heart. “He’s never met a god with all ten toes.”

Bumping her head under my chin, she rasped a laugh. “And, like as not, he never will.”

With those parting words, she dissolved into swirling motes that sank into her bleached skull.

Then Kierce was there, on his hands and knees, reaching an arm into the pit for me, but my soul was anchored in the bottom until I completed this task.

“Patch up my toe, will you?” I drummed up a smile for him. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Frankie…” His eyes flashed silver and wild. “Whatever she promised you?—”

“The bargain has been struck.” I kept my lips frozen in place. “It’ll be okay.”

Only the fear of further harm coming to my body convinced him to return to it and leave me to my fate.

There was nothing to do but plant my palms on the soil and begin the hymn that would change my life.

No sooner had the first words left my mouth than magic yawned awake, reaching out and finding an echo of itself already within me. That first touch, a confirmation, exploded into a torrent I couldn’t break free of or control.

This wasn’t the peaceful humming embrace of Bonaventure or the bitter foulness of cleansing a site of death magic. It was alive . I shivered as wild energies infused my veins, igniting a feral pulse in my chest. As power swept over me, foreign voices kindled in my head, their presence a cacophony beyond my comprehension.

A small white stone tumbled to the earth in front of me, as if the magic that had bound Anunit to flesh had been holding it, and it spun as it dug itself a hole. It might have been a seed for how the wash of spirit blue light grew from it. But I had been a necromancer too long not to identify a distal phalanx.

My freaking toe.

The brightness swept across the pit, smacking into a wall. No . Building one.

All it required of me was to provide the Alcheyvāhā magic with a living vessel. It did the rest. Or maybe it was more honest to say that Anunit, the original guardian, was guiding the power through one final act. I was christened with illumination, the glare forcing my eyes shut as the last of the magic spent itself.

Humming with energy, I drifted up and out of the pit then made my way to Kierce.

“This is awkward.” I stared down at where he held me. “I usually wake up back in my body.”

“The mechanics are the same.” His voice was hoarse, like he had been screaming my name, and I wished I had seen another way out. “Close your eyes and focus on the sensation of me holding your hand.”

Maybe it helped, seeing where he laced his fingers with mine, supplying yet another anchor to my body.

“I can do that.” I followed his instructions, allowing myself to retrace the now-familiar path back with only a slight hiccup as my soul brushed its shell. Then I was waking in his arms. “Hi there.”

On the upside, I appeared to have been spared from the lust dirt effect by Anunit soul-snatching me. As far as wins go, it was a small one, but at least it was something.

Dull footsteps thumped toward us, wheezing inhales identifying the new arrival before she stepped out.

“Didn’t…I…just…say—” panting breaths sawed from Josie’s lungs, “—no…more…running?”

Sweeping my gaze over her, I cocked an eyebrow. “It took you this long to catch up?”

“Running…is for…the devil.” She bent over, hands braced on her thighs. “You think this is…fun?”

As a matter of fact, I did enjoy running, but I knew a rhetorical question when I heard one.

Once she had caught her breath, mostly, I experienced a stroke of inspiration. “Can you bury this place?”

“I can do better than that.” Josie rubbed her hands together. “I can put it to sleep.” She spread her arms to encompass the forest and curled her fingertips. “Don’t be shy. No one will hurt you. This is the gig of a lifetime, I promise.” She opened her eyes, and they shone verdant green. “Come on.”

Dirt shifted and rocks clattered as she summoned, coaxing life to her as twelve sapling trees grew around the edge of the pit, taller and taller, until I could identify the variety.

“Good.” She twirled a finger. “Let’s tighten that circle, shall we?”

“Weeping willows.” I held my breath. “What did you mean? About making them sleep?”

As the trees grew up, they grew out, their trunks thickening. Leaves like tears dripped off their branches. The limbs wove together, creating a canopy that blocked the sky. Their trunks’ girth increased until each one of the trees brushed its neighbor, forming a wall.

The trees shuffled their root systems to draw up dirt from elsewhere and fill in the pit until it was level, covering the bones from view. Then lush grass sprouted in a carpet that filled the ring with small purple flowers poking up through the blades, a variety I had never seen.

“There’s a story the trees told me when I was little, about how a young mother left her baby by the river one night. The mother was poor and sick and couldn’t care for her, so she left the baby where the neighboring village women collected their water every morning. The baby cried and cried until the wind blew the limb from the weeping willow above her into her basket. The willow, having never seen a baby, wasn’t sure what it could do to help. It was only a tree, and the baby was hungry.”

“Please don’t tell me the willow eats the baby.”

“What?” She wrinkled her nose. “No.”

Holding up my hands in surrender, I shrugged. “Just checking.”

“Anyway, the willow asked her friend, the pine tree. It kept a colony of bees as pets, and it offered their honey for the girl. The baby nursed the honey from a willow leaf, but it grew restless and afraid as the night grew darker. And so the willow lifted the baby in a swing made of her branches and swayed until she fell asleep.” A flick of her fingers coaxed the willows to illustrate her point. “She rocked the girl until the women came, and though it wanted to keep the baby, it was only a tree, and it let a young woman with no children of her own take her.”

“That’s a nice story.” I cringed when her eyes narrowed to slits. “Ah. I see. You weren’t done yet.”

“ But the baby couldn’t sleep, and the young woman grew tired. She sneaked back to the willow one night, the baby in her basket, and considered placing her in the water to float downstream to another village. The willow, fearful the baby would drown, took her from her basket—frightening the woman—and showed her how to soothe the baby.” She mimed holding an ax, ready to swing. “The woman, fearing the tree was possessed by an evil spirit, brought men to chop it…”

“Don’t stop now.” I wiped a hand over my mouth to hide my smile. “I’m on the edge of my seat.”

“I always forget how it ends.” She shuddered. “I only ever think about how wonderful it must have been to have a tree for a mother, even for a few hours.” She rubbed her jaw. “These willows can’t rock the gods to sleep, but they’re still the most peaceful trees I can think of.”

“I’m sure they appreciate it.”

“That’s good,” Josie said, her voice thick, “but I think I’m?—”

Eyes rolling up into the back of her head, she fell on a bed of grass that sprung up beneath her seconds before impact.

Scrambling off Kierce’s lap, I crawled to her, glancing back to snap out, “Call Aretha.”

“Carter,” Josie murmured, her eyes active behind their closed lids.

A dryad’s power wasn’t bottomless, and Josie had expended tons of energy. First protecting herself then making this grove. She had depleted herself for my sake, and it was as good a time as any to test Anunit, and the value of her gift.

Josie had dropped close enough to the burial ground for me to grab her ankle and spin her body until her foot passed between two tree trunks. I bent, half in and half out of the ward, to dig a small hole in the freshly sprung grass. After wrestling her knee to bend it, I stuck her foot in the soil then buried it to the ankle.

With that done, I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook until she groaned at me. “Put down roots.”

“Curse…” She rolled onto her side, tucking her face into my stomach. “Bones…”

“I was granted permission for you to use this grove.”

Foot twitching, she formed rootlets in place of her toes on instinct. “Whaaat…?”

“I was going to break it down for you later, but later is now. Put down roots. Draw magic from the earth. Heal yourself. Then we can talk.”

“Carter is on the way.” Kierce’s shadow fell across me. “Aretha is farther out, but she’s en route too.”

“Good.” I stroked Josie’s hair. “Thanks.”

“Will she be all right?”

“She’s drained, but this should help.”

In all the years I watched her do this to replenish herself, I never imagined I would be doing the same. She drew strength from nutrient-rich soil and nearby plants and vegetation. Now I drew strength from faith, belief, and magic-rich soil. I found I liked having one more thing in common with my sister.

Lowering himself to sit beside me, Kierce asked, “Can you tell me what happened in there?”

I told him everything.

And I expected him to scold me, to fret, to caution I had gotten in too deep with yet another god.

But tension eased from his shoulders, and his expression grew thoughtful. “You made a fine bargain.”

Dumbstruck by his calmness, I gawked at him. “You’re not mad?”

“I have no right to be mad when the decision was yours to make.”

“Yes, well, I still would have preferred to get your opinion ahead of time.” I hesitated. “It’s really okay?”

“You had no other choice.” He touched my cheek. “She made sure of that.”