Chapter Thirty

CHAPTER THIRTY

G rimm was the first to move. He scrambled to his feet and caught my arm.

"To the top of the hill," he said, and then pulled me along with him when I didn't move. I couldn't look away from the thing that had come out of the cave.

The monster was massive . It took up my whole field of vision, seeming to rise up above us as it emerged, even though we now stood at the highest point of the valley. It walked on all fours, like a bear, and was covered in rough-looking gray fur that hung off it in clumps and wisps. A few shocking white pieces of bone could be glimpsed in the tangled mass, like twigs might be woven into a nest. Vines curled down over its sides to brush along the ground, seemingly sprouting from someplace on the creature's back, too high up for me to see. Moss grew thick between the toes of its great paws, and its head was wide and wreathed in spikes of bark, like a crown. The monster's seven eyes were all different sizes, scattered unevenly above a wide, grinning mouth full of blunt teeth.

When the monster took a step, the whole valley quivered.

"Draw your sword, Loveage," Grimm said.

"And do what?" I asked incredulously. "Stab it? I may as well be armed with a needle for all the good that would do."

The thing hadn't even started up the hill toward us and yet it was nearly at eye level. The best I could hope to reach was a leg, and those were all covered with fur so thick that I imagined trying to cut through it would be similar to the time I'd tried to cut my own hair with a blunt pair of scissors.

My heart was pounding, rabbit fast. "I need time! I need time to come up with something. A spell, an idea, anything. I just need time; can you get me that?" I turned to look desperately at Grimm and found him staring not at the monster but at me, sword held loose in his hand like he'd forgotten it was there at all. His eyes were wide and far more helpless than I'd known Grimm could look.

"Do something!" I shouted, and he turned away, back to the monster, seeming to snap out of whatever daze had come over him. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a spell.

The paper began to smoke immediately, and magic shivered through the air as it took effect. Then the monster's eyes flashed, and Grimm swore at the same time as I felt the spell die.

I'd never heard him do that before. I wished I were in a better mood to appreciate it.

"What happened?"

"It ate my spell," Grimm said unhappily.

The monster cocked its head at us and blinked its eyes. Not all at once, but one after another, a wave of golden eyes opening and closing. There was something catlike about its attention.

I wondered if the monster had toyed with the foragers before licking their bones clean.

Here was the forest, come to take care of us.

This monster didn't seem inclined to move quickly (perhaps because it knew we had no way of escaping), but due to the size of its steps, it was already halfway up the hill we stood on. I was struck with an absurd urge to call out for it to stop. To plead for mercy. I wanted to tell the monster it could have me, but please let Grimm go because it was my fault he was here in the first place. I don't know why, but in my panicked state I thought that the forest had a sense of justice and might listen to this type of reasoning if only I could explain. But I didn't know how to bargain with a monster. What did it want? What could I give except my flesh? What words could I possibly use that a monster would listen to?

These are rhetorical questions, you understand. I didn't expect for them to be answered, by the monster, or the forest, or even my own panicked mind, searching for a solution. But funnily enough, I found I did have an answer to one of them: Monsters liked to listen to music.

When the monster took another step, my lips parted and I began to sing. The message spell we had sent Sybilla was the first thing that came to mind, because I had been desperate to talk with someone then too. I did not truly have the power to sustain such a spell, but I threaded what little I could into the casting of it and sang the words in the old language I most wanted the monster to hear.

Please , I sang. Please listen. Please don't harm us, oh creature of the woods. Let me sing for you.

My voice broke a little on the last note, and I winced, but when I looked up, the monster had paused its slow march up the hill. All seven of its eyes were open and alight with interest as it stared down at me, listening.

I was so surprised it actually worked that my voice trailed away, but it didn't matter because Grimm was there to fill the silence. He sang the same lines I had, only this time it was a true casting, with all the power of a fully trained caster. He poured magic into the melody until it rang out through the valley, and the monster—

The monster didn't move except to tilt its head to the other side, watching us through slitted eyes.

"Keep going," I said, unstrapping my violin case from my back.

Grimm sang the same line three times while I readied myself hastily. Tuning in front of an audience is always slightly nerve-racking, but it is exponentially worse when you aren't sure if the audience is about to lose its patience and eat you. Each minute adjustment seemed to me to take an age, but the monster didn't appear to care. It lowered itself down onto the hill so that its enormous chin rested right in front of us.

Finally, I nodded to Grimm, raised my bow, and began to play.

To truly explain the spell we cast would be to explain both music and magic, and neither of those things can ever be fully understood. All I know is that there are some moments when the two are allowed to overlap, and that's what happened for Grimm and me on that hill. I laid a tune before him and he followed. I scrived and he cast, but it happened all at once. Perfect harmony with only a monster there to witness it. Our captive audience.

It was a strange and wilder song than any I had composed before. I do not think it was the sort of spell that could ever be replicated.

Despite everything, the danger, the curse, all of it, listening to Grimm's voice still sent a thrill of pure happiness through me. The spell was meant to help us communicate with the monster, but it allowed us to speak to each other too, in a way. I knew him, for a moment, and felt known in return. A connection born of necessity, but beautiful all the same.

The monster closed its eyes and began to purr.

Who knows how long it could have gone on like that. Perhaps I would have played until my fingers bled and Grimm would have sung until his voice gave out and then the monster would have eaten us anyway. But that is not what happened.

Instead, when the monster began to purr, Grimm turned to look at me in a sort of astonished elation, and I grinned back at him, flush with victory—just as Grimm's voice faltered and his eyes narrowed on something behind me. I only had an instant to register that something had changed before Grimm leapt forward and wrapped his arms around me.

My violin screeched as he swung us around. Then everything went quiet. Over Grimm's shoulder I glimpsed Mathias, standing on the rim of the valley, back from wherever he'd been hiding and watching.

He lowered his crossbow.

And then, slowly, Grimm's arms dropped from around me, and he fell to his knees. The arrow in his back stuck out at an awkward angle, dark and wrong looking. Wrong because it had been meant for me. Mathias had thought he knew the forest best, yet I had found a way to speak to it. So he had decided to dirty his hands after all.

I dropped my violin on the grass and sank down beside Grimm. Beneath his coat was a spreading scarlet stain. The head of the arrow pierced through his shirt just below his collarbone. "Grimm," I said, breathless. My hands were raised, but I was afraid to touch.

Grimm took a shuddering breath. Then another. He opened his mouth, and one pained note fell from his lips.

"Don't," I said harshly. "No more singing now."

Hearing this, the monster's golden eyes opened. It raised its chin and looked at us curiously, taking in Grimm's slumped form. Then it raised its eyes to where Mathias stood.

The monster growled, low in its throat. It was not a happy sound. It was the sound of a creature who had been deprived of something and, like a toddler with a lost toy or a cat with an escaped mouse, was unhappy with this change in circumstance.

Mathias took a step back. Then another. Then he turned and fled into the trees.

The monster gathered its limbs underneath itself and sprang. Whatever magic that kept Grimm and me from escaping did not bother it. The creature soared through the air and landed neatly on the lip of the valley in one graceful leap, then it disappeared into the trees.

Three breaths later, there was a scream.

I stopped paying attention after that because Grimm fell forward onto his hands, which made the arrow sticking out of his back all the harder to ignore.

"You should run," Grimm said. His voice was only a little raspier than usual, even though there was blood dripping down onto the grass. "Get out of here before it comes back."

"Ridiculous," I said numbly. "There's no place to run."

"The cave," Grimm said. "There might be another way out through there."

"Then we work quickly. I'm going to break off the arrow shaft so I can move you easier. And then we'll go through the cave together."

Grimm raised his head a little to look at me. Then he looked down at the tip of the bolt pointing through his chest and said, in a resigned sort of voice, "All right."

I did it as gently as possible, which was not that gently at all. I didn't know what I was doing. Maybe I made it worse. It was already pretty bad, but I was doing my best to ignore that fact. When I snapped the arrow off, there was no exclamation. No scream to split the night. This was Grimm, after all. Instead, there was just a small sound of pain, quickly aborted as he bit his lip and bowed his head.

"Sorry," I said. My hands were steady, but every part of my insides trembled. My thoughts were all shaken up inside my skull, and it made it hard to think. I moved to pull Grimm to his feet. "Come on. Slowly now."

We did go slowly, with many stops and starts. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, my own shirt was sticky with Grimm's blood. By the time we made it to the cave mouth, his legs gave out beneath him.

"Can't do it," he said, and now I could hear the hopelessness in his voice. And the pain.

"First aid spells," I muttered, plunging my hands into my pockets. "If we cast a few, maybe the bleeding will stop long enough for us to get out." That wasn't how first aid spells worked, and I knew it. They would cleanse the wound, but they would do nothing for the blood pouring out of it or the piece of arrow stuck inside. Still, I found the spell paper in my pocket and pressed it into Grimm's limp hand.

"I can't," he said again.

"You're the most powerful caster I know," I snapped. "And the most stubborn. You're not unconscious yet, so just cast the spell. Or else I'll do it myself."

The threat worked. Grimm's lips began to move, a whisper of a sound as the paper went up in smoke. And then it was done and he was still lying there with a horrid, gaping hole in his chest, only a little weaker than before because I'd made him cast and, oh, it was going to happen again.

I had gotten it wrong. I'd thought I was protecting Grimm by making him cast, by making him go to the outlaws, by making him come to the forest in the first place. I had avoided Grandmagic because that felt safer than giving myself permission to try and fail. But the worst had happened anyway, and in fact it had very little to do with me at all. Maybe it never had. Now, when it was too late for him to cast it, I would have thrown aside all my carefully held precautions and tried to write the grandest magic possible—something big enough to heal Grimm's wound and stop the gentle seep of blood through his shirt, leaving him whole once more.

Instead, all I could do was take off the pretty green sorcerer's coat Sybilla had given me and press it against Grimm's shoulder. Then I let my knees buckle and slumped onto the ground next to him. The ground was rocky here, and a little damp from the water nearby. The mouth of the cave yawned behind us, beckoning.

"You should keep going," Grimm said. "I'd rather you weren't here for this anyway. You, of all people."

He meant he didn't want me here to watch him dying. That made sense. I had no bedside manner to speak of. He was the one in pain, and yet, selfishly, I was the one who wanted to cry.

"Too bad," I said. "I'm not leaving."

Grimm sighed. "It will come back."

"Yes, and then I suppose we will die together, and won't that just be a fitting end to this whole disaster. The two of us, dying side by side and wishing we were with anyone else." Except I didn't really. Grimm had to know that. It would break my heart to watch him die, and it didn't even matter if the curse was what made it hurt. The pain felt real, just as the love did. I was helpless to stop it.

"At least Mathias is dead too," Grimm said, so unexpectedly that I couldn't help but laugh.

"You're such a bastard. I've been trying to tell everyone that for years and they didn't believe me, but you are. It's actually delightful. Come on, now, let's move just a little bit. No, don't make that face at me. If we're going to die, we might as well paint a fitting tableau, rather than sitting in this puddle. That's it, slowly."

I kept babbling as I helped Grimm move just a little bit farther. We settled against the cave opening, where I could prop him up in a way that didn't press against his wound too badly. I sat down next to him and let him lean into my shoulder. Neither of us said anything about it. I kept talking, because there was nothing else to do, and I didn't want to listen to the sound of Grimm's breath becoming more labored.

"Have I ever told you that turning your hair pink is one of my most cherished memories?" I said. And, "My toes are freezing. If you were feeling just a little more chipper, I'd make you cast my clothes-warming spell. You turned your nose up at it before, but it would come in handy right about now." I rambled about everything that came to mind. Spoke every frivolous word I could think of until all that was left were truths I didn't normally utter.

Grimm was very still at my side. I nudged him with my shoulder, just for the relief of watching his eyes flicker open.

"Grimm. Hey, Grimm."

"Mm?"

"I never told you what I wanted to do after the Fount."

"You told me many things, each of them more unfitting than the last."

"Those were just ideas. They weren't things I wanted. They weren't real."

"What's real, then?"

"Sahnt. The house I grew up in. Where my mother grew up before me. I haven't been there in many years, and I always thought that, once I was finished with the Fount, I could go home. I want that. Someplace to keep all my instruments and drag Agnes to when she's been working too hard. Maybe my brother would visit. You could come too, if you want. You could teach me how to plant flowers like the ones you grow at home. I don't know what else I'll do there—get bored, probably, because you were right, I get bored very easily. But it will be mine."

Grimm tilted his head to look up at me. "Starflowers," he said.

"What?"

"I'll help you plant starflowers. They're hardy. Even you would have trouble killing them."

I huffed out a broken laugh. "That sounds nice."

Oh, how I loved him. So much so that it was like a living thing, growing through every crack in me. Too hardy to kill.

A little while after that the monster came back.

Beside me, Grimm did not move or make a sound. When I looked down, his eyes were closed. His shirt was a crimson blanket. I felt for the pulse in his wrist and found it fluttering still, but he did not stir when I called his name.

The monster sat at the top of the hill, licking its claws.

"Will you come for us now?" I called up to it, suddenly angry. "Will you end this?"

Two of the monster's eyes blinked at me, but otherwise it paid me no mind.

I shifted Grimm gently so that he was leaning against the cave wall rather than me, and moved around to kneel in front of him. His face was nearly as pale as his hair, and I—

My chest felt like it was caving in. There were spells capable of leveling whole buildings, I knew. I'd watched them in action once or twice and remembered the sight now. That inward collapse with only rubble left behind. A devastation.

Amid all of that, a single thought stood clear of the wreckage: I did not want to watch another person I loved die in front of me.

Not without trying to stop it. Even if that meant breaking the only rule I'd ever followed.

I got to my feet and walked back through the water, up the hill to where the monster waited. It watched me approach with curious eyes but did nothing. In fact, when I finally reached the place I'd dropped my violin, its mouth seemed to stretch into a wider smile.

I picked the instrument up, turned my back on that bloodstained grin, and returned to Grimm. Then I began to play.

The music sounded lonely without words, but that was fitting. I was all alone, no one to scrive for, no one to bear the burden of casting. Whatever payment the spell demanded, it would have to come from me. Whatever the magic wanted, I would give, if only I could have what I asked for in return. I couldn't run from this, otherwise what would have been the point of it all?

Here is my bargain , I offered, speaking to the magic as though it might whisper something back into the unquiet of my own mind. I shall scrive a spell like no other, and you will use it to knit his flesh back together. To make whole what has been torn asunder. And in return, you can take what you like. I accept the cost, only give me this.

Then I began to cast.

Instantly, I felt the sharp bite of resistance. You are not meant for this , the pain reminded. Dig your teeth in further and there will be no coming back. This was no cantrip meant to summon butterflies, nor even a charm like the propulsion spell I'd dared cast. It was well beyond the invisible line I'd toed so often but never dared to cross. Now I teetered on the edge, and each note I played pushed me a little further forward.

I kept going, eyes fixed on Grimm. I did not think of the words to Titus's spell, could not have remembered them if I tried, though mine was asking for the same thing.

My chest began to tighten, as though in the grip of a vise. My heart beat faster in warning. Instead of listening, I focused on keeping my bow steady and played on, feeding more and more into the spellsong.

On the hill, the monster leaned forward, watching intently. Distantly, I noticed shapes moving around the lip of the valley, and more stirring deeper within the cave, but I did not stop playing. The monsters could listen. I was beyond fearing their interest.

On the ground, Grimm sucked in a harsh breath. The remains of the arrow burst through his chest and fell, bloodied, onto the cave stones. Then, like torn threads knitting themselves back together, the wound in his chest began to close. Slowly, so slowly.

Too slowly.

My heartbeat was frantic now. Something dripped down my face, and I tasted copper in my mouth. Pressure built in my head, greater and greater, until I was certain one more note would kill me.

Just when my vision began to flicker, I heard something—a low thrumming that was a feeling as much as a sound, vibrating up from the ground through my boots. I didn't dare look away from Grimm, but I knew where the sound came from nonetheless: the monster.

The monster was singing.

The casting was still mine, but its weight didn't rest solely on me. The monster's voice wove a strange harmony that I leaned on readily, watching with hungry eyes as the hole in Grimm's chest made itself smaller.

The monster's harmony grew louder and louder, until it seemed made up of many voices, rather than one, and the rising wave lent strength to my trembling arms. Like I'd been sipping from a thimble and now found myself swimming in a lake, water all round. I was able to continue playing for another minute, and another after that, until Grimm's skin was smooth and unbroken. Once his chest rose and fell in a steady fashion, I finally allowed the spell to end, finishing with a flourish.

As the last notes faded, I swayed on my feet and looked up.

Hundreds of eyes blinked back at me. There was the grinning, many-eyed monster, blinking at me from its place on the hill, but beyond that were more. They sat crowded on the lip of the valley, looking down, and perched up in the tree branches high above. When I turned to my left, I discovered more eyes glowing in the dark of the cave. They were everywhere, drawn by the spellsong. It was all their voices I'd heard, carrying me to the finish. Now they sat silently, watching. Waiting.

Moving delicately, so as not to fall over, I swept them a bow. "Thank you," I said. "You've been a great crowd."

Those were the last words I spoke for quite some time.