Chapter 46

ChapterForty-Six

She walked onto the back lawn before the house, intending to yell at them. She wanted to scold all these people who thought they were above Alistair and better than him. But then she saw them all laughing.

They enjoyed what they had done. They were merry about the fact that a man lay dead in the greenhouse next to a flower none of them even appreciated. So they continued on with their evening of pleasure and alcohol and good food, as though it didn’t matter that he was gone.

She saw that, and something snapped inside her. Like a thread had been held too taut with the loss of him, and their laughter had broken it. Already, magic swelled through her body. A voice whispered in her mind that they had no respect for life or the living. They needed to go. The world would be better with them gone.

She felt the plants wiggling under her skin. All the blooms and buds she’d devoured wanted to come out at the same time. There was so much power in her that even when she bumped into the first person who had laughed at Alistair’s dead body, all she had to do was reach for his throat.

His neck snapped so easily. Too easily. And as she looked at her hand in horror when he fell from her grip, someone else whispered in her mind, “Another.”

She kept going. The crowd ran from her as she opened her arms wide and let all that magic pour out of her body. Magic. Power. Raw life flowed through her veins in an unimaginable amount of pain. But it was her, and it was real. They had thought she was so weak, and now they ran screaming from her.

The pride she felt in that moment would haunt her for the rest of her life.

All that intoxicating pride cajoled her into doing what she didn’t want to do. For a few moments, she reveled in that feeling of no longer being afraid but being feared. And then she blinked her eyes, and so many people were dead.

Three of the Academy’s professors were tied to the ground with vines and roots squeezing them tighter and tighter. Their deaths would be slow and painful. Others were already face down in the fountains that now poured blood instead of water. A few people had sought safety behind a wall of fire conjured by one of the men who now feared her. They should, she decided.

It was good that they were afraid. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t the young woman with a small gift. She was fearsome and wild.

“He was mine,” she said, her voice deep and carrying over the lawn in the wind. “You thought you could take him from me, and then you succeeded. But he was mine, and I was his and I will not let this go unpunished.”

Marren called out from behind the wall of flame, “You are only punishing yourself! Don’t you see that?”

She turned her gaze to him and felt some wriggling next to her eye. “Marren, come out here.”

“The rest of the Academy will soon destroy you. I am sorry for your loss, but you know it was what we had to do!”

She could barely make him out through the flames. The pale man stood with such confidence. Such certainty that she could never reach him.

Thea had been paying attention ever since she moved here, though. She’d watched the people who lived in Wildecliff, and she knew their weaknesses. They were selfish and cruel. They would do anything to protect themselves.

Lifting a hand, she gestured for the roots to lift three bodies next to her. Her heart wouldn’t let her look for too long, but she could see their limp forms out of the corners of her eyes. They hung there beside her like her own personal army, waiting for her to give the order for them to fight back.

The wriggling whispers in her mind said that she could use them. If she wanted to puppet their bodies, then the plants could make that happen. All she had to do was ask for it.

But she couldn’t. Not if she wanted to keep living after all this mess was over and done with.

Instead, she turned her attention to the leader of the Academy, who stood beside the man conjuring the fire. “Send him out, Headmistress.”

“I will not.”

“I’ll let the rest of you go if you do.” She tilted her head to the side, peering through a rose that slowly bloomed over her right eye. “I only want him.”

The murmurs from the crowd should have made him nervous. A few of the people behind him were thinking about throwing him out to her through the flames. But the Headmistress wasn’t about to be outdone by one of her own people.

She cleared her throat and then said, “You want us to believe that you’ll let us walk out of here? Hardly.”

Thea pointed toward the house. “You will run to that building and you will not look back. Anyone who looks back I will kill. And if you think of hunting me down, or trying to harm someone I love again, then I will smother you all in your beds. You know what death tastes like as the corpse flower devours your body. Do I make myself clear?”

The Headmistress nodded and then snapped her fingers. Two men behind Marren grabbed him under the arms and threw him out onto the lawn. He stumbled a few times, then caught himself. When he stood, flipping his disheveled hair out of his face, he looked at her with more confidence than he should have. “I will poison you again. Give me a reason to.”

“You will stop talking.” She opened her hand, and vines wrapped around his lips. They lifted him up into the air and dragged him toward her.

She only asked them to pause when he hung before her. And then she stared into those horrible eyes, waiting for when she would be lucky enough to see fear in them. That fear flickered to life like a candle flame, and he swallowed hard at her stare.

“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Kill me?”

“Thea, no!” The shout echoed across the lawn even as Alistair sprinted toward her. “Don’t do it!”

He was alive?

The power in her quaked and surged like a storm had overturned the sea in her heart. He couldn’t be alive. She’d checked herself, and he wasn’t breathing. He’d left this realm for another where she couldn’t follow him, and that was why…

She skated her gaze over the dead bodies and realized what she had done. The horror of the surrounding massacre made her heart squeeze in her chest. She hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone; she had just wanted to feel like she was powerful for once in her life. She didn’t want them to think she had a small gift anymore. All of this was for vengeance, to make up for the loss of him.

Marren sank to the ground as she shook her head in disbelief.

“No,” she whispered. “He can’t see this. He can’t see me.”

As her vines released their hold on Marren’s arms, he pointed at her with a sneer. “The Academy will never forget this, witch. They will hunt you until the end of your days.”

It shouldn’t matter if the Academy saw what she did. Anyone could understand why she had done it. She thought Alistair was dead. He had died in her arms, and they were the ones to have done it! Surely anyone in their right mind would understand.

As she looked over at Alistair, she knew there had to be someone who saw her struggles. At least one person in Wildecliff must have felt what she felt when she looked at him. How the beloved wrinkles of fear on his face made her sick. The way he moved toward her with so much determination and love turned her anger into grief. Thea wasn’t the only woman to have ever loved with her whole being.

Then Marren turned toward him and time seemed to slow. The pale man looked at her Alistair as though he were something to rid this world of, and then he opened his mouth. She had seen him spit poison into his palm, and she would not let him do that again. Never again.

She lifted her hands, and the vines surged. The flowers and magic she’d absorbed grew inside her, and her vision disappeared. She was nothing, could be nothing, for she was the world inside a small seed of a body waiting to bloom.

Roots and vines spread up through the ground, tunneling through the soft earth underneath his feet. She felt them surge out of the ground and bury into his skin. The wriggling, writhing, monstrous creations she had summoned would destroy this man who had only wanted to harm. And she felt no guilt. Not for this one.

Marren’s spine bent as he seized underneath the weight of her magic. His arms spread wide as roots and branches grew inside of him and stiffened his body. Leaves slapped over his mouth and burrowed around his tongue so that he could no longer spit that poisonous venom. He would harm no one else. Not now that she had him in her grip.

As one last final measure, Thea closed her hand into a fist and twisted. Marren’s head followed the same gesture as her hand, and his lifeless body slumped forward onto the roots.

“There,” she proclaimed. “Now you are undone, and I am finished.”

The magic drained out of her, and her feet touched the ground again. She staggered, her entire body feeling as though she’d been rolled through the dirt a couple of times. But that was all right. She’d survived unimaginable power. Now, all she could hope was that Alistair would forgive her for it.

She took two steps toward him, the shock on his face something she wanted to smooth with her thumb. She’d ease the wrinkles on his forehead and the lines around his mouth. He would see that she was all right. It was just... just... She looked down at her hands covered with blood and started shaking.

Had she really done this? Had she been so callous with her powers that she would allow so many people to die and not feel even a shred of remorse for their lives? It was unlike her.

It was wrong.

Hands covered hers up, and she felt the warmth of his grip sink into her soul. “It’s all right,” he whispered, drawing her up to her feet. “You can stop now. It’s all right. Stop looking at them, darling.”

“You were dead,” she whimpered. “You died in my arms and I felt you go.”

“I know. I know.” He drew her against his heart and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “But death isn’t permanent for people like us. The fae spared me for saving them. They sent me back to you.”

She curled her fingers into the hem of his shirt. Wrapping her grip around him so he couldn’t leave again, she shook, her breath shuddering with each word, “I’m so glad. But these people, Alistair, I didn’t think.... I didn’t know.”

“It was the corpse flower. You had no idea what it would do to you to consume that.”

“I think I did,” she whispered. “I knew it would make me crave death, and I wanted it. I ripped it open, Alistair, and the flesh underneath... It was... It was...”

Delicious. A part of her wanted to say. It melted like butter on my tongue, and it tasted sweeter than wine. It made me want to scream with power, and it made me want to make men kneel at my feet while I drank from their throats.

It was a power unimaginable and a power she should never have felt in her life. Thea knew there was no excusing what she had done. She would have to live knowing that she could kill and luxuriate in the power it gave her. But someday, she would roll this memory over in her mind and know that the corpse flower had wanted more from her. It had wanted death in the hundreds. The thousands.

That power drained out of her, leaking from her form like some kind of oil that had coated her body. Thankfully, they only bloomed once in a blue moon; otherwise... She shuddered to think of what she would have done.

“You did what you had to do,” he whispered against her shoulder. “And I did what I had to.”

But she could feel the quaking of his shoulders. He was horrified by what she’d done, and his eyes couldn’t stop looking at the dead bodies of his coworkers. She’d murdered so many of them, and Thea could almost feel their souls streaking past them. Someday they would hunt her down, she realized. Marren might have been right about one thing. The Academy would follow her, even if they were dead.

She pressed her own lips against his shoulder, a kiss that lingered a little too long. “Losing you made me angry. Maybe that’s not even the right term, but it made me go mad, Alistair. That madness consumed me until I was nothing but raw power. I wanted them to hurt. Like I was hurting.”

“Shh.” He pulled back and smoothed his thumbs along her jawline. “We don’t have to talk about it right now.”

“I do. I have to purge it from my soul because it’s eating me alive. I killed them, Alistair, and I wanted to do it.” She took a deep breath. “It wasn’t me, but it was me. I was lost in an in between place and I didn’t even recognize myself.”

“I recognize you,” he said. “I know this face as well as my own. There are exactly fifteen freckles on your cheeks, although they are hard to see. Your eyes are dark like the sea at midnight and your nose lifts slightly at the end. When you’re very happy, you smile so wide that wrinkles form on your cheeks, but when you are blissful, your smile shows your gums. You are mine, Thea. Mine and mine alone, and I cannot claim that I would have been any better if they murdered you in front of me.”

“They tried,” she whispered. “They wanted both of us dead.”

“And I will never put you in another situation like this again. I will protect you until the very end of my life, Thea Earthshaker. Forever.” His fingers hovered over her right eye, lingering over the part still tinted with the shade of red. “May I?”

She nodded, although she wasn’t sure what he was asking to do.

Alistair grabbed onto something that obscured her vision and tugged. She felt the last bit of that awful magic leave through her eye as he pulled out a lovely red rose by the root. He let the flower dangle from his fingers for a few moments before dropping it onto the ground.

“That was—“ she asked, hesitating.

“You became something so much more than yourself, Thea. A terrifying witch with no small gift.” He gave her that crooked half-smile she hadn’t ever thought to see again. “You’re more powerful than they ever could have guessed.”

And she supposed she was.

Sagging against him, she turned her face away from the bodies and watched the pooka approach them. Home. Soon, they would go home.