Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Meadow!" Grandmother shouted after me.

The wind rushing against my ears kept me deaf to her shouts, as did the adrenaline of dodging what seemed like a hundred roots and tentacles that erupted from the pond. In a frantic voice, I repeated the spell, gulping as I tried to manage the burst of speed. I hadn't gained any mastery over the Rabbit Step Spell since fleeing the manor, but once again, my erratic behavior made me difficult to catch.

Until I wanted to get caught.

Above, the sluagh blackbirds circled, waiting to strike, and the hounds and specters cornered my father and uncle, herding them towards the water if they didn't want to endure their icy touch. The mastermind of this ambush wanted us all in one place for the final attack.

When I was as close to the center of the pond as I was going to get, I released the spell.

My feet immediately dropped below the surface of the dark water, but I didn't sink.

The roots of the silver mallaithe tree encased me in darkness, twisting tight and blocking out the sunlight. I had a momentary flashback to the time Marten had imprisoned me in a tree, but this tree would not be so merciful as the last one had been.

Ivy-green light bloomed from my hands and golden-green light from the runes when I reactivated my cuffs. The pink granules in my fist glowed with an eye-blinding fluorescent light, and I slammed the supercharged Seeking Spell against my prison wall. In my mind's eye, pink lightning tore a path through every root, tracing the magic of this creature back to its very heart. For that's what fae were: magic embodied.

I didn't hear the silver mallaithe tree screech, but the effect of the Seeking Spell finding its source was so profound that that roots surrounding me flared apart in pain. They twisted, writhed, and shuddered in jerky movements as if the mallaithe tree were having a seizure. No longer entrapped, I plunged neck-deep into the water. But I wasn't going to swim away, not just yet.

Clinging to a shuddering root to keep my head above the rising water, I cast a Scouting Spell like my very life depended on it. Maybe it did.

As the silver mallaithe tree was semi-sentient, its signature lit up in my mind's eye, but it wasn't the signature I was looking for. The Scouting Spell rippled out, igniting six other sources. Six glowing dots that had formed a ring around my family in the pond.

The magic hunters.

But there was one glowing more brightly than the rest—the spellmaster directing this infernal ambush. Antler Tattoo.

Seven screams punctuated the air as my magical ping blinded the magic hunters' sight, one a high-pitched screech of the silver mallaithe tree.

The blackbirds circling above us burst into wisps of black vapor, and the smoky hounds and specters vanished as the magic hunters' control shattered from the pain of my Scouting Spell.

My family, released from the threat of the sluagh and the roots of the seizing mallaithe tree, burst into action. They were seasoned witches, all, and had felt the brush of my Scouting Spell and seized the ping before it could destroy their inner sight. I caught snatches of their movement through the churning water and thrashing roots as they blurred across the banks of the pond in the directions of the screams.

Something hit me hard around the middle, and before I could blast whatever it was with battle magic, I was reeled across the water. It was a vine of rippling green magic around my waist, and a moment later I was deposited on the mound. The water was only knee-deep here, and Grandmother gave me a curt, "Get up" before she flashed to the nearest bank on the power of the Rabbit Step Spell.

Though I got my feet under me and stood, I didn't leave.

The Hawthorne witches had gone after the magic hunters, not the silver mallaithe tree. If it recovered before they reached our attackers, it could send its roots out through the ground in pursuit so long as its trunk remained in the water. Once seeded, one part of it, roots or trunk, had to be in contact with water at all times.

Well, I could certainly do something about that.

Wiggling my feet, I dug my boots into the squelching mud of the pond bottom to anchor myself. To ground myself. Taking a deep breath, I deactivated my battle magic and let the oak tree of my power within me flourish. What I was about to do called upon the Life aspect of Nature, not Death.

Emerald green light flecked with gold sparks burst from my chest, wreathing down my arms and legs and extending past my fingers and toes. The brown, churning, leaf-riddled water around me lightened to a ruddy gold as my magic reached its full strength, and I plunged my hands into the soft mud at my feet.

Up , I commanded the earth. Rise up .

The ground beneath my feet trembled. And obeyed.

This wasn't a raised bed I was calling to expand my vegetable garden, nor a mound of earth to keep us out of the water. This wasn't a little hill to playfully launch Sawyer into the air as we raced through the orchard, nor a compact pillar of dirt to bash a motorcycle aside.

The entire valley floor rose at my command, trembling and quaking, the bedrock far below surging upward like a rocky glacier and shoving all the soil and decomposing forest bones skyward.

Up , I urged, pouring my heart into this magic. Not just to save my family, but the future victims of this fae hunting tree if it should ever get free. The river was right behind us, and if the silver mallaithe tree deemed that its dinner wasn't worth fighting for, it would escape to find more suitable hunting grounds. And grow. And seed.

The valley floor was now even with the makeshift banks of the pond, and I used my magic to cut drainage furrows on either side to let the water escape. But not the mallaithe tree. No, I kept half my attention on that creature, which, for the moment, was busy doing exactly what I thought it would do. Its roots plunged through the forest and tried to trip up and ensnare my family as they raced after our attackers.

Though semi-sentient, it wasn't smart enough to realize the water level was shrinking until half its trunk was exposed.

It resembled a girl-child, just as the legends said, with smooth silver skin. Long hair of the same texture and hue hung straight down its back, fused to the nape and spine, and the sharply pointed leaves of its namesake lay in a flat crown around its head. Its square teeth, so much like a human's, were the same silver color, as was the sleeveless dress that clung to its small breasts and narrow waist. Of course it wasn't wearing clothes, nor did it have breasts, but that was part of its defense—it had to resemble a human child—or rather a fae child, given its pointy ears—as much as possible to prevent someone taking a torch to it.

But its eyes… They should have been silver too, without any distinction between iris and sclera, and yet these blazed blue with faelight.

If I hadn't been convinced its presence here was part of a masterfully laid out trap before, I certainly was now.

That blue light flickered in its eyes when it realized the water was now exposing the hem of its dress, where the silver bark met the black of its roots. The instinct to survive battled with the compulsion of the faelight, and the mallaithe jerked back its monstrous roots. With a shrill cry, it plunged into the disappearing water and torpedoed for one of the drainage furrows.

A burst of green magic sealed that furrow with bedrock, the ground shuddering as the silver mallaithe collided into its impenetrable surface. The brown water churned into foam as the mallaithe tried the other furrow only to find that escape route blocked too. With a panicked keen, it began to circle in the shrinking pool. Then it dove for the remaining depths.

Black roots shot out at me like javelins, and I flung one hand free of the ground to lift a glittering green shield. While I'd never split my concentration between two spells before, I was a Hawthorne. Mom had done it. All the robed elders of the coven could do it. And what better way for me to learn than when my life depended on it.

Right?

I screamed as a root pierced through my shoulder. It yanked back, tugging me forward a step and taking my blood with it.

By the Green Mother, that hurt .

Gritting my teeth against the strange burning sensation in my flesh, I doubled down on my spells. Focus . Oh, I was focusing alright. I'd been panicked and desperate before. But now I was angry.

The ground continued to rise, though it wasn't releasing any more of the trapped water, and the glittering shield I'd erected was now thick enough to be nearly translucent. My shield sparked and fizzed where the roots struck it, but nothing penetrated it again as I sank back down into my crouch. My fingers dug into the mud, and my command changed.

Drain .

The surface of the water jumped like a thousand bubbles had just been released below its surface. The ground shifted, creating little pockets and subterranean crevices, but it wasn't draining fast enough. The mallaithe struck my shield again and again, frantic. It put the entirety of its will behind those attacks, and spider-web-like cracks fissured along the shimmering surface.

I didn't have the words to direct my magic now, just my intent. Remove the water, suffocate the mallaithe. Or dehydrate it. I wasn't sure of its anatomy.

My green magic soaked into every living thing. I commanded them to draw up the water through their roots. I ordered the ground to expunge the water, release it, eject it. With my magical core glowing a blinding golden-green, I demanded the water remove itself from the rest of the valley.

Brown murk rose into the air, the heavier soil particles and rotting leaves and decomposing twigs and all the forest debris sloughing back to the ground. Water, pure and clean and catching the rays of the sunlight in the most dazzling rainbow display swept higher towards the sky.

The silver mallaithe tree screamed, its thin silver arms stretching after the water as its black roots extended to their longest length, as if on tiptoe. But it didn't jump. Its existence depended on contact with water and soil, and it'd already lost one of them.

Go , I told the water. Join the river .

The clear water flattened into an arcing wave high above my head, each droplet hurrying to obey my command. There was a different kind of roar as my wave joined the rushing river, but I didn't turn to witness their merging. My gaze, my focus , was on the fae hunting tree.

It scuttled this way and that, roots and thin arms clawing at the leaf-covered ground, searching for hidden pockets of moisture. It shoved its roots deep but was met with only bedrock.

That shrill keen shot from its throat again, pinching off as its skin faded from its luminous silver to a dull gray. Its roots shriveled. The cheeks of its girl-child face sank, its eyes hollowing out. Baring its teeth, it struck one final time towards the single source of water remaining.

My blood.

I hadn't stopped bleeding from where it'd pierced me earlier, and I'd diverted all of my magic to maintaining my two spells instead of healing myself. Now that the valley was level ground and the water gone, my magic had turned fully to the shield I'd erected. But I was weak from the blood loss, the kiwi-sized hole pumping blood over my clothes with the same gusto as a chocolate fountain, and my shield burst apart with that final strike.

The unexpectedness of fainting saved my life. I crumpled to the dry ground as the roots shot through the air where my head and chest had just been, and then there was a sickening crack.

My vision swam as something brown and hulking bit down on the joint between the mallaithe tree's neck and shoulder, massive jaws and claws ripping it asunder. The fae hunting tree shattered into brittle splinters, and that last thing I saw was a bird flying across the cloudless sky, returning home now that the threats had been destroyed.

As the world faded away, the roar of the river was replaced by a familiar voice.

"You are becoming, " Violet told me.