37. Lorraine

Slowly, I came to. My head spun, my ears rang, and my vision wouldn’t come into focus. I saw double of everything—the trees around me, the two men fighting on the ground. The mulch I lay on was wet, my clothes were soaked, and I frowned. What was going on?

A sharp smell pushed into my nose—I’d smelled this when we’d stepped out of the tree, but I hadn’t paid any attention to it. The sounds of fighting distracted me. My vision returned, and I could hear again. The grunts and groans, followed by the sound of punching and a thunderous noise that accompanied it, filled the forest as they fought. I sat up. My head throbbed painfully between my temples, and I pressed my palm to my forehead. I stared at the guys fighting. Ash rolled Oscar over and pinned him down, getting on top of him. His hands were wrapped around his neck, and somehow, he was strangling him. Oscar made strange gurgling noises, but it didn’t sound like he was being strangled. It sounded like he was drowning, even though there was no water. How could that be? “Please,” Oscar said, his voice hoarse as Ash kept pressing down, kept holding him in place. “Don’t let me die.”

“You don’t deserve to live,” Ash sneered. “I know,” Oscar said. “I know… I just couldn’t get away from him. I was tricked into this.”

Ash frowned, and he let up a bit. He still pinned Oscar down, but Oscar was able to gasp for breath. “What do you mean, he tricked you?”

“He let me believe that I would have a better life, that things would be easier,” Oscar said, his voice still hoarse, and he coughed between his words. He rubbed his throat. “I believed him. I shouldn’t have; I realized he wouldn’t let me have what I wanted. In fact, he took away what I cared about.”

Oscar pointed toward me. “He does that,” Ash said grimly. “He told me to sacrifice her, when she was all I wanted,” Oscar said. Ash let up even more. Oscar was winning him over. He couldn’t believe him, I thought; Oscar was just tricking him into keeping him alive! Ash was too nice—he would give Oscar mercy. In his essence, Ash was a kind person, and he cared. “Don’t listen to him,” I cried out. Ash jerked his head around. “Lorraine!” He got off Oscar and hurried to me, falling to his knees next to me. His face was bruised, with a split lip and a black eye, a jaw that was already swelling, and blood trickling from his eyebrow onto a thick cheekbone that would swell up even more before it got better. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “You can’t trust him. Don’t let him trick you.”

Ash shook his head. “We were both forced into the same thing. We were both told we could have the world, only to have it taken away from us.”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “Please, Ash, don’t fall for it.”

“He’s right,” Oscar said, getting up. He dusted himself off, and he looked the worse for wear, too. He looked like he was worse off than Ash, though. “We were both tricked. It’s not right that we fight each other. We should fight together.”

I frowned. Was it really that simple? Had Oscar been good all along, but he’d just been tricked by Dolus, just as Ash had? My mind spun. My head ached, and I struggled to think straight, to understand what was happening. I’d been so hurt by what Oscar had done to me, so set on seeing him as the bad guy the last few weeks I’d been here with Ash, that it was hard not to see him as the villain now. “He’s right,” Ash said, saying the same words Oscar had just spoken. “We should fight together. If Dolus wants your soul, we’re not going to be able to stop him alone. If we all stand together, with the power we’ll have collectively, we might be able to do it.”

“I’m not working with him,” I said to Ash. “I can’t.”

After everything he’d done to me, I couldn’t see Oscar as someone who was on our side. I couldn’t accept that he still loved me and cared for me. “I’m sorry, Lorraine,” Oscar said softly. “I’m sorry for what I did. I just… I had to do what I was told, or I would have died.”

Ash cupped my cheeks, leaning his forehead against mine. “I won’t lose you again, Lorraine. I won’t let Dolus get away with this.”

He kissed me, and the feel of his lips on mine made me melt. While he kissed me, though, something nagged at the back of my mind. Something wasn’t right. Something didn’t quite make sense, and I struggled to add it all up with my head that throbbed so painfully. I had some kind of concussion, I was sure. Oscar said he’d been manipulated and tricked the same way Ash had, tricked into giving me up. Ash had given up his memories of me, but Oscar had sold me. What he’d done was to give me away so that Dolus—or whoever he was working with—could have my soul. Oscar was doing all this for himself, and what happened to me was nothing more than a means to an end so that he could have more power. I pulled back, breaking the kiss. “No,” I said. “He’s not on our side. He’s not good, like you. He wasn’t tricked into this. Dolus gave him his power, which means that he’s the one tricking us. Right now.”

“What?” Ash asked. Oscar laughed, and the sound was menacing, scraping against the inside of my skin. “I always knew you were the one who deserved to go to college. You’re smart as a tack, babe. You’re right, none of that bullshit is real. It’s too pathetic.”

Ash jumped up, hands balled into fists. “You son of a bitch!” he shouted. He stormed toward Oscar, but Oscar didn’t budge. Instead of fighting back, he took out a lighter and flicked a flame into being. “Come at me,” he challenged. I frowned. What was he doing? I pressed my hand against the mulch, drenched, and the sharp smell suddenly registered. Gasoline. “No!” I screamed just as Oscar threw the lighter onto the ground. The whole forest seemed to go up in flames, the crackling deafening. The flames danced all around me, searing hot. “What the fuck are you doing!?” Ash cried out. He spun around. “No! They’re all going to die!”

“Yeah, and good fucking riddance,” Oscar said. “You think I was just going to wait out here and do nothing while the two of you had your fun in the tree? It gave me more than enough time to drench the forest with gasoline.”

A terrible moaning sound rose up as the trees caught fire and the forest burned. The druses who lived in the trees were being burned alive, and the screams grew louder and louder. “Stop!” Ash shouted, his voice becoming hoarse. “They don’t deserve this!”

“You wanted to believe that I was good; here’s your reward,” Oscar sneered. “You’re a fucking loser, letting me trick you like that again and again. I don’t know what she sees in you. Then again, she’s just as pathetic as you are.”

Oscar’s eyes locked on mine, and he offered a sly smile. “But now you get to watch him burn before I take you to your end, too.”

As he said it, Ash’s skin started glowing. He caught alight, too. He was burning right in front of me, and I could do nothing but watch as he caught fire in the same places his tree behind him burned. He was a tree spirit, bound to the tree. “Get to the water!” I shouted, running to Ash. I grabbed his hand, but he was boiling hot, and when I touched him, it singed my skin and blisters appeared right away. “Ash!” I screamed.

“Get to the water!”

His eyes were filled with pain and sorrow, the light of the flames flickering all around us. The fire was burning down the vale, burning the man I loved, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. “Ash!” I shouted again. I fell to my knees. “Please, no!” Tears streamed down my cheeks and I cried, wailing. “Someone, please! Anyone!”

No one would hear me over the roar of the flames. No one would know that my life was ending. I loved Ash more than I’d ever loved anyone, and I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t do anything to save him. “Ash,” I cried again as I watched him burn. A shadow moved behind him, and I turned my head to look at the goddess who appeared. “Please,” I said in a hoarse voice, raw from crying and screaming. “I love him. I can’t lose him, not now. Not ever. Can you help?” The goddess kneeled in front of me. I couldn’t see her face, but I had the idea that she was smiling. “Oh, child,” she said. “What would you be willing to offer in return for his life?”

“Anything,” I whispered.

What happens next? Find out in book three of the trilogy - Entwined with the Dryad .