Chapter Thirty-One

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

T HEY WAITED UNTIL THE DARKEST HOURS OF THE NIGHT, AT A TIME when only ghosts wandered the snowcapped moors, to sneak into Thorn Grove's stables.

Even the horses slept, the stables eerily silent as Blythe and Signa slipped inside. Death's shadows dripped from their bodies until the reaper stood beside them, determination hardening his stare. According to him he'd been with Aris, though Death wasn't willing to share where they'd gone.

Knowing them as she did, Blythe hardly had to venture a guess.

"Did Solanine hurt either of you?" she asked him quietly.

He offered the smallest shrug. "The only thing injured was Aris's pride. We haven't long before he notices we're gone."

Blythe's jaw tightened as she steadied her emotions. She crept along the stalls, guilt making a knotted home in her chest. "I hate this."

"So do I," he whispered. "But there's only one way for nature's balance to become so misaligned, and this is how we remedy it."

Signa's sight was so well adjusted to the darkness that she took the lead, carving the path forward. "There's no other choice, Blythe."

They were right. All three of them had reached the same conclusion about what needed to happen next, but that didn't mean she had to like it. Wordlessly, Blythe followed Signa past Mitra as the mare huffed a curious greeting, and to the deepest part of the stables where the horse she'd brought back from the dead awaited them.

Even now, Blythe looked at it and saw only beauty. The silver haze that emitted from its skin. The comforting warmth of its body as her hands rested along its neck, brushing down the length of it with soothing strokes.

It was too exquisite a creature to kill, and yet this would not be the first time they brought death upon it.

"I'm sorry." Blythe spoke softly as she curled her fingers into its mane. "I am so, so sorry."

The horse did not deserve to die, yet Blythe knew no other way to protect her family from Chaos. She knew too well the story of Foxglove, and of the plague brought about by Life's demise. Blythe did not want to consent to the death of this creature, but for the sake of everyone she cared for, she would.

"Will it be painful?" she asked, to which Death responded gently.

"I promise it will not feel a thing."

He peeled off his gloves, and Blythe wondered whether it was for her benefit that he was in his human form. He didn't need to be; the more time Blythe spent in his presence, the more she relaxed, taken over by a sense of comfort that likely came from Life's nostalgia.

She fought the urge to shut her eyes as he reached a pale hand toward the horse. If she was going to lay claim on its life, then the very least she could do was witness its final moments. But when Death settled his touch against its neck, it did not fall. Instead the silver haze shone brighter as the horse nuzzled its face into Death's palm.

Blythe did not miss his quiet gasp, or the way his fingers curled against the horse's muzzle, surprised. He looked back to Blythe, a wildness in his eyes, and whispered, "I can't kill it."

Signa stepped forward to lay her hands upon the creature while Blythe remained rooted in place, unable to look away from the light that was radiating so intensely from its body. A light that no one else seemed to notice.

She had laid claim on this creature's life, and now it seemed it could not die.

Panic rose in her throat. She could offer Chaos another life, perhaps. But whose? Balwin's? Mitra's? And what if it didn't work? What if she took an innocent life and still failed to protect her own?

The idea made her queasy. Blythe stumbled backward, away from Signa's fearful eyes and Death's stunned expression, toward the same hay bales that Chaos had sat on when she'd cornered Blythe days ago. Only this time when Blythe reached out to catch herself, her vision went black. The stables faded from view as she tuned out whatever urgent words Death and Signa whispered to each other, her mind slipping into a strange place that seemed to toe the edge of dreaming. Her body was no longer near the horses, but standing barefoot atop powdered snow in her mother's garden. All her limbs were numb, quivering from a cold that made every step send shocks of electricity through her. The pain was enough to knock her to her knees, leaving her grappling in a bush of roses with thorns that tore at her skin, drawing blood that neither healed nor brought more flowers to life.

All she could see of her own body were strong hands that didn't look like her own, so caked in mud that she couldn't determine the color of them. As fast as her heart raced, her body was weighed down by a fatigue that settled deep into her bones, telling her that this snow was the perfect place to close her eyes and rest. Tempting as it was, Blythe knew in the back of her mind that she would die if she succumbed to that desire. While every step made her cry out, she dragged herself up with the help of the nearby tree, blood bubbling beneath her nail beds as she dug her fingers into the bark to keep standing.

She recognized the garden, but why was she there?

A glance over her shoulder had her stomach hollowing at the sight of her mother's gravestone. She needed to hurry and escape before she was buried beside it. Blythe stumbled toward the gate, wishing with every muddy step that she could chop off her legs and be rid of the pain that had her eyes watering. Each sob felt like a serrated blade dragging up her throat.

Several times she fell upon the snow, having to drag herself until she made it to the gate. The iron doors opened with a terrible moan and she pushed forward, onward to Thorn Grove where a bath and a hot meal awaited her.

At the tinny scraping of the garden gates, Blythe's eyes fluttered open. She lurched upright, straw in her hair, and nearly slammed her face against Signa's, who had bent to inspect her. Death, too, stood distressingly close.

She was back in the stables, looking down at her legs and nearly crying when she could feel herself wriggling her toes. She tried to stand, but the first time Blythe blinked she saw roses waiting behind her eyelids. Saw bushes of snowcapped hellebore and vines that clawed along the garden floor, and felt the unease of it all.

"Blythe?" It sounded as though she was below the surface of water and Signa was shouting at her from above, the words a hollow echo as Blythe's mind followed the path of vines. "Blythe!" She said something else, too. Something about Aris, but Blythe couldn't focus enough to understand.

This was not like the vision she'd just had in the garden; this was one of Life's.

An invisible hand guided her into its depths, far into a maze that Blythe had never seen before.

With each step, images flashed in her periphery. Pale skirts and glances of hair like wheat that disappeared the second she turned to look. A couple spinning mid-dance, or hand in hand as they darted through shelves. Blythe heard their giggles. Heard the dulcet words of lovers as they flitted by, but could never quite make out what they said.

She hurried after them, breathless by the time she came to a halt. Only then could she see Mila standing before her, swept up in Aris's embrace. Neither appeared to notice her, and as Blythe stepped forward to reach out for them, her hand skimmed through their forms like water.

"Don't do this," Aris whispered, bending to press his forehead upon the woman's. "We can save you. Let us save you."

Mila pressed to her toes, loosening her hold on her lover. "This is the way of things, Aris. You must let me go."

But Aris did not let her go. He pulled away, and Blythe was quick to follow as Aris sought his brother. Together they concocted a plan, going against Mila's wishes in order to save her. Blythe knew what happened next, but still she followed the story, watching as a plague tore through the world, ravaging life after countless life. She watched Death's guilt turn to distress. Aris's sorrow manifest into anger. Watched as Mila died all the same, made a husk by her despair and by the betrayal of those she had trusted.

Watching the memory play out reawakened a wound buried deep within her. Blythe's head throbbed, and soon the world surrounding her morphed into garden hedges. Ones that familiar blond hair swept behind, humming an all too familiar song. It was a woman in a sun hat whom Blythe had seen a hundred times before, bent at the waist and humming as she tended to the garden.

"Mother?" Blythe tried to step around her. Tried to catch a glimpse of the woman's face, though the figure turned as soon as Blythe did.

"You rascal!" her mother chided someone in the distance. A small boy with hair of harvest orange. Lillian turned to chase after the boy, her laughter rattling in Blythe's skull.

Thunder raged in Blythe's heart as she followed them. Yet no matter how many steps she took, she never ended up any closer. She was panting and breathless as she followed after the ghost, who she saw only in quick glimpses from the corner of her eye.

Blythe stumbled, clutching her chest, for it felt ready to burst through her skin. The garden had disappeared into a hallway of old portraits and the familiar mahogany floors of Thorn Grove. Outside a room just past her bedroom door, a figure skirted the edges of her vision.

Only it was no longer a woman with blond hair, laughing as Blythe chased her. It was a figure in a fox mask. One with hair as red as flame.

The pounding of her own heart warned Blythe to stay back. She braced her body against the wall, standing beside her mother's portrait as the figure took a step toward her. But before it could approach, the light of the room shifted and the masked figure jerked their head to it.

"Blythe?" It was Aris's voice, low and worried. The sound of it was all it took for the masked figure to retreat to Thorn Grove's shadows. Slowly, the hallway vanished, and Blythe's bleary eyes adjusted enough to know that she was back in her library. Back safe at Wisteria. She hadn't even felt Death move her.

"She's been like this for several minutes," her cousin whispered, voice thick with concern.

"It looks like a seizure," Death said. "Has this happened before?"

Blythe folded into her knees, ignoring the voices. If only she could manifest Thorn Grove again. Something important was within those halls, she was certain of it. But she couldn't make sense of what was up and what was down, let alone control her voice enough to tell the others that.

"Get away from her," Aris spat, lifting her from the ground. "You're scaring us, Sweetbrier. If you can hear me, I need you to let us know."

She wanted to open her eyes. Wanted to soothe him and assure the others that they had nothing to worry about. But before she could open her eyes to do that, Lillian's butter-soft laughter warmed the air. It was a sound that drowned out all else, and Blythe relaxed against it.

She no longer heard Aris calling out to her. She had no knowledge of his growing concern or where he took her, let alone of the sweat that drenched her gown.

Blythe was certain that her mother had led her to that room in Thorn Grove. She only needed to get in there to discover what was waiting for her inside.

Blythe tipped her head against Aris's chest, and from behind the darkness of her eyelids, she followed her mother toward the darkness.