Chapter Thirty-Five

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

T HIS ISN'T POSSIBLE." S URELY B LYTHE HAD ALREADY DIED. S HE MUST have become a spirit, trapped and forced to forever roam the halls of Thorn Grove. That, at least, would have made more sense than her dead brother standing before her. "I was told that you died."

He was fairer than she remembered, and now that she'd had a good look at his eyes, Blythe could see that the color had been leached from them. Out of all the strange beings she knew, Percy looked most inhuman, and the sight of him standing before her with his shoulders hunched and his body unsteady had thorns rising to the surface of her skin once again.

"I don't remember," he whispered, drawing back toward what was once their mother's bed. There was a masquerade mask of a fox face beside it. "For weeks I've tried to piece it together, but all I remember is seeing Lillian, a man of shadows, and vines tearing up from the earth. And then there was this… this hound. It looked as if he'd stepped from the pits of hell."

Even amid all his grievances with Grey's and their father's refusal to let him inherit it, Blythe couldn't remember ever seeing Percy's shoulders so bowed. Never had she seen him so distraught, quaking like a sailor caught in a hurricane.

She stretched out a tentative hand, pressing it against her brother's wrist to confirm that his skin would not suddenly evaporate at the touch. He brushed his thumb against hers before she could pull away, and Blythe sucked in a breath at the sharpness of his nails against her skin.

"I'm real, B," he whispered. "At least I believe I am."

She snatched her hand back, tongue fuzzy with moss as her powers inched to the surface, ready to defend her if he came any closer. She fought them back for now, instead grabbing two sharp pins from her hair.

"You have no right to call me that," she snarled in a voice every bit as poisonous as the ivy that wanted to snake around her fingers. "What do you expect from me, Percy? A welcome parade? You tried to kill me!"

Blythe lunged forward, stabbing at him with the pins. Percy jumped back, managing to avoid one, but the other stuck into his thigh. With a hiss of breath he bent at the waist to tend to it as blood blossomed on his pants. Only, it was not red blood but black as tar. Blythe covered her mouth at the sight, stumbling toward the door.

"Let me explain!" he called after her, and blast her treacherous heart and its dreaded feelings . His words halted Blythe in her tracks. For months she had wondered what she'd done wrong. Wondered how she could have angered her brother to the point that he'd decided that killing her was the only option.

The safest thing Blythe could do for herself was to run and find the others. Instead she turned, and even then she could not see him as a killer. When she looked at Percy, she saw only her brother. A much more dead version of her brother, but nonetheless.

Percy teetered several paces closer, stiff on his feet. Blythe recognized his walk; she'd seen it earlier that day, when she'd envisioned herself trapped in her mother's garden. But perhaps it wasn't herself that she had envisioned, perhaps it had been Percy. That, at least, would explain why the garden had been torn apart last she'd seen it.

"I never should have involved you," Percy told her, his eyes seeming to scan the corners of the room with increasing paranoia. "I wasn't in my right mind. I was afraid of losing everything, and I'm sorry—"

"‘Sorry' isn't enough to justify nearly killing someone." As strong as she tried to be, Blythe struggled to speak those words. After so long wishing for the chance to speak face-to-face with her brother and for him to explain why he'd betrayed her, this was all he could come up with?

A laugh tore through her, drawing tears from her eyes as she hugged her arms tightly around herself. "You put me through hell, Percy. You made every bone in my body feel as though it were on fire. You watched as I could no longer see straight. As I could no longer hold my food down or manage conversation. You left me alone in my room, staring at a ceiling I believed would be the last thing I ever saw. You witnessed all of this, and still you poisoned me."

Even then, Percy did not meet her eye. He was watching the corners, as if anticipating Death to leap from them at any moment. She should have expected as much; Percy always had been a coward.

"You killed me," she told him, withholding none of her bitterness. "And it's your fault that I'm dying again now."

Only then did his head jerked up to look at her, and so terrifying were his fathomless eyes that Blythe wished she could look away. She wouldn't, though. She didn't dare give him any advantage over her.

"I haven't done a thing to you since I've been back," he said. "I'm glad that you're here, Blythe. I didn't know how to stop the poisonings because I couldn't face you after knowing what I'd done. You were so sick."

"I don't want to hear it," she spat, brushing down the thorns prickling along her arms. "How long have you been living in Mother's suite?"

"Since early November, I think? I don't know the exact date."

"And who else knows you're here?"

"No one," Percy told her. "I've been in this room since I returned, drinking snow and sneaking into the kitchens through the tunnels."

"I'll have them all blocked," she swore, feeling a cruel pang of satisfaction when his jaw visibly tightened.

Good. Let him worry.

"No one but Signa and I know that you're dead, you fool. But I swear that I'll tell them. I'll tell Father everything you've done to me, and I will spare no detail. For months I've been well, and then you show up and—" She cut off as the realization struck like a knife through her gut.

She'd been well up to the night of the wedding. After that she had chalked up her symptoms to a passing cold or allergies from the poor state in which Wisteria had been kept, but as she examined the jaggedness of Percy's nails and thought back to her earlier vision, she remembered what else had happened the day of her marriage. Remembered when she'd visited her mother's garden and noticed her magic for the first time in the form of a single crimson petal.

Blythe held her stomach, noticing that Percy's fingernails were not caked with mud but blood. They were torn apart, the skin shredded and the tips frostbitten.

He had clawed his way out from the ground, and it was because of her.

A year ago, Signa had taken Percy's life. She had given the rest of his years to Blythe, to save her from the belladonna poisoning. And now Blythe had unknowingly brought him back. It was no wonder Chaos had sought her out, and all that had happened was but a taste of what was to come.

"You're not meant to be here, Percy," she whispered, feeling the weight of those words settling into her bones. Her hands ached to find more pins and sink them deep into his neck. To end him then and there, and save herself.

And yet she couldn't. Because despite all that had happened, when she looked at Percy, she saw the face of her brother staring back at her. The face of someone she had grown up with, and who she'd spent years of her life chasing through trees and sneaking late night snacks from the kitchen with.

Perhaps he was capable of murder, but Blythe? She would never move for the killing blow. Instead she stepped toward him, stilling when he flinched back. Silently, Blythe reached her hand forward, waiting for Percy to place his palm in hers. It was a great effort not to shudder at the harshness of his frostbitten fingers against her skin.

It didn't matter what pain he had caused her; Blythe could not bear to see her brother like this. She shut her eyes, summoning her magic to the surface. She'd never healed anyone intentionally, but that didn't stop her from picturing Percy's hands in her mind's eye, healthy and unblemished as she let her powers flow freely. It was the first time she'd knowingly summoned it this way, and the magic welcomed her with great delight, as though it'd been waiting for her all this time. Blythe leaned into its embrace, flooding herself with its warmth.

"You're the one who broke into Grey's," she said as she worked. Her words held no question, for it was the only thing that made sense. "Even after all this time, you're still angry."

"Of course I am," he spat, and in that moment Blythe saw the extent of his cruelty firsthand. "It was mine , Blythe. All these years, it was meant to be mine. I shouldn't have had it taken away just because our father lost his mind."

Her brother had become a fool. A heartless, callous fool.

"You have a son," she said, feeling the need to tell him. "With Eliza Wakefield. She was forced to marry Byron when you disappeared, and he's claimed the child as his own. He thinks you're dead, but he hasn't been able to confirm it."

The tremors in Percy's hand paused, if only for a moment. "A son? I hadn't even known she was pregnant." His laugh was not a joyous sound but as hollow and haunted as the halls surrounding them. "Has it truly been that long since…"

"Since you died?" she finished. "It has."

The magic was harder than she expected it to be. Lines of concentration embedded deep into her forehead as she strained to do something she had done to Signa by accident. Trying to heal Percy had her hands aching. She could barely feel her fingers, and as she drew back to reevaluate the situation Blythe had to smother her gasp. While pink, fleshy skin now coated Percy's formerly frostbitten fingers, the tips of her own were turning gray. She peeled back, smothering her hands in her skirts to avoid his notice.

It seemed the healthier his body became, the worse her own succumbed. The extent of their connection had never been clearer—if Percy was to live, she could not. It was his stolen years that Blythe had been surviving on, after all.

But how Percy even had a body left to return to was astounding. She supposed if the frogs were able to reunite their bones and reform their flesh, then she shouldn't have been so surprised that he could, too. Still, how unnatural it was to be looking upon him.

"What do you remember?" she found herself asking, gripping fistfuls of her skirts to quell her trembling. Blythe could hardly feel the fabric against the tips of her fingers.

"From when I was dead?" Percy was heedless of Blythe's scrutiny as she tried to calculate whether he'd returned taller than he'd been in the past. And had he always had so many freckles on his nose? Her brother may physically have come back, but it wasn't right. Everything she remembered about him was slightly off, a picture painted from memory rather than reference.

"It was cold," Percy continued. "I didn't realize I was suffocating at first, but my body could hardly move. All I remember is dirt around me and my lungs filling with it as I tried to force my way out. It wasn't even a proper grave .

"It feels like there are things inside of me, Blythe." At this, his voice began to shake. "Like worms are writhing through me. Insects scavenging my bones even now. My skin… none of this feels right."

Blythe's stomach grew cold. It didn't match at all with what she knew about death, though she also hadn't been present in the garden when Percy died. Still, why couldn't Percy have been reincarnated? Or gone to the afterlife? She needed to ask Sylas. Needed to ask him why Percy was here while her mother was still dead.

But there was no time. The adrenaline of finding Percy was wearing off, and the corners of Blythe's vision were becoming bleary as her body grew body nauseous from standing, and she knew she had to make a choice quickly—Percy's life, or her own.

The truth was that Blythe knew herself and knew there was only one option. Yet before she could say it aloud there was a flash of light followed by the most intense darkness Blythe had ever known. Percy screamed, and Blythe was taken up by a thousand threads of gold encompassing her at once. Only as the darkness cleared could Blythe see that Sylas was upon her brother, gripping a scythe that shone as silver as the moon. He drew it back, only for terror to rip through Blythe's throat.

"Don't hurt him!" she cried, noticing then that Signa was just behind them. Her cousin's face was grave, expression resolute, and she didn't once turn toward Blythe.

"Dear God," Signa whispered, unable to look away from the man before them. "Blythe, what have you done?"