Alice held her breath, trying to compute what he was saying. Every time she’d told Kuu to ‘go’ and sent out her itse-soul to defend her from an attacker, she’d released her soul – that was true. But it had never gone far. He had to be lying.
‘Tom was working for you,’ she rasped.
He nodded. ‘In a way. He was working for Marianne, and everything Marianne does is for Tuoni.’
‘Those attacks . . . my soul escaping . . . It never happened anywhere near the Summer Tree. I didn’t even see the nightjar until a few days ago. I couldn’t have—’
‘You couldn’t have helped yourself,’ said Risdon. ‘As soon as you bound yourself to the tree, you created a pathway. A direct line from your nightjar, and your soul, to my prison.’
Alice remembered, suddenly, the first time she’d met Cecil and discussed the binding draught with him. He’d framed it as an honour to link your life force to the life force of a tree, but she’d considered it servitude; members were forced to take the greatest care with it because if the tree was damaged, the binding passed on that damage to you. Its benefits were given with conditions attached to guarantee your service. But Cecil had said it was a one-way street. Members of the House couldn’t damage the tree in return – otherwise every time someone linked to the tree died of old age, their death would damage it. But they didn’t. The tree was too powerful to accept such insignificant damage.
‘No,’ she said. ‘The binding draught doesn’t work like that. The link between the tree and the members of—’
‘You are not a member of House Mielikki,’ Risdon said softly. ‘You are House Mielikki, just like your mother. Your connection to the Summer Tree runs deep. It’s in your blood.’
Alice stared at him, her mouth dry. All this time, she’d been blessed with the benefits she’d received from the Summer Tree, unaware that – with her Mielikki blood – she was passing back something of herself, her own damage, to the tree.
‘Every time you strengthened the link’ – he nodded at the empty binding draught chalice – ‘you chipped away at my bonds.’
‘But Holly,’ she said desperately. ‘She died because the tree was already growing; the draught was too powerful for her. But that was before I’d linked myself to it at all, so I couldn’t have—’
‘Your first test almost killed you,’ he said. ‘Your soul suffered a trauma while you were standing in Mielikki’s House, a corridor away from the replica of her tree – its anchor. You were so close to it, and you were so weak.’
Alice’s eyes searched his face. ‘But I—’
‘Infants have no self-control,’ he repeated with a grim smile. ‘You are the one who has been liberating my soul from Leda’s trap. You’re the reason the Summer Tree has grown. And now – the bonds are so fragile, Alice – you’ve had the final binding draught. It’s time. I want my soul returned to me.’
Alice pressed her hands against her ears to muffle his words. No. She was Mielikki’s heir. She was going to save the Rookery. People had died because of this. People had . . . people . . .
She sucked in a ragged breath, the truth striking her so suddenly that she swayed on her feet as though she’d taken a blow to the temple. He was right. She was Death. She had tried to run from it, but there was no escaping who and what she was. People had died because she’d tried.
‘Leda won’t forgive you,’ Alice murmured after a long moment. ‘If you go to her, in the moors, she won’t forgive you for using what she did to destroy the Rookery.’
‘I’ll take that chance,’ he said. ‘I’m tired of this existence. Please. Let me rest, Alice.’
He flicked his fingers and the burning elm flamed more brightly. Smoke peeled away from the canopy, billowing through the air and leaving an acrid taste in the back of Alice’s throat. Powerful heat pressed against her face, stinging her cheeks, but still Alice stood in silence, watching.
The fire jumped the distance between the trees, snagging the leaves of the neighbouring poplar . . . then the oak . . . and the hornbeam at her back.
‘Alice,’ said Risdon, his weary voice carrying through the trees. ‘Run.’
Her boots kicked up soil as she plunged through the undergrowth. Fire swept through the trees behind her, consuming the dense canopies. Twisting columns of flame stretched into the glowing skies. Leaves turned to ash. Scorched branches were tossed from the sizzling inferno. Expanding pillars of smoke pumped out above the trees, a churning grey smudge against the gold-streaked sky.
Alice threw an arm across her face to protect it from the searing heat at her back. The smoke drifted down to blanket the forest floor, obscuring the safe passageways between trees. She stumbled through a copse. Wrong turn. Shit. Stay ahead of the fire. She swung back round, searching for a gap. The air rippled with heat haze, and Alice’s eyes stung, but she ploughed onwards, darting past a smouldering cedar. Spiked brambles whipped her skin and pulled at her hair, but she quickened her pace. The fire had caught her up. It bloomed out between the trees, latching on, spreading . . . Wildfire.
Embers rained down from above, a shower of glinting cinders hitting the brushwood. Alice leapt aside with a gasp. A spark flared to life at her feet, snagging her bootlace. She stamped it out with her other foot and swayed back and forth, light-headed with smoke. The forest tilted around her, a smear of orange and gold on a dark canvas. Head for the shadows, she imagined Crowley shouting at her. There’s safety in the shadows. Her footsteps slow, she lurched onwards. Shadows. Find the shadows.
‘There’s nowhere left for you,’ shouted Risdon, raising his voice above the crackle and hiss of flames.
A scorched maple branch thudded onto the ground at his feet. He kicked it aside and stepped closer.
The fire had torched the trees and left blackened skeletons behind. The flames had amputated their crooked limbs, and their kindled remains lay in tumbling piles over the forest floor. The fire consumed them from within, like a parasite. Everywhere was dancing flame and thick, funnelling smoke. Sweat beaded Alice’s face and stuck her jumper to her damp skin. The air was too hot to breathe. She maintained her wary stance, staring at him as he approached.
‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘Refusing to be bowed by fire.’
Her muscles tensed. She swiped away the sweat dripping from her brow.
‘Fighting to save a city that doesn’t know you. You have Leda’s bite.’ A burning rowan tree shed its branches and smoking wood thumped to the ground between them. ‘I think . . . in a different life . . .’
He shook his head and waved his hand. The fire flared brighter. The flames exploded outwards from the trees, their rippling peaks just inches from her skin. Risdon’s face, painted by shadow and fire, stared through the flames with an eerie calm. He was untouched. The fire glanced off him. He flicked a finger, and the spitting flames roared and tightened around her. The air swelled with blistering heat, walling her in from all sides. She couldn’t breathe; the boiling air flayed her throat and ignited her lungs. What did he want? To burn her alive? Cauterize his wounds by destroying the child who should never have existed? But that wouldn’t bring Leda back. This attack was senseless; he’d never be . . .
Her thoughts skidded to a halt. An attack. Just like the others. Tom’s attacks hadn’t been senseless; their purpose had been to threaten her so that she’d unleash a piece of her soul to cut down her attacker. Risdon wanted her to fight back. He wanted her to unleash her soul on him like a bomb . . . but her soul would sever his nightjar’s cord. Finally and completely. Alice shuddered. She could not send Kuu away. Her soul couldn’t save her this time.
She dropped to her knees, one arm raised to shield her watering eyes. She scrabbled through the hot brushwood, searching for something she could use – a weapon, anything – and found a thick branch, one end blackened like charcoal. She launched it at Risdon. As it struck the fire it disintegrated to ash. He smiled grimly at her and she shook it off. Her brain scrambled for possibilities. What can I do? What can I do? She
groped for something else to hurl through the flames. But her hand caught the edge of the fire and she yanked it back with a yelp. It was getting closer. Think.
Roots. The roots were underground. Hidden from the fire. She plunged her hands into the warm earth. Scraping mud aside, she burrowed deeper with her fingers. Her chest tightened with apprehension. She dropped her head onto her chest, ignoring the sizzle and pop of the flames only inches away, and sent every ounce of concentration into her arms. She pushed her will through her wrists; it spread across her palms and seeped into her tingling fingers. Damp grains of mud coated her hands, caked into the lines of her skin. Thick wads of soil were embedded under her nails. She rolled clumps of moist earth between her fingers. Mielikki’s soil. Mielikki’s trees. The soil began to vibrate. Particles ricocheting off particles, a wave of movement rippled underground. Sweat – from the heat, from concentration – dripped into Alice’s eyes, but she maintained her focus. Move.
Outside the ring of fire, tree roots erupted from the soil. They smashed through the surface, raining clumps of muck as they wound upwards. A tangle of creeping roots slid through the undergrowth and through the fire. Flames snagged the bark but the roots poured ceaselessly across the forest, with just one destination: Risdon.
A flexible vine whipped around his knees, pinning his legs together. A root curled around his chest. Squeeze. The root pinched around his ribs. He puffed out his chest to fight against the pressure. Like a moving spider’s web, the snarl of roots wrapped their burning arms around him and hugged him tight. The fire around Alice stuttered and she raised her head, a spark of hope lighting in her eyes.
But Risdon wrenched his arms out to his sides and the roots disintegrated. No! Charcoal and ash flittered to the ground like snow. Ash streaked his face and hair, tinting his skin statue-grey. He snapped his fingers and the fire rushed closer, caging Alice. Fury and fear descended and she yanked her hands from the soil. The ends of her hair curled as the heat drew in.
‘You have two options,’ he shouted over the flames. ‘Fight me – the only way you can win. Or die.’
Save her life by sending out her soul to attack him . . . or die and her soul would be released straight to the moors – harmlessly stepping into its natural home, where he couldn’t use it? He was wrong. There was only one option. She would not release her soul to attack him and his bonds – she would not destroy the Rookery; she would not risk the lives of those who would die when it crumbled beneath them; she would not fight him. She would die. And with her death, his chances of releasing his soul would die too, and his chances of reuniting with Leda. Without Leda, he had nothing to live for. But Alice had something worth dying for.
This was it.
She put aside all thoughts of fighting and crouched on her knees. Sweat slid down the back of her neck. Don’t think of the fire. Ignore the heat. She groped for something else to focus on, to distract her. She thought of the pictures she’d seen in history books, of the victims of the Pompeii eruption, ashen and huddled in their death poses. Would House Mielikki block off this forest entirely, or would they one day open the door to find the fire doused and Alice here, in just this position? She thought of Joan of Arc and Thomas Becket, and the World War One poet Wilfred Owen. Martyrs to a cause. Could she claim martyrdom? What was Owen’s famous poem? Dulce . . .
The fire licked at the sole of her boots and she pulled her legs in closer. Her head nodded dizzily. No oxygen.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. That was it. It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. Sarcasm on Owen’s part. But now she was going to follow him down that rabbit hole. Only, no one would ever know what she had done, or what she had sacrificed. There would be no blue plaque outside Coram House for her, no Rookery-issued medal to console her loved ones with tales of her bravery.
She thought of her parents, who would never hear her voice again, who would wonder why she had never returned home. Maybe they would assume she had found a more exciting life than the one they had offered – that she had finally set them aside to pursue her glamorous new life in the Rookery.
She thought of Crowley. Crowley – who would be furious with her for dying, for allowing this to happen, for being tricked, for leaving. And proud, too, she hoped. Helena and Leda’s actions had almost destroyed the Rookery. And now Alice’s inaction would save it. She would right both their wrongs.
The flames crested against her cheek and Alice clenched her jaw to keep from crying out. Something fluttered against her neck and she flinched, expecting pain. A gentle churring in her ear shushed her fears. Kuu. The tension in Alice’s chest unspooled and she reached for the bird with a choked sob. Kuu’s head nuzzled her face. Her pale wings shone brightly, untouched by fire. Kuu was a nightjar, not a phoenix, and nothing could harm her – not flame, nor anything else.
Falling embers scorched holes in Alice’s trousers, singeing her legs. She hissed at the sudden burning and Kuu flapped her wings restlessly.
‘Stay,’ Alice murmured. ‘Stay with me till the end.’
Risdon stood on the other side of the rippling fire, like a demon in the flames. The fire swept nearer and set her sleeve alight. She desperately batted it out and pressed her arm into the soil to soothe the pain. She closed her eyes against the brightness.
‘Let go,’ he said. ‘Dying for the Rookery is not necessary. Tell your little nightjar to save you.’
Alice frowned, her conviction wavering in the throb of pain from her arm. No. She gritted her teeth.
‘Nightjar,’ he called. ‘I’m talking to you. I might have been your master, once. You sense me, don’t you? You know what I am.’ Kuu’s head darted up, listening, and Alice groaned. ‘Your job is to protect her. And protect the world from her. Tonight, you can do both. You don’t need to compromise.’
‘Don’t – don’t listen to him,’ Alice managed.
‘You can save her if you leave,’ said Risdon. ‘It won’t be her soul that destroys the Rookery, it will be the Summer Tree. She won’t be responsible. You won’t be responsible.’
The white nightjar tipped its head sideways as though considering his words. Could she really hear him?
‘Kuu, no,’ Alice whispered. ‘Don’t.’
‘Save her,’ said Risdon.
And then he brought both hands together, and the fire took her. Alice’s trousers ignited, the fire eating through cotton. Hot spikes of pain drove through her skin. Her mouth fell open in a silent scream, and her body began to spasm and buck as waves of boiling agony swept through her. Alice’s fingers clenched and a soft moan slipped from her clamped lips. She was too far gone to think, to have awareness of anything beyond her agony.
One eye slid open. Panting, her cheek pressed against the soil, she scanned sideways for her nightjar. For comfort. The glowing cord looped to her wrist was . . . too thin. She scrabbled to reach for it, to pull Kuu closer. But fire engulfed her jumper and the cord slid from her fingers. Trembling, she gave herself up to the pain.
A bolt of lightning slammed into her spine and she snapped backwards with a gasp. No, Kuu! Her breath rasped out from burning lungs – and with it, something else. Her very essence – potent energy and ravenous darkness – poured out from her body. Like motes of glittering dust, she hovered in the air, lost to all sensation except one: hunger. The steady pulse of warmth nearby drew her closer and she stretched herself wide in yearning. Warmth. Life. Close by. She reached for it . . . but a brightly glowing rope swung across her path, barring her progress. Every gleaming particle of her soul vibrated. A wave of raw power surged forward, slicing through the incandescent barrier . . . A nightjar shrieked . . . not her own. Not Kuu. Tuoni’s nightjar – its cord had been severed.
And then a fluttering of pale wings wafted pockets of air and she spiralled backwards. Kuu cried out and Alice shrank back . . . back . . . shrank back.
Alice exhaled sharply and collapsed onto her side. Her eyes flew open and the forest loomed over her, trees blackened with charcoal a
nd soot. The fire . . . was gone. Every flame doused. No fire . . . no Risdon. She was alone. Alone with her burns and her blistered skin. She panted softly through the pain. Can’t stay here. Got to . . . got to go. Alice pushed herself upright with a scream of agony. The skin on her back stretched and tore open. Her arms trembled but she increased the pressure and forced herself to her feet just as Kuu swooped down to settle on her shoulder.
‘What have you done?’ she moaned, as the ground began to rumble beneath her.
House Mielikki was empty when she staggered along the corridor. Bursting out onto the pavement, she swayed groggily at the sudden city noise and crisp breeze. One hand grappled for support and latched on to the House’s botanical wall, her fingers slipping through the gaps. The knitted branches of willow, cherry blossom and horse chestnut, colours shifting, buds and flowers blossoming, were a wall of constant motion.
But in her hands, the branches hardened and the buds withered. Pink and white petals curled and dropped to the ground, discarded. The plants wilted, growth ceased and the branches cracked under the weight. Before her eyes, the wall began to decay. Alice snatched her hand away in alarm and stumbled across the road on leaden legs.
Get to Coram House. Sanctuary. Before the Summer Tree could—
The road’s cobbles shuddered and clacked together. She lunged for the safety of the pavement, hissing at the flare of pain in her back. The noise was barely noticeable at first, but the thudding stone grew louder until a cacophony of sound followed her along the street.
Get to the door and travel away. She flung the door open in a panic. The pavement lurched and threw her off balance. She careened sideways, her shoulder slamming into a stone wall and robbing her of breath. She shook her head to sharpen her focus and pushed off from the stone. But before she could hasten through the open doorway, the entire pavement juddered and dropped several feet, sinking deeper into the Rookery’s foundations. A yawning gap opened up between the road and pavement and Alice scrambled to avoid it. She grabbed the edge of the doorway and hauled herself inside the void with a wince.
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