Aurora dropped flower petals on the path as she walked. She tossed them out before her like some fairy goddess of the forest. And the path to the Cursed Forest treated her as such.
It always rained on the roads to the Cursed Forest—except where Aurora Valor walked. As soon as she tossed her petals and took a step, the rain fell no more. All Apollo felt was a subtle breeze as he walked in step beside her on a path paved in shoes and lined in overturned carriages, some of which still had wheels spinning.
“You haven’t told me what this will cost,” said Apollo, “or where we are going.”
“I’m taking you to the Tree of Souls.” “Your father—”
“Is very stubborn,” Aurora interrupted. “He knows a great many things, but he does not know everything.”
Something twisted inside Apollo—a feeling that told him either he’d eaten some bad mutton earlier or this was a very poor idea. He knew better than to trust Aurora. She was not half as sweet as she looked as she continued to pull flower petals from her silver cloak and toss them onto the path.
Yet, how could he walk away from this? A chance to be immortal.
“There’s just one small thing I ask in return,” Aurora said, so softly he almost missed it.
Apollo immediately tensed. “What do you want?”
She slowly turned toward him, and for once there was nothing sweet in her expression. She looked wolfish in the moonlight, white teeth gleaming as she said, “I want you stop this nonsense about trying to kill Jacks. After tonight, you will clear his name of crimes and he will no longer be wanted or hunted.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then I cannot show you the Tree of Souls.” Aurora stopped walking as the path ended and they reached the misty in-between that led to the Cursed Forest. “Either you can have immortality or you can choose to hunt Jacks, who I actually doubt you’ll ever be able to kill—not as long as you’re human. You’ve sent a whole kingdom after him, and what have you come up with? Perhaps once you’re immortal, you’ll have a fighting chance. But I don’t want you to take that chance, which is why right now, you’ll swear in blood on your life never to harm Jacks.”
Apollo’s shoulders tensed. “Why do you want to save Jacks?” “That’s none of your business.”
“It is if you’re asking me not to kill him.” Apollo glared. “Did he bewitch you, too?”
Aurora bristled. “No one bewitches me. I’m a Valor.” She looked at him with all the haughtiness of a princess.
And this was exactly why Apollo had never liked princesses. Like Aurora, they often looked good on the outside, but so many of them were rotten at the core.
“If you’re worried about Jacks winning back Evangeline or taking her away from you, you don’t have to,” Aurora said. “I’ve already taken care of it.”
“How?”
“You don’t need to fret about that. I keep my secrets, just as I’ll keep everything between us secret. Now what will it be, Prince?”
Apollo knew he couldn’t walk away from this. His father had always told him to be more, and there was nothing more than immortal. He imagined that he could probably keep fighting Aurora about Jacks, but he doubted he’d win. Despite what Aurora had said, clearly Jacks had
bewitched this girl, just as he had bewitched Evangeline. “After you take me to the tree, then I’ll swear in blood. But not before then.”
Aurora narrowed her eyes.
“You have my word,” Apollo said. “If I’m lying, you can tell the entire kingdom I took the memories of my wife.”
“Very well,” said Aurora. Then she was tossing petals again as she led Apollo deeper into the in-between.
“Why are you still doing that? It’s not raining here.”
“I do it because the forest likes it,” Aurora said. She tossed out several more petals, and as she did so, the ground beneath them glowed, lighting up more of the in-between.
“Is that where we’re going? Into the Cursed Forest?”
“Not if it can be avoided. You can reach the Tree of Souls by venturing to the other side of the forest. But there should be an old arch around here that can take us to the Tree of Souls quicker.” A crease formed between Aurora’s brows as she scanned the misty stretch of land. Finally she squeaked, “Found it!”
Apollo didn’t see anything except a patch of mist that looked darker than the rest.
Then Aurora tossed out more of her petals. This time she threw them high into the air, and as they hit the mist, they clung to it. Briefly the petals formed the outline of an arch, and then they seemed to melt and spread until the arch wasn’t just an outline but an actual structure made of glowing white marble.
Apollo had heard stories growing up that there were hidden arches in the North, but this was the first time he’d seen one of them.
He almost asked how Aurora knew it was here. But then he remembered that the Valors had built all the arches in the first place.
As the North’s ruling monarch, Apollo had a couple of arches of his own. One he’d used to dazzle the guests who’d attended Nocte Neverending. The other protected a very old phoenix tree. That one actually looked a little like this arch, as both were covered in curious magical symbols.
Aurora bit her lip as she looked over the symbols. Then she took one of her fingernails and jabbed it into her palm until it bled. She smeared the blood on the side of the arch.
“Good arch, please open and let us through to the Tree of Souls,” she said.
A second later, a door appeared, the same glowing white as the arch. The door opened to what looked like a tunnel, although it was too dark to properly see.
Aurora pulled out a match from within her cloak and struck it against the wall before dropping it to the ground. As soon as it fell, a row of fire spread along one wall in a fiery streak. She repeated the process with the other side until the cavern was lit bright as day by two outstretched lines of fire.
Aurora entered gracefully, humming as she strolled between the rows of flames. The air was hot and grew even warmer as they continued down the path, until the tunnel expanded into an enormous cavern formed of sparkling white granite ringed in the same fire as the tunnel.
Apollo could not see the sky, yet the cavern must have opened up to it, for ahead of them a perfect beam of moonlight illuminated the most colossal tree that Apollo had ever seen.
Although tree didn’t feel like quite the right word. Trees weren’t supposed to have heartbeats.
The bloodred trunk of this tree appeared to be pulsing. Beating. Apollo swore he could hear it as he drew closer. Thump . . . Thump . . . Thump . . .
And were those human faces carved into the trunk?
He thought he saw terrified eyes and twisted mouths frozen in the wood, as if people were trapped inside the tree, but it was a little difficult to be certain it wasn’t a trick of the flickering firelight.
The Tree of Souls was dotted with spiky burnished red leaves and full of branches the same bloodred color as the trunk. Some of the untamed branches crawled up toward the sky, while others grew outward and downward toward the ground.
When Apollo had first read about this tree in the scroll from Lord Slaughterwood, he’d thought it would be similar to his phoenix tree. Something enchanting and magical. He’d imagined a perfect place to pose for portraits—not that Apollo did that sort of thing anymore.
“It’s ugly,” he muttered.
Aurora shot him a scolding look. “Be careful what you say.”
“It’s just a tree,” Apollo said. But then he heard its heartbeat again.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It was beating faster now, eagerly, hungrily, bringing to mind Wolfric’s warning: I was also a fool to plant it in the first place. The Tree of Souls is evil.
It certainly didn’t feel good to Apollo.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared now,” said Aurora mockingly.
But Apollo noticed that although she had drawn close to the tree, she didn’t dare touch it.
“Do you plan on drinking from it as well?” he asked.
According to the scroll from Lord Slaughterwood, all Apollo had to do was pierce a branch and blood from the tree would pour forth. He then had to drink the blood straight from the tree, and immortality would be his.
He would no longer get sick or age; he would stay young and strong and healthy forever. He could still die if someone tried to kill him, but he would not perish of natural causes, and according to the scroll, the same magic that kept him youthful would also make it harder for him to be killed.
He might have thought it was too easy, but the scroll had also laid out that growing one of these trees was not a simple task. After Wolfric Valor had been given the very rare seed to plant this tree, he then had to feed the tree with his blood—every morning and every night for a full year. Miss one feeding and the tree would wither and die.
“I’m waiting a few more years,” said Aurora. “It’s hard enough being female. I don’t wish to be a young female forever.”
“At least you have some sense, although not enough for me to feel like calling you daughter right now,” bellowed a loud voice from the tunnel behind them.
Seconds later Wolfric Valor marched into the cavern, flanked by what looked like two of his sons. Like all the Valors, his sons seemed a little more than human.
Aurora flinched ever so slightly at their entrance. “You’re looking surly as ever, Father.”
Wolfric gave her a scathing look before turning to his sons and commanding, “Take her back to the camp. Her mother and I will deal with her there.”
Before they had even gone, Wolfric prowled toward Apollo. Apollo reached for his weapon.
“Don’t bother,” Wolfric said. “I’m not here to kill you, boy. You have been good to my family, so I will give you one more warning about this
tree. The only reason this tree is still here is because I cannot cut it down. If this tree dies, then I die. And before you get any ideas, I’m the only one who can cut it down.”
“I would never—”
“Don’t lie,” Wolfric cut in. “The fact that you’re here says you would do a lot. But do you know what you’re doing? Or did you simply just follow my cloud-headed daughter?”
Apollo thought about telling Wolfric that his daughter was more like a mastermind who had been blackmailing him, but he doubted that would help the situation.
“Do you want to know why I told you no when you asked me about this tree?” Wolfric continued. “Do you want to know what it costs to drink from the Tree of Souls? There is always a price to magic, and to gain eternal life, another life must be sacrificed. In this case, you would lose the life of the one you love the most. That’s the reason I was given the seed to plant this tree.”
Wolfric craned his neck to give the tree a bitterly appraising look. “When I was younger, I was a bit of a fool, like you. Once when visiting a neighboring kingdom, I saved the life of their princess. Her name was Serenity. She was pretty and I was a little friendlier than I should have been. Before leaving the kingdom, Serenity gave me the seed to plant this tree. She told me it was a thank-you for saving her life and I believed her. I thought myself deserving of immortality and didn’t think to ask any of my trusted advisors as to what this tree truly was before I fed it my blood every day.
“It was only after the tree was full-grown, just before I was about to finally drink its blood, that I learned Princess Serenity actually gave me the seed to this tree in hopes that I would plant it and that my wife would die as soon as I drank from its branches.
“After I’d saved her life, Serenity fancied herself in love with me. But she knew that I would never be with her unless Honora was dead. But I would rather die than hurt my wife.”
“So would I,” said Apollo. Everything he’d been doing had been to protect her.
“I hope you mean that,” said Wolfric gravely. “Do not come near this tree again or it will be the last thing you do.”
