BLYTHE KNEW THERE WOULD BE NO RETURNING TO WISTERIA THAT night, no
matter what her blasted ring thought.
It was a wonder that she managed to make it out of the garden at all, let alone through the snow-drenched woods. Had traversing them not been second nature to her, she may never have found her way, for she was in no state to be traveling, let alone in waning daylight. She grabbed on to each tree she passed, bracing herself from the swaying world.
Moss sprouted beneath her fingers, infecting everything she touched. It grew beneath her bare soles, melting the snow with each step she took toward Thorn Grove. She had to rest when she reached the mouth of the forest, breathless with a sheen of sweat across her skin. She couldn’t tell whether it was her clothing or moss that clung to her, for all her senses were too heightened to focus.
She could feel the buzz of the earth beneath her feet. The flora that slumbered in the peacefulness of winter, awaiting its rise with the warmth of spring. She could feel the roots of barren trees drawing life from the soil. There were animals, too. Birds flitting through the branches. Wolves prowling in the depths of the woods and rabbits hungry for their next meal. It was as if even the ants that crawled along fallen leaves were a part of her, each of their steps a tickle across her skin.
Her blood burned hot, thrumming with this new world she had never seen. A world where every breath, every particle, was hers to control.
Still, even through all that overwhelmed her, Blythe had enough sense to know she couldn’t remain in the snow. Besides freezing to death, the flora
would likely soon overtake her and she’d end up a tree herself, forever rooted in the woods.
With the manor in sight, she plucked twigs from her hair and tried to smooth out her pale gown with trembling hands that were now webbed in moss. As for her lack of shoes… there was nothing to be done. There would be questions when she reached Thorn Grove regardless of her state, but she tried her best to measure her breaths and wait for her clammy skin to dry. For her senses to dull and her skin to stop sprouting flora beneath its every touch. And when it did, she hurried down the snowy hills toward the manor. Blythe kept out of view as much as she could, grateful that what few staff were left at Thorn Grove were busy preparing for the Christmas ball. The manor smelled of pine as maids strung garlands and mistletoe, and she inhaled deeply as she slipped through the door, hoping the scent of the
holidays might ease her nerves.
For once Blythe wished that she had Signa’s powers of dissolving into the shadows or whatever it was that she did, so she could slip into her old suite without being seen. She needed someplace that was quiet. Somewhere warm, where she might steady her thoughts and the memories that were pouring into her. Memories of music. Of Aris. Even of Death, seated in the shade of a towering wisteria. They were coming so fast that she couldn’t make sense of them, struggling to differentiate one life from another.
A maid hurried down the stairs with armfuls of holly, and Blythe had only a moment to escape from view. She ducked into the parlor, peeking through a crack in the door and waiting for the woman to pass. The maids were not the only ones to worry about, however, for a voice behind Blythe demanded, “What on earth are you doing here?”
Blythe spun to find Warwick’s eyes growing large behind his glasses. He looked paler than normal, and faint. As if he’d seen a ghost. One glance down at her numb toes and the dirt and debris caked onto her feet, and Blythe realized she must have looked like one.
“What’s happened to you?” Warwick pressed, looking only at her feet. “Blythe, are you—”
“Hush! Are you trying to rouse the dead?” Blythe drew the door into the parlor fully shut before spinning toward him. “I need you to be very quiet. The others cannot know that I’m here.”
“But your feet—”
“They’re fine,” she lied. “In need of a washing and a fire, but otherwise fine. I insisted on being dropped off near the woods to pay a visit to my mother’s garden, and my boots were ruined on the way back—”
“You went out in this weather?” he demanded, behaving well above his station, certainly, though Warwick had always been more of a familial figure to her, given that he’d been working closely with Elijah since before Blythe’s birth. “Without any chaperone? Where is your husband?”
“He’s seeing to business.” Blythe quieted with each word in the hope that it would encourage Warwick to do the same. “He doesn’t know that I’m here.”
She should have chosen her words better, for his eyes narrowed. “Has he hurt you?”
She had to bite back her laugh, for it would have come out as a sob as memory after memory of Aris played in her mind. Memories of him laughing. Of them arguing. Of time spent in silence in each other’s company. With every blink she saw another flash of him, incomplete memories working to sew themselves together anew. “My husband couldn’t hurt me if he wanted to.”
Warwick was less than reassured as he took a gentle hold of Blythe’s shoulder. “You’re going to catch your death if you continue like this. If your father saw you—”
“He cannot!” Blythe said with the utmost urgency. “I realize how this must look, but I swear to you that I am well. I just need to get to my room without him seeing me in this state.”
Though the pale press of his lips said that Warwick didn’t at all care for her plan, he sighed. “Your father is out replacing a pair of boots he lost last week. But should any of the other staff see you, I cannot think what they might say to him.”
Blythe knew a blessing when she saw one, and she had every intention of seizing it before Elijah returned. “Then let’s try our best to stay out of their way, shall we?” As used to her shenanigans as Warwick was, his severity did not put her at ease. As he led the way out of the parlor, he looked primed to speak with her father the moment he returned. Blythe would have to worry about that later. For now, she tossed her hair back, squared her shoulders, and did everything in her power to look positively proper so as to not give anyone reason to glance at her feet. Warwick barked
out a command when a few of the maids started to turn their way, stepping in front of Blythe to block her from view as she hurried up the stairs.
Only at the edge of the long mahogany hall, her toes curled into the ornate crimson rug, did Blythe pause to fill her lungs with Thorn Grove’s familiar musk. Gnarled trees bowed toward the windows, their ravenous branches grinding against the glass in a woeful symphony that Blythe had long grown accustomed to.
With every step she drew forward, curious eyes from the portraits of Hawthornes long deceased trailed her. Their prying itched at her skin, and yet each time she turned to catch them in the act, she found only blank faces staring ahead into nothingness. Just as she had since she was a young girl.
The manor was every bit the same as she’d left it, yet somehow unfamiliar in a way she couldn’t place. Like a dream magicked to life: squint too close and the details became fuzzy.
“You have one hour to right yourself,” Warwick told her as they reached the door to her suite. “I’ll send up a maid, but see to that mud first. You’ve already arrived without a husband; you needn’t give them more reasons to talk.”
She despised that truth even while knowing he was right. Blythe’s skin felt like a flimsy thing, and she was on the verge of bursting from it at any moment. Yet as much as she needed time to herself, it was a relief to know that she had an upcoming distraction. Because Blythe’s room was no longer the sanctuary she’d built up in her mind. The moment the door shut behind Warwick, and Blythe was alone, all she could focus on was the pressure of the suite she was trapped in as she waited for her ring to burn. For the magic to summon her back to Wisteria.
But it never came.
Blythe stared around the reading room, with its wallpaper of soft blues and silver. At the fresh lilies sprouting from a vase atop the ivory mantel of a fireplace she’d so often relied on the past year. And then to her bedroom across from it, the door half-open. A glance at the canopied bed was all it took for repressed memories to shudder through her. She slammed the door shut, casting any thoughts of poisoning or death to the back of her mind as best she could.
A maid arrived not long after Warwick left, drawing a bath for Blythe that smelled of honey and lavender. She melted into it, and any time her
mind strayed to thoughts of the blooming garden and the power she’d drawn from the earth with her bare hands, she’d scrub harder at the dirt. Even clean, Blythe could feel the memory of the moss lingering on her skin, forcing its way into her body and sticking to her ribs.
In the few spare seconds when she did not fret about her body becoming one with nature, her mind instead strayed to thoughts of Aris—to the memory of his hands against her, to a vision of her giggling as they danced to music she didn’t recognize. Blythe sank deeper into the water, eventually letting it cover her entirely as she tried to drown out the sound.
She bathed until the water was too cold to bear, then until more was fetched and that too became like ice against her skin. Only when she was pruned and halfway to wilting did Blythe allow the maid to help her into a pretty blue muslin dress with matching embroidered slippers. Her pale hair was dried and done up as quickly as they could manage, and Blythe was grateful for the maid’s silence all the while, too lost in her haze of thoughts to be any good at conversation.
It seemed Warwick must have bought her some time, for it was over an hour before a stern knock sounded at the door. The maid was quick to answer, sidestepping her father as Elijah let himself in.
“Thank you for your help, Angelica. You’re dismissed,” he told the woman, eyes never once straying from Blythe despite how she dared not meet them. Only when the door shut did he stride forward, taking a knee before her.
“What’s wrong?” Elijah made to grab her hand, but Blythe tore it away in horror at the thought of somehow infecting him with moss. Or what if she did something worse, like make his skin sprout vines or something else utterly ridiculous and impossible?
Or at least it should have been impossible. Now she had no doubt that such absurdities were within reach and shook the violent thoughts from her mind so they would not become her reality.
“I’m fine,” Blythe hurried to say, though she hardly sounded convincing. “Blythe, if Aris has done something—”
“He hasn’t.”
Her forcefulness behind the declaration silenced him. The corners of Elijah’s eyes narrowed for the briefest moment before he blinked the look away, his sigh deep.
“I told you not to come here until the ball. Warwick said that your husband doesn’t know, and that you hadn’t any shoes.”
Blythe was too numb for retorts. She couldn’t be angry with Warwick, though it certainly would have been nice if he’d chosen to leave that detail out.
“You said before that I could return at any time,” she said by way of answer. “I’m not hurt. Aris didn’t do anything to me. I was just… worried about you.”
This, at least, was something that Elijah could believe. He forced his attention away, loosening a long breath from somewhere deep in his chest. “Very well, then I’ll write to Aris to let him know that you’re spending a few days here. Shall I have dinner brought up to you, or would you like to join me in the dining room?”
“Brought up, please,” she said. As grateful for the distraction as she’d been, Blythe very much wanted a moment to herself to reflect on the situation. Her father, however, looked unnerved enough to spend the entire night with her. If not for her insistence that she needed rest, he just might have.
Not five minutes after he left, Blythe locked her door and took a seat at her writing desk. She was tired of her wandering mind. Tired of questions when she needed answers. She didn’t allow herself time for thought as she pressed her palms against the surface of the wood and considered what it had once been. Not always a desk, but at some point a beautiful oak tree. Blythe allowed the image a home in her mind, and the longer she thought on it, the more the wood warped around her fingertips. It grew rigid beneath her palms, a splinter biting into the tip of her forefinger as she dragged her hand along its new shape. No longer flat, but curving into the shape of a log.
No, not a log—for logs did not grow branches or sprout leaves and twigs
—but a tree.
Blythe snatched her hands away, clutching them to her chest as her palms pulsed with a heat that had no business feeling so pleasant. Breathless, she leaned back, still able to picture the tree in her mind’s eye. Her body ached to bring it to fruition. To take what was dead and give it back to the earth anew.
To give it life.
How positively absurd.
Blythe smothered a bark of laughter. It was real, then. She had powers just like the others, but not the faintest idea of the extent of them. In her twenty-one years, never could she remember waking up one morning and just… sprouting things. And as far as she could remember, she’d always been able to bleed, too. Whatever had happened to change that, it had to have started around the same time that other paranormal elements had invaded her life.
Around the same time that she had nearly died.
Certainly it was all related, though she couldn’t determine how. Aris might have answers, but the idea of talking to him—let alone announcing that she was the wife he’d been looking for all along—made her mouth feel as thick as if it was sprouting more moss.
There was, however, someone else that she could talk to. Someone who likely knew a lot more than they’d been letting on.
To My Dearest Cousin,
There is no chance on God’s green earth that you can miss this year’s Christmas ball. If you do not want me to turn into a tree that remains forever rooted into the earth, you must come to Thorn Grove at once.
Ever since I was bonded with Aris, whatever ridiculous magic makes up our rings has been paving our paths. It has informed all that I can and cannot do, and now in the moment when I need its guidance the most, it has fallen still and I fear that I know why. I fear that I know who I am and what you were trying to tell me that day in Fiore.
Tell me that you know something about this. Tell me that you know a way out, in which I may free myself from this mess looming before me. Tell me that I am hallucinating.
I need you, Signa. Please, make haste.
