She opened her eyes and found herself suspended within the tree. The heartbeat became a drum beat that occurred outside her body. Around her, the tree’s sap was a thick, black, slow-moving substance like tar or the pitch used to coat torches. No wonder the tree burned; its very essence was combustible. Only small spots of red light remained among the darkness. The tiny pinpricks of life tried to keep the heart in the old tree working.
Dawn was one such bright spot within the Ravensblood. She moved as though in a warm bath, her body meeting soft resistance as she reached out with glowing hands and plucked the lights one by one, as though they were stars in the sky. She gathered them to her, piling them up in her apron until she had all the ones she could reach.
Then she picked up two bright red blobs and pushed them together as if they were dough and she worked bread. They were soft and malleable in her hands as she formed the two into a larger ball. Dawn added the next one from the stash in her apron and kept working the glowing spheres until she had one large ball of light and life.
Warmth flowed through her body as she imagined her short lifetime of nurturing plants. As she cradled the large orb, she visualised digging her hands into dirt as she planted thousands of tiny seedlings. She called a light gentle rain to mist the container and encouraged it to grow tall and strong like a sunflower, to flourish like a bright zinnia, and to multiply like a spent sweet pea.
The ball pulsed and grew until it became so large she couldn’t hold it any more. She let it go to spin into the blackness, no longer a small star but now a glowing moon. Then there came a flash and the ball split it in two. Now two balls of light spun in the black tar. Dawn whispered to them, encouraging them to use her life force to keep growing. Another burst of light hurt her eyes as two orbs became four.
Her sacrifice was working, but would it be enough? The tree was enormous and old. If only she had more blood to give, if she could drain her body dry of every drop and give it all to the tree, she would.
No, the Ravensblood whispered to her. You have given enough.
Then it plucked the final strands of Ava’s vine from Dawn’s flesh and blood, and the tree released her with a gentle push. Dawn spun through an inky sky now full of exploding stars. Then with a gasp she slammed back into her body as a cool breeze washed over her skin. She sat up, clutching her cut arm to her chest, and opened her eyes.
The wound in her wrist had clotted shut. A small strip of bark from the Ravenswood now sealed the wound and tiny lines spun out from it like a web and formed a bandage. Unlike the shard from the black vine that had festered, her body incorporated the Ravensblood flake into itself and began to heal. All along her exposed skin, the faint lines left by the Cor-vitis glowed a luminous green. Her heart beat slow and strong, in perfect time with the tree beside her. Or were they one and the same now?
Dawn rose to her feet as calm strength washed through her. She was the heart of the estate and clan. Jasper was her bonded Lord Warder, and Ava was no more than a nuisance bug that needed to be removed. The other woman was already defeated, she just didn’t know it yet.
How long had she dwelt inside the tree? It seemed she took centuries to nurture the orbs, but only minutes had passed. Dawn stepped around the large trunk to find Ava and Jasper still locked in aquatic combat within the moat. The talons on the end of his wings dug into her branches to wrench them away with powerful flaps. Each time he tore off a branch, Ava grew another to replace it.
“Let her go, Jasper. She is nothing now,” Dawn said.
The large gargoyle froze, his hands still wrapped around the slender trunk in his grasp. Then he turned and climbed out of the moat, dragging Ava behind him like an exhausted walrus. His grey eyes contained pure steel as he stared at Dawn. Then he shoved Ava away.
“You’re glowing,” he murmured as he reached out, and Dawn touched his stone hand. When their fingertips touched, a spark from the Cor-vitis jumped from Dawn to Jasper and raced along his granite surface. The same intricate pattern ignited over his surface. United, they faced Ava.
“It is done, Ava. You are no longer a part of this sanctuary,” Dawn said.
The woodland sprite rose to her feet. Her form shimmered and became less tree and more human, but she was still a deformed and rotten version of humanity. Her limbs were made of bundles of twigs lashed together. The leaves fell from her hair and branches hung limp down her back. Only her eyes retained the bright green that must have once entranced Julian. Her mouth hung open on seeing the light radiating from Dawn and Jasper.
“No. This is all mine. Join with me, Jasper.” She opened her arms and pitched her voice low, but it was tinged with fear and desperation.
“You are nothing to me, Ava. I am free of you, as is this family.” Jasper’s arm moved to encircle Dawn’s waist and he sheltered her with his outstretched wings.
Lettie shimmered and glided along the moat to where Elijah stood. She stepped out of the water and it ran off her body as she stood next to her nephew. She took his hand so he did not stand alone before the creature who had given him life.
“No! Your father ruined my family, and I vowed to destroy his. They promised me revenge, and I will wring every drop of life essence from all of you.” Ava dropped to the ground and scrambled in the dirt and grass. She found the knife discarded by Dawn and barked in triumph as she held it up. Light glinted on the blade as she ran it along her arm as Dawn had done. “You will fail. I will take it back.”
She threw the knife away and raised her hand. The same black tar that had clogged up the Ravensblood tree dripped from Ava’s wooden arm. Large, fat drops formed but took their time to fall to the ground. One broke loose but the others simply hung, as though it was too congealed to break free.
Dawn watched the viscous fluid pool around Ava’s cut, but already it clotted. “Your veins are full of poison. The Ravensblood rejects you, we reject you, this land rejects you.”
Safe in Jasper’s embrace and with the Ravensblood beating through her body, Dawn closed her eyes and touched her Meidh power again. This time she sought not the light, but the dark. Instead of dawning light, she thought of extinguishing dusk. She gathered a void into a ball and made an orb of pure nothingness in her hands. This one was cold and sparked memories of snow in the garden. When she could stand the cold radiating from the ball no longer, Dawn hurled it at Ava as though it were a snowball.
The black sphere hit her in the chest and vanished under her bark. Ava cried out and staggered backward, looking at where the ball entered her body. She swatted at her trunk, digging twig fingers into her torso, and pulled parts from her as she screamed. Ava fell to her timber knees, and her scream became a high-pitched keen as she tore at herself. Bark littered the ground around her.
“What have you done?” Jasper asked as Ava writhed on the ground, shredding herself.
A calm detachment flowed over Dawn. She was the head gardener and had plucked the unwanted weed from the estate. “You said that there are two sides to every trait, so I channelled my dark side. Just as I can stimulate life, I can also snuff it out. Ava is extinguished.”
As Dawn said the last word, Ava let out a shrill cry and the gleam of intelligence drained from her eyes. She froze as the life fled her form, and she rolled to one side like a tree felled at ground level.
Hector jumped the moat with an axe in his grasp. Whacks echoed around the enclosed space as wood chips flew from his blade. Piece by piece, he hacked Ava into a pile of rough and uneven kindling.
Only when nothing resembling either a woman or woodland wraith remained did he drop the axe to the ground. He wiped his hands on his trousers. “I’ve waited forty years to do that. Horrible piece of work she was. Never liked her from the first day she showed her face.”
Dawn glanced at the pile of wood. While she didn’t want anything of Ava left on the estate, she wanted to pick her next words carefully. The wraith had been Elijah’s mother, and no matter her crimes against the family, they would also be grateful for the one gift she gave them.