I shove all of that away and keep my awareness on the magic coursing through her. Like the roots of a weed, I drag it out as gently as I can manage. Fingers dig through soil, removing the rotten stasis I buried her in, letting her body reacclimate. I’m meticulous, lifting each bit of corrupted patches like drying clay, ridding it piece by cracked piece.
Despite the biting air, sweat beads at my temples. My teeth clench as I pull the power back to me, back to the recesses carved from my veins to simmer in my own spoils. I get it all out of her, until there’s just one single fragment left. One seed left buried in the center of her chest.
Yet when I call to it, try to unearth it from her depths, I find resistance. Instead of withdrawing like the rest, this piece sinks in its thorns as if it’s trying to stay.
As if it’s trying to keep her in its clutches.
My brow furrows and my hands shake, while the rotted roots on my skin stretch down the length of my arms. It slinks past my palms and cloys beneath my fingertips, the dark lines rubbing me raw from the inside out, threatening to pierce through my very skin.
A war of confusion and fear jumps in my jaw.
Never has my rot been so reluctant. Never has it been so persistent in staying. I haven’t struggled with controlling it like this for years, not since I was a boy. I had to learn very early on how to handle the malodorous magic before it destroyed everything, including myself.
So what the fuck is happening?
Frantically, I check over the rest of her, but there’s no other blight in her, not a single other part besmirched. The rest of the rot is gone, leaving her as she was before, so why won’t this last piece leave?
“Let go.” My tongue is heavy with the taste of unrelenting toxins. “Let go of her.”
It writhes in reply, like brambles twisting around her chest, like it wants to root inside of her. Panic slices through me like the sharpest blade.
“Get the fuck out of her!”
Magic and might unleash from me, stronger than the torrent of the storm trying to rend from the sky. With a crack that splits the air and clangs my teeth, I give one massive tug.
The force of my violent pull sends me flying back, while Auren’s entire spine bows up from the ground like an arcing wave.
“Rip!”
I lie stunned and out of breath, eyes locked on the shadowed outline of clouds covering the night sky above me. Snow flies up from the impact of Lu’s knees as she hits the ground next to me, eyes wide with worry. “Are you okay?”
“What the fuck just happened?” Osrik demands.
I hear Judd let out a whistle... “Your roots...”
My eyes drop, gaze falling to where the veins in my hands are writhing and snapping angrily. I can feel everyone’s gaze lift to my neck and face, but I don’t need them to say anything, because I can feel the lined roots beneath my skin. Fucking everywhere. As if I haven’t used my power in months, as if it’s pent up inside of me to an unstable magnitude.
But it doesn’t matter, because I just ripped that last bit of rot out of her, so everything will be okay.
Lu tries to help me sit up, but I push her fretting hands away, a pained groan escaping me. I quickly lean over Auren again, but the moment I see her face, I realize that she’s still not awake.
She’s still not moving.
My panic stems and swells.
Rot bleeds into the ground, shooting into the depths of the earth just as thoroughly and as violently as my stomach falls straight through into my feet.
What did I do?
Fingers dig into the snow, rotted mulch spreading from my touch, corrupting the ground with putrid lines. I don’t just feel it spreading into the snow—I feel it wrapping around my heart, squeezing, crumbling, making it wither right here in my chest.
My eyes slam shut, and my roots stab up against the skin of my neck. They wrap around my veins like furious snakes, constricting and biting, making me hurt all over, but it doesn’t matter.
Because I killed her. I fucking killed her—
Her lips suddenly part. The movement makes my eyes snap open just as a shuddering breath lurches out of her. Wisps of black expel from her mouth, the poisoned air evaporating between us.
Relief pounds through my temples. “Auren?”
But her eyes don’t open, and dread pulls at my chest.
I close my eyes to focus on the inside of her again, and immediately, the blood drains from my face. Because that piece—that single scrap of rot that I should’ve just ripped out of her when I got knocked on my ass—is still there.
It’s still. Fucking. There.
Stunned, I mentally try to grip around it again and yank, again and again, but it won’t budge. It won’t leave.
She breathes, another exhale of murky black misting past her lips.
My heart pounds like fists against my ribs, ready to punch through and fight. And still, no matter how much I call to my power, that piece in her chest won’t come out. It’s sunken in, like a stain of ink in gold fabric that I can’t get out.
Yet her chest is rising and falling. Her heart has begun to beat. She’s alive.
I can’t get that fucking last drop of rot out of her, but she’s alive, and that’s what matters.
“Wake up, Auren.”
Seconds go by. Five, ten, twenty. I count them all.
“Is she okay?”
My back tenses at the rough question spoken from Digby, his voice hostage to both injury and disuse. I don’t answer him, and I don’t know if anyone else attempts to. I keep watching her. Willing her to open her eyes.
“Come on, Goldfinch…” I murmur, urgency notched around my neck like a noose.
There’s the sound of shuffling footsteps, then Digby is pushing his way forward to kneel next to me. “Is she okay?” he demands again.
When I still don’t answer, his hand grabs the front of my shirt, and he tugs me to face him with surprising strength, considering the bruised state of him. “What did you do?” he snarls through swollen lips split with blood and frost.
Osrik is there in an instant, lifting Digby and pulling him away. “What did you do?” Digby’s shout is mangled, hoarse with accusation, but it melds with the voice of my own inner terror. The two of them exchange some heated words, but fear is too busy slamming in my ears for me to hear what they say.
What did I do?
The panic and fear that’s been latched to me since the moment I used my power on her comes flaring up in the form of a tremor through my hands.
“Why isn’t she waking up?” Lu asks beside me, but I don’t know. I don’t fucking know, so I can’t say a damn thing.
I clasp her cold cheeks in my hands, hissing at the pain throbbing in my fingers. Even now, it’s as if my power wants to split from my skin and go back to her.
Her aura is dull. Just wisps of dreary gold barely skimming against her silhouette. It should be gleaming brightly despite the night, yet it’s nothing like the flare of potent power and life that usually shines from her.
I waited too long.
I should’ve rotted her sooner, before she’d nearly drained herself. I should’ve landed faster, ripped my magic out of her earlier.
“Don’t do this,” I grit out. To her, to the gods.
Not now.
Not after everything. Not when I just fucking got her.
“I need you to wake up,” I order, but really, it’s a plea pulled from the pit of my soul. What if she never wakes up? What if that clinging seed of rot has taken root inside of her and won’t let her go?
The whole reason I used my magic on her was to stop her from draining herself to death. But I made it fucking worse. I made it worse, and now my own power is lashing out against me like a thousand serpents ready to bite, while she’s been tainted with my magic.
My head drops, forehead pressing against hers, my hands still on her cold cheeks. “Don’t do this,” I plead, eyes shut tight. “You’re stronger than this, Goldfinch. You are. So. Wake. Up.”
She doesn’t.
“Fuck!” Jerking upright, my fist pummels the snow beside me, the meat of my hand splitting open from the sharp ice packed into the ground. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
I can hear Digby fighting like hell against the others, cursing me, threats and profanity slung against my back like a whip. Beating me with the realization—
“I did this.” Three words cut from the keenest guilt.
Lu’s lips press together at my declaration. “So undo it.”