Witch Unbound by Debbie Cassidy

Chapter Sixteen

“You did this!” Lauris growled. “You think you know best. You take risks, and it gets others hurt.” The vitriol in his tone barely registered through the haze of disbelief clouding my mind.

“Back off!” Rune stepped between us, shoulders bunched with suppressed aggression. “That isn’t fair, and you know it. Cora has put her life on the line more than anyone I know, and this…” He looked down at Bramble and the tension bled out of him. “It wasn’t her fault. She was trying to help.”

“And made things worse,” Lauris retorted. “If we’d waited…”

“Then what?” Rune snapped. “You think they’d have let her go?”

“Maybe…” I stared at my friend’s lifeless form. My heart felt too big for my chest as it swelled with grief. “Maybe I should have waited. I…Bramble…” I reached for her but Lauris stepped away, hugging her lifeless body to his chest.

My eyes welled and I blinked back the hot tears, resolve churning inside me. “I can get her back. I can go to Tarrifel and get her back.”

Lauris stilled. “You can do that?”

I nodded eagerly, reaching for my friend. This time Lauris let me touch her. She was still warm. Skin clammy.

I cupped her face and made the jump.

“Well?” Lauris asked. “What’s happening?”

I frowned and tried again.

Nothing. “No, no, no. Please. Let me do this.” I tried again and again until my chest was shaking with grief and my face was wet with tears. My knees hit the ground, and Rune wrapped his arms around me and held me to his chest, rocking me back and forth.

Lauris’s sobs mingled with ours as he fell to his knees with Bramble. I pulled away from Rune to look at my friend, so fucking small and delicate, so fierce. She couldn’t be gone. But she was.

She was gone and it was my fault. “I’m sorry. Bramble, I’m so fucking sorry.”

Rune took a shuddering breath and squeezed my shoulder. “We need to get out of this forest. And we need to do it now.”

Lauris pulled himself up and started walking toward the rift, his movements jerky and stiff with rage. “I’m taking her home.”

There was a flash of light and he was thrown back onto his ass, with Bramble clutched in his arms.

The rift was gone.

“Fuck.” Rune raked a hand through his hair.

We needed to get out of this forest. If the Magiguard had come this way, what was to say they hadn’t been attacked by something in these woods? What’s to say they were still alive? With the rift gone, we had to keep moving forward. But what about Bramble?

Lauris was up and glaring at me as if reading my thoughts. “We’re not leaving her.”

I gave him an incredulous look. “You think I’d…” Anger lashed at my throat, hot and bilious. “Fuck you, Lauris. Fuck you.” My eyes burned with indignation. “She was my friend. I cared about her. You do not have the monopoly on grief.” A raw sob broke from my throat and Rune wrapped his arm around my shoulders, hugging me to him.

“This way!” Wren piped up from the ground.

With grief and guilt clouding my mind, I’d almost forgotten about our guide. I zeroed in on him and the weird orb of light floating by his head.

He looked at us with a frown. “Come on. Quick, before the slenderwhip wakes.”

“What’s a slender—”

“Hurry!” Wren set off with purpose, practically jogging after the bounding orb of light.

My gaze fell to Bramble in Lauris’s arms, and I nodded. “Go. We’ll make up the rear.”

Lauris headed after Wren, and Rune and I followed. I trusted Wren, and right now I didn’t have the mental fortitude to think for myself.

Bramble was dead.

A sharp pain lanced through my chest, bringing fresh tears to my eyes.

“You got this, Cora,” Rune said. “We grieve after. Not now. We can’t do this now.”

I nodded, swallowing a sob and pushing the tears down.

We jogged after Lauris, running from an unknown creature. One moment the forest around us was silent, and the next it was filled with moans and eerie groans that galvanized me to move faster.

The forest was waking.

It was waking, and it was calling to its inhabitants to stop us.

Tree trunks leaned in ahead of us to create a dingy, dark, arched tunnel, and branches whipped down to grab at us.

“Watch out!” Rune snagged me round the waist and tugged me out of the path of a vine with thorny barbs. He grabbed my hand to steer me, and we broke into a run.

Lauris fell into a sprint, his body curved around Bramble’s to protect her from the lash of thorns. They slapped and sliced at him, leaving welts in their wake, because just like in Shady Lane, his skin wasn’t so tough here. He wasn’t even attempting to evade. He was gonna get ripped to shreds and he probably didn’t give a shit.

He was probably numb right now because Bramble was—

No. Don’t think about it.

Wren remained untouched. Small and light on his feet, he was able to leap and dodge the fauna that attacked.

“Faster!” he yelled. “The slenderwhip is coming.”

What the fuck was that?

The hairs on the back of my neck sprang up and my spine tingled in awareness that something was at our backs. A dragging sound rose above the moans to confirm it. Something was sliding along the ground behind us. Moving fast. Chasing us.

“Don’t look!” Wren cried. “Keep running.”

A gust of warm air blasted my back, cutting through the thick material of my jacket like it was nothing but a sliver of cotton. The thing’s breath?

The urge to glance back was a hand squeezing my nape, compelling me to turn. But I wasn’t the dickhead who would go into the basement when they heard a dodgy sound or run upstairs to get trapped when confronted with a pursuer. I was smart.

I’d listen to Wren.

Fuck it, I could jump ahead. Gripping Rune’s hand tighter, I made the jump. An invisible force yanked at my solar plexus, but something stronger jerked me back. Shit. Something was blocking me from jumping.

I kept running, dodging the killer vines and getting closer to the exit to this messed-up place.

The dragging sound grew louder, closer. The heat became intense and sweat beaded on my skin. The phantom hand on my neck squeezed harder, urgently, demanding I obey.

Look.

Look at me.

See me.

Oh, shit. No.

“What is it?” Rune made to turn his head, but I yanked on his arm.

“Don’t.”

My legs ached, thighs screaming for relief. How fucking large was this forest? Up ahead the trees bowed inward, extending the tunnel and keeping us penned. Wren was a furball on legs, moving faster than I’d thought he was capable. Lauris’s back was a bloody mess, but the thorns had stopped attacking now. Instead, the trees closed in, narrowing the tunnel.

“Nearly there!” Wren’s cry sounded far away.

I watched in horror as the world seemed to elongate and stretch. The tunnel pushed out ahead of us, drawing Wren and Lauris with it.

“What the fuck?” Rune cried.

His hand in mine was a solid pressure as we picked up speed, desperately trying to outrun whatever this distortion was.

Light bloomed in the distance. Freedom. The exit. Wren ran into it with Lauris close behind. They stood bathed in it, silhouetted against it.

“Cora!” Wren’s cry was filled with fear and desperation.

But the faster we ran, the farther we got… Fuck. “Rune, I think I know what we have to do.”

“What?”

“We need to stop running.”

“What?”

“The faster we run, the farther they get.”

“Cora, there’s a thing behind us.”

“I know.” Shit, I could be wrong. I could be totally fucking wrong, but the light was dwindling. Almost out of reach completely. “Rune, my gut says we need to do this. But my gut also said set the tree on fire, and it got Bramble killed.”

“Not your fault, Cora.” Rune squeezed my hand. “I trust you. We do this. On the count of three. One. Two. Three.”

We ground to a halt and a roar lit up the world behind us. Heat singed my skin and the earth shuddered, bringing the overwhelming conviction that something was about to attack. Every muscle and sinew ached to run, and Rune’s boa-constrictor grip on my hand told me he felt the same. But I locked my knees, gaze fixed on the light.

Please. Please. This had to work.

As a fresh blast of hot air washed over us, bringing a sense of impending contact with something, I was certain I’d fucked up.

But then the light rushed toward us, bringing Wren and Lauris with it.

It washed over us, tugging us out of the gloom and spitting us onto soft, downy grass. I remained on all fours for a moment, one palm pressed flat to the earth, the other still wrapped in Rune’s grip so that our collective fist punched at the earth.

“Cora!” Wren leapt on me, wrapping his arms around my neck and momentarily choking me. “You made it.”

I gently extricated myself from his death grip. “What the hell was that?” I glanced back at the woods, several meters behind us, all inky trunks and jagged branches. No sign of a monster.

“The slenderwhip won’t come out,” Wren said. “Bixie says the forest is its home. Bixie says Cora did good not to look. Bixie says bad luck the warping happened when we were almost out, but Cora clever to stop, but also stupid because the slenderwhip could have eaten Cora.” His lip trembled. “Wren not want Cora to get eaten.”

I stared at him, trying to keep up with what he was saying. “Who the fuck is Bixie?”

A spot of light bounced out from behind Wren, hovering in the air in front of my face. I caught the distinct shape of a humanoid body and fluttering wings before it dashed away again.

“What is that?”

“Bixie is a pixie,” Wren said proudly.

“No.” I shook my head. “Bramble is a pixie.” I pressed my lips together. “Was a pixie.”

Wren gave me a stern look. “Pixies are many sizes. Bixie says if we want to save Bramble, we need to hurry.”

My head snapped up. “What?”

“What did you say?” Lauris demanded.

Wren sighed dramatically. “Bixie says if we want to save Bramble, then we need to hurry.”

Lauris and I exchanged shocked glances as hope blossomed in my chest. I pulled myself up quickly.

“What do we need to do?” Lauris asked.

“We follow Bixie.” Wren set off after the bouncing orb. “Hurry. Not much time left.”

We set off after Bixie, no questions asked.

She’d just saved our asses, and if she could bring back Bramble, then I’d follow her to the ends of Faerie.

* * *

The fae worldoutside of the dead forest was a mishmash of death and life. Strange purple and pink flowers with huge droopy petals bloomed on charred soil, as if the earth was fighting to live against overwhelming odds. Shoots of lush green grass pushed up out of the earth only to be strangled by a blanket of brown thorny vines.

This world was at war with itself.

But above us stretched a blanket of stars so bright it made my heart sing.

I glanced down at the rose brooch, still shiny and gold. We had time. I inhaled sweet, fresh air, allowing my muscles to unknot a fraction, because even though the world was silent, I sensed life, hidden and wary. Life and hope for Bramble.

We crossed a field and stepped onto a winding track made of pebbles that gleamed white in the moonlight.

Bixie zig-zagged ahead of us as if excited.

“Close now,” Wren said.

The track split and we took the left fork that led to a wall and a wooden door crawling with lush green vines that bloomed with a multitude of tiny white flowers. The sweet scent intensified, making me dizzy. Bixie shot toward the door and vanished through the wood.

Wren marched forward. “Bixie says Wren and friends welcome. Come on.”

He passed through the closed door.

Lauris didn’t hesitate in following, and I went after him with Rune right behind. The world seemed to tilt for a moment, and when it righted itself, I was in a paradise of color and light.

Long-stemmed flowers, petals open to soak up the moonlight, bordered a grassy expanse dotted with huge red-and-white-spotted mushrooms. A brook bubbled and giggled to the left, flowing around steppingstones that led to a rocky platform that wept with vines, the tips combing the crystal waters below. I wasn’t sure how far this grove stretched but it seemed to go on forever, spilling every which way into the night.

“Here.” Wren pointed at the carpet of blossoms. “Lauris put Bramble here.”

Lauris laid her down carefully. She looked pale and small, her wrists red and raw, her face criss-crossed with cuts. Her purple hair spilled across the blossoms, melding with the lavender and lilac hues.

A reverent hush fell over the grove and then hundreds of little lights shot out from behind trees and flowers. They surged toward Bramble and hovered over her in a cloud-like mass.

Lauris tensed. “What’s happening?”

“Lauris not worry,” Wren said. “Wait.”

One of the lights detached itself from the mass and drifted toward us, growing and glowing brighter and brighter until we were forced to look away.

When the light died, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust and focus on the figure standing in front of us.

The woman was slender and regal-looking, with a pointed chin and long fae ears that peeked out from golden tresses that fell to her waist. Her gown was a deep blue to match her eyes, and her tiny feet were bare and hovered a foot off the ground. I couldn’t see her wings but the blur of light at her back told me they were there, just maybe not visible to me.

“Who are you?” Lauris demanded.

She stared at him for a long beat and then drew nearer. Lauris held his ground as she raked him over.

“I could ask you the same question, but I wager you would not have a clear answer.”

Her voice was like the bubbling brook, and like a summer breeze, it evoked a longing to feel the kiss of sunlight on my face.

Lauris, obviously unmoved, glared at the woman. “It doesn’t matter who I am. Only Bramble matters.”

“Not entirely true.” She smiled slightly. “But at this time, I see your perception will have to stand.”

I wasn’t a fan of riddles and run-arounds, and time was wasting. “Look, we came here to save her. Can you do that or not?”

She dragged her gaze from Lauris and fixed it on me. “My name is Minerva, and yes, I may be able to help.”

“May be? No one said may be.”

Lauris’s brows snapped down. “Your pixie said Bramble could be saved. We came here because of that promise.”

“Bixie told you the truth. Bramble can be saved, if she chooses to be.”

“Why wouldn’t she choose it?” Rune asked.

Minerva looked sad. “The fae afterlife is home. It’s a fae’s favorite memory, safety and security. Not many would leave it willingly.” She slid a glance my way. “It would take someone with great mental fortitude to separate the living reality from the dreaming of death.”

I lifted my chin. “Bramble can do it.”

She smiled. “You believe in her.”

“With all my heart.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Please…bring her back.”

Minerva moved toward Bramble and the many lights vibrated against each other in excitement.

“It is time.” Minerva spoke to the lights. “Are you ready?”

The cloud glowed bright as if in affirmation.

Minerva bowed her head. “Your sacrifice will be cherished.”

The cloud fell over Bramble and the lights sank into her. For a moment nothing happened, and then her body began to glow so bright that light shone through her clothes. The wounds at her wrists and on her face began to weep, crimson and then…silver?

Her blood was silver.

* * *