Chapter Twenty-Six

Father did not like that at all. For his spirit knew, just as I did, just as Mother did, that to remove him was to remove the one thing keeping me alive. Then something shifted, and with it, my understanding, too. Father was no longer angry but excited. Elated. This ritual would take him from me, and without my body to hold him, give him the chance to be completely free. Resurrected. Whoever won, I lost. The Binder had handed down a death sentence, and for a long, painful moment I could not breathe.

Inside my mind, Father smiled. Then the screaming began.

My screams. The first time Father overpowered my will, it had been a gradual thing, the slow creep of a negative thought twisted into something more dangerous. A thorn that became a barb that became a knife. The drip, drip, drip of confusion, of not knowing whether a thought was mine or his. First, I stopped taking my tea with cream and sugar, until I began preferring a strong herbal brew that could only be found at one shop in the neighborhood. Then each tree began to have its own unique and alluring perfume, and insects, if I skewered them with a look, would retreat, leaving me in peace.

And that was when it was all still manageable. When it felt not like being captive but like putting up with an odd relative come to stay.

Needless to say, it had gotten worse.

A single thought survived the heat now exploding through my skull: I had done the right thing, for whatever I could do to rip this monster from my mind was, indeed, what must be done.

I felt my knees collide with the ground, and somewhere, in the distance, a cry from Mother. What a response to the Binder’s demands, though this was not my own. Father had waited, letting me grow comfortable, letting me lower my guard. And now he’d struck, with all his pent-up rage, not just red before my eyes but bright crimson-and-black spangles, and a steady sound like the drums of war pounding in my head, louder and louder, until I felt sure my eyes would pop and my teeth would slice through my tongue.

Here it came, his wrath. I had worn a pin once, gifted to me by Mr. Morningside. “I am Wrath,” it said. But I had never been this, never been the last desperate attempt at living by a god cornered into death. Was this what Khent and Dalton faced back outside the door? Did the shepherd sense his time was close and find terrible power and pain in his imminent end?

Every word of the book inside of me was whispered by the Binder at once, and though my eyes were no longer my own, I felt the searing in my fingers as they elongated into claws, felt the tightness in my skin, my legs, my arms, my spine, as the twisted deer of Father’s nightmares surged through me. Even Malatriss shouted something obscene and afraid, in a language that was lost, in the tongue I had used in the stranger’s ritual at Cadwallader’s and that was now branded into my palm.

“Do not whisper your elder speak before me, doorkeeper. The gods may sleep in your tomb, but you have never woken one to challenge it.”

Father’s voice through my lips. He spread outward like smoke, and Mother’s warm hands fell on my arm, but Father threw her off, into the darkness. I cried out but was instantly silenced. He had pushed me to the bottom of the sea, and though I sensed a light high above me, no amount of thrashing and kicking brought me near the surface. I drowned in his black-blooded fury and tasted the sourness of revenge on my tongue. It was all he craved, blood and revenge, his spirit impervious to Mother’s pleas for understanding. For patience.

“You would rip me from this fleshling, and once I would have welcomed it,” he roared, and his arm—mine—swiped with razor claws toward Malatriss. He was going to get us all killed. “She has proven herself somewhat useful, but I can take many forms. You may unmake the white book, but you will never unmake me. I am the Dark Father of the Trees, Caller of Night, the Stag in the Sky, and I will carry the book within me from this place, and I will not be stopped.”

Mother no longer pleaded with him, but with Malatriss. How long would they put up with this insubordination? Father had to be mad to think he could overpower those that had created him in the first place. I had read Dalton’s diary, which meant he’d read it, too. Only a madman would take such warnings, such violence, lightly. But yes, of course. Of course he was utterly, irredeemably mad.

“I see now.” The Binder spoke, unperturbed. Intrigued. “This one is not one, but two. This, too, like all things, can be undone.”

Father roared, undeterred, and lashed out against Malatriss. She hissed, as did her snake, the white serpent striking fast, batted away with a swift riposte from Father, and then Malatriss unfurled all of her arms, moving lightning fast, dodging each swipe of claws until at last she managed to hook Father by the arm. One, then two, then three hands clamped down, yanking him—us—hard to the ground.

“Two will be one,” Seven said, more somber now. Father’s panic, his pain, filled my head and flowed through my screams, tears pouring down my face as Malatriss twisted hard, snapping the bones. “Two will be one, and from one emerges the book. A new book. A new beginning for the children of the Fae.”

And then we were floating, lifted into the air by four of the Binder’s pale hands. My arm throbbed, hot with agony, but my thoughts and feelings gradually became my own. Then I would sense Father again, as if a flimsy wall existed now between us and he spent his remaining will, bashing against the barrier.

“No! Please!” Mother knelt below us, reaching up with both hands. “It will kill her! If you take his spirit, she will die!”

“THEN SHE WILL DIE.” Malatriss whirled on her, brandishing her six powerful hands.

The first time I died, it had been a quick thing. This was slow torture, the ripping of a fresh scab still hard-sealed to the skin. Father did not want to go, and he dug in, each of his deep and tearing claws removed with precision but not mercy.

I began to feel cold, first in my feet and then in my hands. The iciness spread fast, like the first frost rushing to kill the last tenacious wildflowers of autumn. So, too, did my spirit cling on in Father, resistant to the frost but not invincible. I heard his cries as my own, and for one brief instant I pitied us in equal measure. He had made me suffer in life, and now he made me suffer in death, but I felt his twin pain and wished it upon no one.

Cold. So cold. A silvery puff of air left me, crystalizing with ice, and I watched it dance away toward the Binder’s smooth, white face.

Was that my last breath? I did not think it would be so very cold.

“Balance.” Seven did not cease its torture, tearing Father’s spirit from me steadily until it was a thing made real, a ghostly rendering of his form, skull, antlers, robes, and all. It floated apart from me, helpless, seeing its former home and reaching for it. “One favor, two sacrifices. Balance, said the dice, and balance there will be. One book is unmade, another rebound. One creature undone, another reborn. Two souls again in one body. The Mother replaces the Father.”

Wait. I tried to speak, but nothing happened. My voice was lost somewhere, spinning there in the darkness, trapped in Father’s soul. Wait, no, this isn’t right. I couldn’t know what exactly the Binder meant, but how could it be kindness when all I knew of this place was pain?

It was too late. Seven had made its decision. I saw a flash of understanding in Mother’s eight eyes, her arms still lifted in pleading and prayer, and then she, too, was hoisted into the air with us, held by the Binder’s unnaturally strong hands.

Father’s screams were unending, but I didn’t look at him. I could only stare at Mother, hoping she could see in my dying eyes that this was not what I wanted, that none of this was balanced. That none of this was fair.

Then Father’s spirit thinned, turning slowly to smoke, smoke that was caught in one of the Binder’s jars, settling there to mix with some inky liquid within. A quill was dipped into the vessel and a blank book was produced from the shadowy nothingness above us. At least, I thought, helpless and hurting, it would not be Mother’s skin used to make that new cover, as it was already bound in something smooth and pale. Whose it was, I would never know, but I saw the beginning of the binding, of the writing—Father’s spirit, his knowledge of the Dark Fae book, rewritten in his own essence.

One of the thin, pale hands of the Binder wrapped around Mother’s neck and began to squeeze. I was frozen, dying, and soon she would be, too. Her arms stretched out toward me, her lips twisted in a lost, sad smile. I watched her tears disappear into the void around us and heard Malatriss cackle with satisfaction from somewhere beneath our feet.

“Courage, Louisa, daughter,” she whispered. “Your feet are on the path. I’ll be going with you.”