Shouts and the sound of battle reached Raef at his tree. Argos whined to hear the howl of a fellow hound. The demon had sprung her trap.
“Idiots,” he muttered.
He pushed himself up on his toes, wriggled, but found no give in his bonds. Argos growled as Raef strained against the ropes.
“I’m just trying to help.” Raef grimaced as he pushed again. “I don’t want him to die.”
Seth was like him.
The knights had twisted him, made him hate himself, but that didn’t mean he deserved what he’d find in the castle. The Bishop knew. They all knew. A demon waited for them, but they’d marched in anyway.
“Idiots!” Raef repeated.
Kinos was in there. If the knights failed to capture him, if they all died, what chance did Raef have?
“You could help you know,” Raef told Argos. “Don’t you want your master to survive?”
Argos stopped growling and sat back as if to consider the suggestion.
Seth’s knots wouldn’t give, so Raef would have to.
He tried to use the force of the ropes to pop his arm from the socket. He jumped, yanked, pushed until he saw red, but he could not bring enough force to bear.
“I’m not strong enough. Please, Argos.”
Argos leaped, jaws open. Raef let out a yelp, but sagged forward as the hound sank back. He kept his eyes on the hound as he shrugged off the severed rope. Argos had bitten through it.
“Thank you.”
Argos let out a little yip.
“We’re friends, right?” Raef asked.
Argos yipped again.
The keep was ancient and crumbling, a round tower with a great crack that split its side. It rose behind a square outer wall marked by a gatehouse.
The smell of burning wood washed over Raef. He took his knives from Seth’s discarded pack.
“Let’s go find them,” he told Argos.
The hound yipped and followed when Raef started walking.
“Never thought I’d be happy to have a Hound of Hyperion at my back,” he admitted.
The cadre had made it inside the outer wall, leaving the gatehouse doors open behind them. Raef passed inside, intending to cross into the courtyard, but paused to see the thorny vines carpeting the walls and ceiling of the gatehouse. They writhed, twisting like a veil of serpents. The flowers blinked open and shut like watching eyes.
One of the knights lay strangled in the vines, impaled on the thorns. They curled around her, obscuring her face.
Argos growled as Raef moved closer.
The shadowsight showed him the spirits in the wriggling green. The thorns had pierced her, found the exposed skin and joints in her armor. They’d soon suck her dry.
She coughed, startling him. She wasn’t dead.
Raef took a long breath, drew a knife, and started cutting her free.
“Thank . . . you,” she sputtered, her breath heaving.
“You’re bleeding. Can you call your fire? It will close the wounds.”
She choked on whatever answer she’d meant to give but nodded.
Raef found her sword and pressed it into her hands.
“Stay with her, Argos.” He didn’t expect the hound to obey him any better than it would its master, but the knight was clearly stunned. “Burn anything that gets near her.”
The doors to the courtyard stood open, charred and smoldering. At least there were no more bodies, but there was a new smell of meaty rot, like a compost heap mixed with a butcher’s leavings.
Thorns and flowers coated the inner walls and much of the ground. The hulking, stitched shades were everywhere, floating in and out of the smoke that filled the space.
A hound howled in pain and fell silent.
The shades had broken the knights’ formation. Many of them lay sprawled, unmoving as vines crept to ensnare them.
A flash of fire led Raef to Lathan. He crouched with two others behind some derelict carts and debris. A pair of the stitched-together shades came at them. The fire cut them down and drove them back, but Raef could see that the knights were weakening.
“Where’s Seth?” Raef shouted.
“Ahead with the Bishop.”
The doors to the cracked keep had rotted off their hinges. Its dark maw looked like the only path. The building was nearly as much branch and thorn as stone.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” Raef shouted as another pair of shades emerged from the keep. “There’s too many of them.”
“Not without the others,” Lathan called, standing to cleave another spirit as it drifted toward the trio.
They wouldn’t last long if they didn’t run. Raef had to find the Bishop, get Kinos and Seth, then get her to order a retreat. Raef clenched his jaw and ran toward the keep’s doors.
He’d almost reached them when one of the giant shades stepped into the doorway, blocking his passage. It raised a fist and tendrils snaked free, aiming for him. Raef drew the shadowknife, ready to test it against the thing, knowing he’d never be quick enough to keep it from catching him.
A ball of fire struck the giant’s chest, knocking it back. At first Raef thought Lathan had thrown a spell, but the flames uncurled and growled. Argos snarled as he clawed and bit his way through the shade’s heart.
The hound leaped free as the spirit fell, breaking apart as it struck the ground.
“Good boy,” Raef said, breath heaving more from panic than exertion. When he looked back, he saw that the knight he’d saved had joined Lathan’s group. “Let’s go find your master.”
The entrance opened into a round space, the keep’s base.
Raef walked the bottom of a wide, dry well. The floors above had collapsed, broken by the vines. Blades of sunlight filtered through the opened roof, lighting on piles of debris and ruined furniture.
He tried to stay hidden, though he doubted his success with Argos glowing as he followed. The hound’s flames were near enough to almost singe the hair on the back of his neck.
He exited the passage and saw a body, a peasant hanging, impaled on the thorns.
The man took a slow breath, his skin so colorless that Raef nearly mistook him for a shade. Raef stumbled inside and found the rest of them, countless people impaled at every angle, ringing the well from base to splintered roof.
Red petals drifted downward. They carpeted the ground.
The latest victims hung closer to the ground. The knights. The Bishop. Seth. The vines pulsed, drinking deep. Their captives did not stir.
Raef froze when he found Kinos.
He hung on the thorns, pale and still as a marble ship’s prow.
One of the thorns had pierced through his shoulder. Another, his side.
The spirit girl stepped out from behind an empty throne. Raef’s guts twisted at the sight of her blood-filled eyes. Her face had healed. It seemed they all healed quickly, even half-breeds like Raef and Seth.
“It’s the perfect solution, cousin,” she said.
“Killing them slowly?”
Keeping their distance, eyes locked, they circled each other.
“They make blood. The shades feed and thrive. The rimmon tree keeps them alive.”
“You call that living?” Raef nodded to the shriveled bodies.
“That was the bargain they made with me. The price they paid. You should have seen them weep when they killed their own, offering them to me in sacrifice, but it was the only way to survive when the servants of Hyperion came.”
“What are you talking about?” Raef gauged the distance between them. The shadowknife would likely stop her. It certainly wanted to. It thrummed, his second heartbeat. “Thiva’s tower still stands.”
“Yes, it does. The island’s prince would not allow them to raze it. He brought an army against the knights, sent the peasants, but even the Knights of Hyperion wouldn’t murder them, and so the Inquisitors came, creeping like spiders among the people. Oh, and the poison they brought . . .”
“You sound impressed.”
“I was. They died so fast, too quick to be buried.”
“But not you.” Raef inched closer.
She was almost in reach. He could leap, tackle her, and drive the shadowknife into her heart.
“You’re something else, aren’t you? You’re the thing that crawled out of the Moon’s Door.”
The vines curled nearer, the thorns dripping with dark sap. Raef had to keep her talking.
“No, little cousin. I was invited. The fools summoned me. Then the plague took them too. The survivors were happy to accept my offer. Their fear of death is all I need to walk this world.”
Kinos twitched. He shook, like he might wake. The vines curled closer, tightening their grip on him.
“They’re dreaming,” Raef said.
“Their nightmares feed me. Their blood sustains their spirits. Now the servants of Hyperion will feed us too, and here we’ll all remain.”
Shades crowded through the door. Shuffling forward, trailing vines like chains, they carried the bodies of Lathan and the other knights. Raef heard the squelch as they pressed the knights into the vines. Lathan screamed as the thorns pierced him. Then he fell quickly silent.
“It can’t last forever. Someone will come to stop you.”
“Who?” She stopped circling and opened her hand. A red flower bloomed on her palm. “Who’s left in all this dying world to care about me?”
“Maybe I care,” he suggested. “You called me cousin.”
“Because you are another child of the Sunken Garden, even if you are a mutt.”
“A demon,” Raef said.
She hissed. “That is their word for us, their lie.”
“What would you call us, then?” Raef could charge her. He was close enough to make it, but he needed to know. He may never get this chance again.
“We were gods before they came, before they killed the greatest of us.” She spun, her face lifted to the sky. The blood in her eyes overflowed and ran like tears. Her skin rippled, some other form threatening to surface. “This was our world.”
“Why did the priests summon you? What did they want?”
“To make you,” she said. “To make those like you.”
“But why?” Raef asked.
“You don’t know,” she teased. Her skin browned, rippling like the rough bark of the vines. She laughed. “You don’t know what’s coming, do you? You don’t know who is coming.”
He could stall no longer.
Raef tensed to leap, but the vines exploded from the earth beneath her, pushing her skyward, beyond his reach. Riding a mass of roots like a great skirt of thorny tentacles, she loomed above him.
She wasn’t a girl. She was the tree.
Argos whimpered as the vines and thorns caged him. The hound sparked as he tried to call his fire, but he was too young. He’d used up his flames to save Raef. The thorns pierced him, and he fell silent.
The shades pressed in behind Raef, closing off the tower’s entrance.
“What shall I do with you, cousin?” she asked, her voice something else now, a terrible choir of all those she’d ensnared. “Shall I make you a bargain?”
He was surrounded. Even with the shadowknife, he would not be able to fight free, and he’d never leave Kinos and Seth behind.
“What do you want?”
“Serve me. Carry my seeds beyond Thiva’s shores, and I will let you have one of your mortals. I’ll let him live and you can sate your own hunger with him, whatever it is you crave.”
She gestured, pointing a long, thorny finger at Kinos.
“Not that he has much blood left. He came to me half-drowned. He won’t last long. But they both dream of you, and oh, the things they dream. Pick one.”
“And the other?”
“He stays with me, forever, to ensure your loyalty. It is a generous bargain.”
Raef pretended to consider her offer. He pretended to be torn.
“All right,” he said. He pointed to Seth. “That one.”
“Interesting,” she purred.
The thorns withdrew like sheathing blades. Raef rushed, catching Seth as he fell.
“Pol . . .” Seth whispered.
“It’s Raef, actually. My name is Raef.”
“You—you lied to me.”
An ember glowed in Seth’s golden eyes.
“You heard?” Raef asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s right, I lied to you. I’m a demon.” Raef struggled to say it aloud. “Just like her.”
“Like me.”
Raef wanted nothing more than to tighten his grip, to pull Seth to him, and say he wasn’t alone now, that they weren’t alone now, but he couldn’t. Something inside him cracked to say what he had to, to do what he had to do now.
“So what are you going to do about it?” Raef asked. “You have to burn me, don’t you? I lied to you. I betrayed you.”
Seth grew warm in Raef’s arms.
“I know—” Seth choked. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“Then you also know why,” Raef said, voice low, cracking. “You have to let it out.”
“Oh, sweet nothings,” the demoness sang. “Is that what you feed on, cousin?”
“No.” He looked up at her. “It’s curiosity.”
Father Polus had always called him mind-hungry, and he’d never been happier or more content than in the library, reading while others read, copying texts while others copied.
“Boring, but we’re all the god of something.”
“I’m no god.” Raef helped Seth to his feet. “We made a deal. Where are these seeds?”
She grinned and rose higher. Stretching out her spindly arms, she began weaving her palms together.
“The people—” Seth whispered. “It will kill them.”
“You can control it. I know you can.”
“Please don’t make me do this.”
“I’m sorry,” Raef whispered. “But you have to. It’s the only way any of them are getting out of here with us.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You, we, are so much more than you think. You’re good, Seth, a good man. You won’t hurt those who don’t deserve it.”
“Argos?” Seth asked.
“She has him,” Raef said, looking to where the hound lay impaled on the thorns.
“It’s time, cousin,” the demon said. “Are you ready to carry me beyond these shores?”
In her palm she held three pits, like the stones of plums. They were the same color as her eyes.
Seth choked once. It might have been a sob or a gulp of air.
“Get behind me,” he said.