The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,114

wave emanated from him, just like the one he’d used to attack Richard earlier. The effect was immediate: a line of trees collapsed into a path, sinking, writhing, their trunks bubbling grotesquely as they disintegrated. Harper rushed forward, her sword at the ready. She sliced and hacked at branches as they reached for her, refusing to let her guard down. Every moment of her training had been for this: an army that she’d never expected yet knew exactly how to fight.

Together, they rushed through the tiny path they had made, one that was already closing behind them. Harper saw a great, writhing mass of roots over the town seal that extended up into a tree stump, a cauldron boiling with liquid. Already, the iridescent puddles they had left behind were writhing and foaming, new saplings rising from the ashes.

May walked toward the cauldron, her blond hair streaked with grime, and spread her arms wide.

“This is it,” she whispered. “This is where we end it.”

The founders’ seal had grown markedly more corrupted since Richard had forced May to drink, the branches twining thickly above her head, nearly blocking out the light, the roots growing just as tightly along the ground.

All around them, the hearts illuminated in the trees beat in tandem, their thump, thump, thump loud enough to drown out the rhythm in May’s own chest. May knew she should feel scared, but she felt strong instead. She could feel the Beast’s presence swirling around her?—what was left of it, anyway. Feel its panic pulsating at the edge of her consciousness, whining in the back of her mind. It was dying, but what power it had remaining was centered here.

The others looked just as disturbed as she did. May had no idea how Violet was even standing, her shirt caked in blood, her face flushed with the clear effort of every step she took. She swayed, then sank to her knees, panting. Isaac knelt gently beside her, gesturing for May to continue.

Beneath the membranous skin of the trees, forms stirred, vaguely humanoid. They pressed themselves against the edges of the trunks, reaching toward them but unable to break through. May gasped and stepped backward as a handprint appeared on the nearest chestnut oak, bulging outward. A familiar face appeared a moment later, then another, both of them baring iridescent teeth.

May’s stomach dropped as she gazed at Caleb and Isaiah Sullivan.

Isaac’s voice rang out a moment later. “No,” he murmured. “No…”

Violet, who was leaning on his arm, let out a noise of recognition. May turned her head to see that Daria Saunders’s wizened face had appeared across the clearing.

She whirled around, staring at faces she remembered from obituaries and so many others she did not. Each of these figures stirring in the forest was a life the Gray had taken to hold back the corruption, to satisfy its appetites. It didn’t matter that she knew they were merely echoes, that the souls in each of them had long since departed the earth. They still shook her to her core.

May fell to her knees, her breaths coming too quickly, the world around her spinning. A moment later, a figure appeared in front of her?—not an apparition or a grotesque reimagination of the dead, but Harper Carlisle, grime and iridescence smudged on her cheeks, her mouth a thin, determined slash.

May swallowed, tears brimming at the corners of her eyes. “It’s all our fault,” she whispered. “All of this… all of them…”

“Don’t break on me, Hawthorne.” Harper’s voice was soft and steady. “Not now. Not when you know that this is his fault, not yours.”

She held out her hand. May grasped it, and together, they rose to their feet. Across the clearing, Isaac and Violet still knelt together, transfixed and trembling. Wordlessly, they walked up to them; wordlessly, Isaac and Violet turned.

“We can’t let him win,” Harper said.

Violet snapped out of it first. She placed a hand on Isaac’s shoulder, and he nodded, leaning into her touch, his eyes fluttering shut for one short, pained moment before they opened again, blazing with determination.

“Let’s do this ritual, then,” he said. “Now.”

The roots grew wild and free, coiling across the founders’ seal. May knelt in the center of the stone and yanked them away just as she had in her vision.

“It’s like what we did on Founders’ Day.” Violet’s voice was soft. “When they crowned us.”

“You’re right,” May said, her eyes snapping up to the girl’s disturbed expression. They had playacted this every year, she realized, glorifying