The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,31
was ink, not paint. She would have known it anywhere.
“Hetty Hawthorne drew this.” It wasn’t a question.
Ezra nodded grimly. “It depicts a sort of plague that the uncaged Beast appeared to unleash in its wake.”
May’s stomach lurched. “It isn’t free, though. It can’t be free.”
“No, it isn’t,” Ezra said quickly. “Things would be quite different if it was. But from what you’ve told me, Four Paths’ condition has declined significantly since I left town. The line between the Gray and our reality has grown thin. Four Paths may be heading toward a breaking point.”
“A breaking point?” May asked. “You mean like the Beast escaping?”
“Maybe. This rotting tree is just the beginning of what the original founders faced at the hands of the Beast. If it does escape, this corruption will eat this town whole. If we’re lucky, it’ll stop at Four Paths?—but if we’re not, it’ll spread farther.”
“We have to stop this,” she whispered, shoving the tablet back into her father’s hands. “How can we stop this?”
Ezra tucked it into his coat once more. He was calmer than she could comprehend?—but then, this was not his town. He was here because she’d asked him to be. She was here because she had no other choice.
“Do you remember when you were younger?” Ezra asked. “That ritual you did?”
The forest seemed to blur suddenly around May, the colors and the iridescence bleeding together, and she realized those were tears.
It had been real. Those memories?—he knew it had happened, too. He knew.
Her voice, when she spoke, no longer sounded like it belonged to her. “Yes.”
The first time he’d cut her palms and asked her to give her blood to the tree, May threw up afterward. The second time, she cried. But the third time, she walked away feeling unbreakable.
The lines on her palms had long since faded away, but the memories hadn’t, nor had that strange, persistent itch on her hands. And when the hawthorn tree did not bow to Justin all those years later, she wondered in the back of her mind if it was because it knew her blood instead of his.
“I always told you that ritual would be important someday.” Ezra’s face was solemn.
May swallowed, her palms itching, the forest still dangerously woozy. “What did you do to me?”
“The Gray has been threatening to overpower the founders for a long time, May.” His voice was gentle. “I knew that if we wanted to have any chance of fighting the Beast, really fighting it, the founders needed to be stronger. I read about the original ritual the founders did for power. I thought it might tip the balance if a founder did it again, but Augusta refused. Said it was too risky.”
“But you did it anyway.”
He nodded. “Because you asked me to.”
May’s heart was beating so fast, it hurt. She wobbled, then swayed, her father’s hand steadying her and guiding her to a seat on the forest floor. It was true that she’d asked. She’d talked to him about her ritual?—about how scared she was of failing it. About how she knew Justin would do well, but she wanted to prove herself, too.
What if we could guarantee that you would pass it? he’d asked her. And she’d jumped at that chance.
It was why she could not hate her father. Because he had given her the power she had always wanted. Because he had seen in her the things Augusta couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Because he’d been right.
“The ritual worked,” she murmured, thinking of all her futures laid out before her, of grabbing the one she wanted and yanking it into place. “I’m stronger than I should be.”
Ezra knelt beside her, and there was that smile again, big and wide and proud.
“That’s not true,” he said. “You’re as strong as you deserve to be.”
Gratitude surged through her. She grinned and turned to thank him?—and saw, from her new vantage point, a pair of sneakers twitching behind the nearest tree.
“Dad,” she whispered, extending a shaking finger.
She didn’t remember standing, or moving, but she knew the moment she recognized the face of the person lying before her. It was a white boy in Justin’s grade?—Henrik Dougan.
His face was ashen, his eyes open and staring blankly at the clouds above. She would have thought him dead if not for the way his body was twitching ever so slightly. May’s mind churned as she noted the pack of cigarettes spilled on the ground beside him. This was a popular smoking spot?—but clearly, he’d been interrupted.