The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,93
And we can only do that from inside the Gray.”
Inside the Gray. May’s heartbeat sped up at the thought, but they were out of other options. She would have to go through with this, however risky it was.
Whatever mist was pouring out of the corrupted flowers had thinned the walls between Four Paths and the Gray until it was as easily ripped apart as paper. Isaac had already warned them that it would be easy to stumble through at the founders’ ritual sites, but May supposed that right now stumbling through was the plan. She stared, horrified, at the way the world shifted and changed between the trees, flickering back and forth between her world and the Beast’s prison. All around her, flower petals twisted and twitched, a slight discoloration at their edges that reminded May of fingernails.
“Stick with me,” she told Ezra, grasping for his arm in the darkness as they headed for the center of the churning fog. “Most humans don’t do too well in the Gray.”
May did her best to keep up the pretense of bravery as the fog engulfed them a moment later, but it wavered when a familiar voice rang out inside her head.
Fog rushed around them a moment later. Seven of Branches, it hissed, Seven of Branches?—but May pushed it down. The fog thickened as they stumbled forward, and then May felt the world change around them in the matter of a single heartbeat. It was frightening to her, how easily they had stepped through a hole in the world. The fog cleared, and May blinked into the flat, surreal brightness of the Gray’s staticky sky.
The first thing May noticed was that the corruption was even worse here than it was in Four Paths. They were near the Sullivan estate, which was still intact here, a small cabin that looked nothing like the mansion May had known before Isaac had destroyed it. May inspected the tree nearest to her, her stomach churning as she tracked the silvery veins running beneath the places where the bark had peeled back. The tree looked far too much like human skin, but skin leached of all color, gray and bloated as a corpse.
Seven of Branches, the voice snarled in the back of her mind. Don’t?—
She pushed it down.
“Where should we do the ritual?” she asked, turning to Ezra. Her voice rasped out a second later than her lips moved?—it was disorienting. “Here?”
“No.” To her surprise, he didn’t seem frightened of the Gray at all. She supposed he’d probably heard a lot about it before?—maybe he knew what to expect. “There’s a place that’s more important to the founders than this. It’s a direct conduit to the Beast, and it will allow you to channel it more quickly.”
May understood immediately. “The founders’ seal.”
“Exactly.”
“Why didn’t we just go into the Gray there?”
“The walls aren’t thinned like they are here, in the places where the corruption has already eaten them away,” Ezra said, shrugging. “This was our gate. Now come on. Let’s get going.”
A copse of trees grew around the founders’ seal. They were corrupted at a level May had not yet seen. Hanks of human hair grew from the branches in knotted, tangled clumps. Corrupted flowers bloomed across their branches, waving in a grotesque parody of human arms. And beneath their silver veins, pulsating gently inside each of the trees, was the thin, glowing outline of a human heart.
“Holy shit,” May whispered, the words echoing a second too late as she watched the heart move.
She remembered with a sickening rush how many times she had felt the hawthorn tree’s deep, steady heartbeat over the years. The dull thudding of these trees’ heartbeats coursed through her, sluggish and strange. All of it was wrong on a level May could barely conceptualize: a forest of flesh, as if the trees were doing their best to become human but did not know how to put all the pieces together.
She needed to stop this now.
In the center of the founders’ seal was a tree stump. Silvery veins radiated out from it, climbing over the seal. Inside the bark, spilling over the edges, was a boiling cauldron of iridescent gray liquid. Noxious smoke rose from it and wafted through the air. It was identical to the smoke pouring out of the flowers.
“What is this?” May gasped, turning to look at her father.
You know what it is, hissed the voice, so familiar, too familiar. You know, you know, you know?—