Chapter 11: The Voice Goes Quiet

My chest burns, and I cannot pull air in. Cold presses in from every side, and Cael keeps saying my name in my head. I cannot feel my hands or my feet, and I cannot tell which way is up.Then the cold lets go all at once. I fall and hit something hard, and air slams back into my lungs.I cough until my throat goes raw. I open my eyes, and I am lying on dark roots that pulse with white light underneath. White trees rise up so high I cannot see the tops. The air is thick and still and smells like something ancient. There is no wind and no echo. Sound disappears the moment it leaves our mouths. The light moves under the roots like something beneath is breathing, and it feels wrong. Cael is on his hands and knees next to me, coughing. Maya is a few feet away, curled up and not moving. My mother, Roran, and the thing made of sap are all gone. It is just us three in a place that feels alive.Cael looks up at me. He does not say anything out loud. I hear him in my head clear as if he were r

Chapter 12: He Wears My Face

My breath stops. My own face is rising out of the pool behind Roran, smiling with my mouth. Sap slides off his chin, and his eyes are brown like mine, not gold.The cold sap is already at my knees, and it burns through my clothes. Maya is screaming my name and fighting against the sap holding her. Cael hangs next to her with his head down, and I cannot feel him anywhere in my chest.The other me walks out of the pool without effort, like the sap is nothing to him. He has nothing on, and dark sap drips off him to reveal skin that looks exactly like mine. He has every scar I have, even the thin white line on my left knee from falling out of the loft when I was nine.Roran throws his head back and laughs. The sound shakes the white trees. "There he is," he says, and his voice fills the space around us. "The one I kept."My hands go cold and numb and I have to look at them to believe they are still mine. My chest tightens and my breathing goes shallow. Eighteen years. He has been down her

Chapter 13: The Offering

My palms sting where my nails cut them. Cael stops less than a foot from me and holds the knife out flat on his palm like he is presenting something sacred. His eyes are still solid black and his mouth is curved into my own smile.The sap around my arms loosens just enough for me to move my fingers, cold and wet, letting go of my right wrist first, then my left. I do not reach for the knife right away because my hands are shaking too hard."Take it," Cael says, and his voice is not his. It is mine, layered under something older, like Eryth is speaking through my throat. "The law wants a willing hand."Behind him, the other me still has the blade pressed to Maya's throat and has not moved. He watches me with my own brown eyes, and his face is blank. Maya is breathing fast and shallow, and tears are running down her cheeks, but she does not make a sound.Roran laughs from the edge of the pool and the sound rolls through the space around us. "Two hearts grown from one root," he says. "On

Chapter 14: I Say No

I do not open my hand. I close it. The wood of the handle bites into the fresh cut on my palm and the pain is sharp enough to clear my head. The knife pulses once against my skin, warm as a heartbeat, like it knows what I am about to do. It has only ever pulsed for Cael before. Now the beat feels wider, like it is listening for more than two."No," I say, and my voice cracks. The thing in front of me goes still and through the bond I feel Cael go still with it. He is not scared of dying. He is scared I will let go.Behind me Maya whispers, "Do not."The other me is on his knees, tears running down his face. "Please," he begs. "She will make it stop. I am tired of the dark."Roran laughs from the pool's edge, thin and cracked. "Give it to her, light-born. That is what mothers do."My throat closes. Part of me wants to believe this is her just to hear my name in that voice again. But I know where my real mother is. She lost her voice to the tree and she is not this.I think of the real

Chapter 15: The Light Holds Me

The brightness does not fade. It presses down on me from every direction, and I cannot move. I cannot feel the ground under my knees, and I cannot hear anything except a high thin ringing filling my ears.I try to call for Cael, but my throat makes no sound. I try to move my hands, but they do not answer. The only thing I feel is the tearing in my chest where the bond lives, slow and deep like a wound that will not close.The white light peels away in layers until shapes return. I am on my knees on cold stone, and the air is cold and still.I lift my head, and the pool is gone, the white trees are gone, and the sap is gone. I am inside a round chamber where roots cover every surface, thick as arms, pulsing with faint light that moves like blood under skin.I look around the chamber. To my left, Cael is on the ground, still breathing. His skin has gone pale, and when his eyes open, the color in them is not black or brown. It is a warm amber I have never seen in him before.To my right,

Chapter 16: Mother Bleeds

I can hear Cael, but his voice sounds distant and strange, like it is coming from somewhere far above me. My face is still wearing a smile that is not mine, and when I try to speak, the voice that comes out is not my own.I try to call back to him, but nothing comes. My throat will not obey, and my tongue sits heavy in my mouth. The only sound I make is a low breath.The wood is still spreading through my hands. I feel it under my skin like something cold pushing upward, moving from my palms into my wrists, each pulse in time with the roots on the walls.The first root watches me with his white eyes, and his head tilts like he is listening to something only he can hear. He does not move to help Cael or look at Maya.My mother steps forward, her hands shaking as she reaches for my face. She does not touch the smile but the edge of my jaw, where the skin is still mine."Aiden," she says, and her voice breaks on my name. "Fight it."I want to tell her I am fighting, that I have been figh