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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A short-order griddle that’d been sizzling sausages and frying eggs since dawn. Asphalt after it’d been baking in the summer sun all day. A pot of boiling, amber-colored caramel.

Imagine flattening your hand against any one of those surfaces and that would only be a fraction of the pain the half-heart was trying to inflict upon me.

If Ossian was shouting encouragement to me, I couldn’t hear it over the roar of my pulse in my ears. All that existed was the conflagration of the half-heart, the snarling of my battle magic, and the heavenly coolness of the filigree key indenting into my palm.

Kill the heart. Claim the fire.

Wreathed in swirling thorny vines, I sent my perception into the half-heart’s prison. Its crystalline structure was just as disorderly as the cloch’s. Instead of tunnels of soothing gray, I meandered through passageways of flickering ruby. Instead of a voice, snarls guided me.

In the real world, I felt my skin beginning to blister and peel from the blight, but battle magic could not heal. I had to make this quick.

My steps quickened, the ruby hallways turning a dark garnet behind me as I fortified them with my magic. I had not almost died from its blight nor spent all that time with Flora creating its moonflower prison to let whatever nasty lurked inside the half-heart out. A crosshatch of magical tripwires formed in my wake, ready to ensnare and collapse the tunnel if I failed.

I didn’t know the nature of the Unseelie creature who’d given part of its heart for this contract with the Alders, whether it was a demon like a cindercat or hellhound, or if it was a horned high fae like Arcadis, but it presented like a snake.

A snake whose fangs were lunging straight for my throat the moment I exited the tunnel.

“Thistle—” I didn’t have the time to finish the expletive before I pivoted to the side, a battle magic club bashing the serpent’s head into the wall behind me.

The creature was as red-orange as the rest of the half-heart, its body and tail like flame with only its spade-shaped head corporeal enough to strike. A head that was the size of my torso, fangs as long as my hand. It was lightning-quick too, hissing and spitting flames like venom and striking with frightening speed.

Overwhelmed, I let out a screech and spun a circle with my thorny club. The magic oak tree flexed its myriad branches, and a bolus of dark green light ejected from its canopy. Between one second and the next, I was encased in a mimicry of that canopy. Glittering green branches thrashed whenever the flame serpent attacked, swatting after the creature like broomsticks.

There was no time to catch my breath. The branches were on fire from where the flame serpent had struck them and leaves sloughed off and turned to ash, leaving gaps in my defense.

It’s not a serpent, just like the wight isn’t a dog. It is fire. And fire must be smothered.

Abandoning the thorny club, I channeled my battle magic into the canopy. The branches grew longer and supple, wide razor-edged leaves emerging from every bud. Where the flame serpent struck, the thicker leaves sizzled and smoldered longer before turning into ash.

Acutely aware that my real body was still suffering from the effects of the half-heart, I gave my canopy one last surge to fortify it. Then I struck.

The razor-edged leaves shot off their branches like a flock of starlings. They chased after the flame serpent, cutting through its tail and body. Each cut was a sacrifice, but each cut released a tongue of flame that never returned to the main body. The leaves ignited into cinders, but the canopy at my command shot wave after wave of leaves to replenish the swarm, sacrificing its own branches to become spade-shaped arrowheads of glittering green light. They were so thick and numerous there was not a single place in this prison that the serpent could find peace.

And when it finally slowed, enough of those leaves having nibbled away its strength, I released my hold on what remained of the canopy.

Millions of fleshy green leaves engulfed the flame serpent. No matter how many it scorched, dozens more smothered the hole it created. The flame serpent screamed, jettisoning fire, but the leaves clamped down tight around its jaws. They followed it as it tried to break free and escape, always layering and layering. They were bees swarming around an intruding hornet and smothering it with their body heat.

Finally, the flame serpent resembled something a spider had caught and trussed up in a cocoon of silk, though this one was made of leaf-like scales. It writhed like a worm, but the millions of leaves held fast.

I gave the leaves their final command: Snuff. It. OUT.

A scream like that of a steaming tea kettle lifted from the writing mass as the leaves obeyed. They fused together into a seamless sphere, smothering the flame serpent’s cry. Like the containment field I’d used on the wight, this one, too, began to shrink.

The half-heart fought, but my will was indomitable. My power, infallible.

There was a crack, and the sphere shuddered. Orange light appeared in the seams I thought it had sealed away, glowing brighter and brighter, but the malevolent creature was gone. Only true fire remained, and only one who understood it could contain it.

Lunging forward, I seized the cracking sphere before it could shatter altogether.

A new kind of heat brought sweat to my skin. It trickled down the furrows of my frown and made my scalp itch. It even pooled in my ears, which had to be one of the most insufferable sensations I’ve ever felt.

Ignoring it all, I focused on the fire that was destroying its containment sphere in my hands.

It wanted out, if fire could be called sentient. It wanted freedom, to burst in every direction in an explosion of light. It was reaching, always seeking more, never satisfied.

It was like Violet’s one rule about Nature in that regard—it sought growth. It knew no temperance, only ambition. It was selfish, but also purposeful. It stripped away anything that didn’t matter—leaves, chaff, bark—and fed from what would sustain itself most—the heartwood. Destruction wasn’t its purpose, that was only one of its results.

Its essence was refinement. Purity of purpose.

Ore became gold from its heat; fevers burned through infection to restore the body; sequoias only opened their cones to reseed after drying out from the intense temperature left behind by a wildfire.

The heart of the oak tree kindled with red light like a dormant coal stoked to life. Its light and power grew the more I allowed the green containment sphere to melt away. It was akin to finally taking the leash off a dog you’d been working with for months to see if the mutual respect and training would pay off. Would the dog bolt at the first sign of a squirrel, or would it stay because it trusted you?

The leash and containment sphere gone now gone, a yellow flame that flickered and pulsed like a little heartbeat remained in my hands.

“Hello there,” I murmured.

The flame gave a little wiggle in reply. With a little snap and a pop, the yellow flame turned a vibrant green. It wiggled again as if to ask if I liked its new color. The color of a true hearth witch’s fire.

I laughed, delighted.

It didn’t scorch me, and I was no longer sweating. The flame was no longer curbed, but it wasn’t allowed to rampage, either. The little fire could exist peacefully in the presence of someone who understood it.

And just like that, the green flame vanished.

I blinked, abandoning my magical perception for the physical world.

In my hand, the filigree key shone in parody of a Yule tree: red and green lights and silver tinsel. I didn’t have more than a moment to marvel at my accomplishment before the Stag Man plucked the key from my fingers and squirreled it away into his pouch.

While that was unsurprising, it still hurt. The fire had been alive in a way different from the earth. Almost . . . personable. I felt as if I’d just made a new friend only for them to be taken away.

“Meadow, love, how do you feel?” Ossian asked, his voice sounding soft and faraway after the conflagration I’d endured.

Swallowing thickly, I turned my attention back to the tree. My hand was still pressed against the half-heart, but it was black and lifeless. Nothing but a lump of glass embedded in the trunk. I yanked my hand away and found them both scalded. They were healing slowly, but I paused the process and high-stepped stumbled over the moonflowers. The Stag Man caught me, supporting me against his chest.

For once, I didn’t protest. I felt hollow, not victorious, and I was grateful for the comfort he provided. Surely I had to be anthropomorphizing the little fire, but at the same time, it didn’t feel that way. Fire was just as alive as the earth was, but it didn’t go through restorative cycles like the rest of nature did. When it was extinguished, it was gone for good. Like a life.

And that life was written in the scalding on my hands.

“I want to go home,” I whispered.