Briar Willowshade's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

The green held across the grove, but the pull under Briar's ribs grew worse. She knelt by the spring and watched dark water lick at the cut on her palm. The wound would not close. Each time she pressed cloth to it, the blood rose again, drawn toward the basin like a thread being reeled in. Her fingers went cold. Her sight blurred at the edges. The spring was awake, and it wanted more of her. "It's still taking," she said. Her voice came thin. "I gave it what it asked. Why won't it stop?" Oberon crouched across the water from her. The young fae king had not left. His black clothes were still, but his topaz eyes moved fast, reading her gray face, her shaking hand. "Because you never told it when to stop," he said. "You gave freely. Now it decides how much." "Then tell me how to end it." She swayed. A drop of her blood fell without her lifting her hand. "You made this bargain to teach me. Teach me now." He weighed it. She watched him do it, the pause where he counted the cost of helping her. A soft chime broke the quiet. A small cat stepped from the moss, gray-furred, with faint wings that caught light like wet glass. It walked to Briar and pressed its head against her cold wrist. Warmth moved up her arm. The pull eased for one breath, then returned. "It knows you're fading," Oberon said. He looked at the cat, then at her. "The spring binds through blood. But a binding needs a name to hold. You gave blood and no name. So it grips the whole of you." He reached across the water. "Give it a smaller thing to hold. A token. Living, yours, freely offered. It will settle for that." Briar looked at the winged cat leaning into her hand. She could not give the cat. She looked at her farm, at the row of fairy-shaped planters near the beds. In one grew a shrub she had raised from a single cutting, blossoms open, roots strong. Hers. Living. Grown by her own care. She crawled to the planter. Her hands barely gripped it. She carried it to the basin and tipped the shrub, roots and soil, into the black water. "This," she said. "Take this. Rooted to you. Not me." The water pulled the roots down. The shrub's blossoms flared bright, then sank. The thread in Briar's chest snapped loose. Her palm closed over. The blood stopped. She fell back onto the moss and breathed. The spring glowed steady, fed now by the shrub's living roots instead of her veins. The cat curled against her side. Oberon stood. "It's tethered," he said. "For now. Roots die. When it does, it will look for you again." He turned toward the shimmering stones that led away through the grove. "Grow something stronger before then."