Riona Blackwell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Riona Blackwell had six petals left on her crown, and the blight was already eating the seventh. She ran through Knotheart grove with mud splashing up her white gown. Behind her, the ground blackened where her bare feet had touched it moments before. She was a young goddess of the sunlit world, but for six months of every year the underworld claimed her as its queen. Today was the first day of her return above. She had crossed back at dawn to save the wilting orange flowers braided into her crown. If they bloomed here, in living soil, they would bloom in both worlds forever. That was the bargain she had made with herself. That was the only way home stayed home. But something had followed her up. A grey rot crept along her heels, curling the moss and silencing the birds. One petal on her crown had already gone black and flaked away. She could feel the next one thinning against her forehead. She stopped at a clearing where a woodcutter stood frozen with his axe raised. His antlers caught the morning light. Golden sap dripped from his gloves onto the log at his feet, and the log gleamed solid gold where the sap had touched it. Finn Hawthorn. She knew his name the way gods know names. She had watched him from below all winter, the boy whose grove was going quiet because everything he cut turned to treasure and stopped being alive. His eyes went wide. "You're her. The one who—" He looked past her at the spreading rot. "That's coming with you." "I need living ground," Riona said. "Fast. Before the crown dies." Finn dropped the axe. He pulled off one glove. Sap welled up on his fingertips, bright as honey. "Living ground I can't give you. But I can give you gold." "Gold won't grow flowers." "No." He stepped toward the black line chasing her. "But it stops things. Watch." He pressed his bare hand to the moss at the edge of the blight. The moss stiffened, veined, and turned to gold beneath his palm. The rot hit the gold and stopped. Riona understood. She knelt and tore the crown from her hair. Six petals. She pressed the roots into the soil at Finn's feet, inside the ring he was drawing with his hand. He worked around her, pressing palm after palm to the earth, walling the flowers in a circle of gold moss. The blight climbed the outer edge and held there, shivering. The crown's roots took. A seventh petal opened, pale and new. Riona sat back in the mud and breathed. The flowers were alive. They were also trapped inside a cage of gold that could not spread, could not seed, could not reach the underworld below. She had saved them from the rot by locking them in one small ring of dying grove. Finn wiped his hands on his vest. The sap kept dripping. "Now what?"