Seren Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 15 of 26

The thing that crossed the threshold was not a god. It was a wyvern with a saber-tooth face and fire-purple wings. It did not attack. It knelt. On its scaled back sat a spirit in dark robes hung with gold coins. Hekate's hounds stopped growling. "A broker," the old goddess said. "That's worse. Debts don't die." Then Seren understood. Belladonna's price still stood unpaid. The ancestor had not released her hold on the rite. The seat under Seren was whole, but it was not free. The spirit slid down and folded its blue hands. "I am Virgie. I count what Belladonna is owed." White eyes fixed on Seren. "You promised to hunt whoever cut her root. You caught him. You did not pay her. A caught debtor is not a settled debt." Seren's throat went dry. "Then I'll finish him." "No," Virgie said. "Blood does not grow a root back. She wants what was lost returned." Seren had nothing that could regrow a four-hundred-year-old root. Her hands were empty. Her magic was locked into the seat. She looked at Kida, then at Ganzie, hoping one of them had an answer. Neither did. A soft step sounded in the passage. A young woman came into the torchlight, thin, her plain dress overgrown with living rosemary. Green vines trailed behind her feet. Seren's stomach dropped. "Rosemary," she said. Her sister. They had not spoken in years, not since Seren buried their mother alone. Rosemary did not smile. "I felt the family debt pull," she said. "It reaches every Nightshade. Even the ones you left." Rosemary carried two things. In one hand, a dark grimoire, its cover threaded with rosemary sprigs and dried belladonna flowers. In the other, a small living plant in early bloom, pale purple bells on glossy leaves. "Belladonna's own book," Rosemary said. "And a first-bloom cutting from her line. Grown from a seed of her true root. Give her these and the root lives again through it." Seren reached for them. Rosemary pulled back an inch. "I brought them. You pay the rest. Send word to her yourself." Seren whistled the old family call. A raven dropped through the tower's broken roof, black-bodied, silver-winged, purple-eyed. Seren tied the book and the plant to its feet with her own hair. "Carry these to Belladonna," she said. "Tell her the root walks again." The raven climbed into the dark and was gone. Virgie went still, listening to something no one else could hear. Then it nodded once. "Received. Counted. Exact." The gold coins at its chest chimed. "The debt is closed. She lets go." Seren felt the ancestor's grip slip off the rite like a cold hand pulling from her shoulder. The seat was hers alone now, unshared, unowed. Rosemary watched her, jaw tight. "You owe me now," her sister said, and walked back into the dark before Seren could answer.