Seren Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 7 of 26

Isaiah stood in the willow roots with the rite humming behind his teeth. He did not sit. He did not lift a hand toward Seren. The girl with the mohawk lay in the moss where the rite-speaker had eased her down, breathing but hollow, one soul gone into the smoke. Seren knelt with Hank limp against her ribs. Dawn was climbing the ridge. "Name your first act," Isaiah said. "Before I seat you. A god is what a god does. Say it and show it, or I take the words and walk." Seren stood. Her legs shook once and stopped. "You want proof. You'll get it." The rite-speaker looked up from the girl. "She's fading. Her second soul is caught in what's left of the smoke. If you're going to move, move." Seren pointed east, past the willow, where the old temple sat on the ridge with crystals still catching light through moss. "There. Where you can see it from here. I'll do it in the open." She pulled Hank close and pressed her forehead to his. She had carried this cat since she was twelve. She had spoken the rite into him and he had held it without breaking. She spoke to him now with no rite left, only will, the judgment ash still burning under her skin from the day she ate it. "Change," she said. "Be what you always were underneath." Heat came up her arms. Hank shuddered. His fur brightened. Nine tails opened from his back in a slow fan, each one a different color, catching the gray light and throwing it back. He landed on the moss on four sure feet and looked at her with the same green eyes. Isaiah drew in a breath. On the ridge, the temple crystals flared once in answer, then dimmed. "Not enough," Seren said. She turned to the girl on the ground. She pulled a smooth black stone from her pocket, threaded with white swirls, the last thing her mother had pressed into her hand. She set it on the girl's chest. "Come back through this. Ground yourself in it." The girl's fingers twitched. Her chest lifted. Her eyes opened, both of them, one soul and then the other settling in behind the same face. Footsteps came fast through the brush. Seren spun. A soldier pushed through the ferns, one she knew, the sergeant she had healed months back, his eyes clear because of her. He was breathing hard. "Hunters," he said. "On the ridge road. Six. They saw the crystals light." Isaiah looked at Seren for a long second. Then he stepped forward, put his palm flat against her sternum, and spoke the six lines low and fast. The rite left him. It did not enter her cleanly. Half seated. Half loose. Something in her chest locked and something else tore. "Run," Isaiah said. "You're half a god. That's what I could give with hunters this close."