Chapter 3: Blood for a Door

The root stair did not lead down. It led sideways through the world. Maren felt it in her bones as she ran. One step smelled of chapel dust. The next smelled of rain. The next brought a flash of winter stars overhead, though the tunnel remained closed around them. Cael moved ahead with brutal speed, dragging her by their joined hands when her strength failed. The thorn-oath burned at her wrist like a brand. Behind them, the sealed door shuddered under the hounds' attack. "They cannot pass," Maren gasped. "They can if Vespera brought a root-singer." "Did she?" "Your stepmother seems fond of expensive crimes." The answer arrived as a note of song slid through the roots behind them. Sweet, high, and wrong. The tunnel walls trembled. Maren saw white cracks open in the black bark. Cael swore softly. "She brought one." Maren pushed harder. Her lungs felt scraped raw. Every bruise from the coffin woke. Still she ran, because the alternative was Vespera's men dragging her back under the chapel and making sure the second burial was permanent. The stair ended at a stone door with no handle. A crown of roots grew across it, twisted into a knot the size of a human heart. Cael stopped so suddenly Maren collided with his back. "Open it," he said. She stared at him. "I do not know how." "Your blood does." The root-singer's voice rose behind them. The tunnel ceiling cracked. Through the split, Maren glimpsed a hound's glass teeth. Cael took her hand and pressed it to the root-knot. "Think of what you want." "I want not to die." "Too small." "I want Vespera exposed." "Too polite." The hound broke through up to its shoulders, screaming metal. Cael threw his black-glass blade. It sank into the creature's mouth and pinned its skull to the wall, but more teeth scraped behind it. Maren closed her eyes and saw Aldric's note. Celeste wearing her mourning brooch. Vespera telling the court she had always been delicate. Her blood answered before her mind did. "I want my name back," Maren whispered. "I want every candle at my funeral relit for their trial. I want Aldric to read his love letters under oath. I want Vespera to hear the court call me living." The root-knot tightened around her palm. Thorns pierced skin. Maren cried out, but she did not pull away. The stone door drank her blood in thin red lines. Cael watched her face, not the door. "Good." "Do not sound proud. It makes me want to slap you." "Survive this and I will permit one attempt." The door opened. Cold air struck them. Cael seized his blade from the dead hound and shoved Maren through. They emerged into a ruined orchard under a moonless sky. Black trees clawed upward, their branches strung with old iron bells. Beyond the orchard rose a manor house with no windows lit, its roof collapsed on one side like a broken crown. "Where are we?" Maren asked. "The edge of the Hollow Wild." "Your exile?" "My inheritance, according to liars who needed me far from court." The root door behind them bulged. Something hammered from the other side. Cael cut his palm and drew a line of blood across the threshold. The door sealed with a sound like a throat closing. For a moment, quiet returned. Maren took three steps into the orchard and nearly fell. Cael caught her by the elbow. His hand was steady, but the thorn-oath sparked where his skin touched hers. His expression tightened as if pain had crossed from her body into his. "The contract shares injury?" she asked. "Only enough to warn me when you are being foolish." "Then it must be screaming." "It has opinions." She would have laughed if she had remembered how. The manor doors opened without a touch. Inside smelled of cold ashes, leather, and herbs dried for too long. Cael led her into a hall lined with portraits turned to face the wall. He gave her water first, then a gray cloak, then a chair near a fire that lit itself when he looked at it. Maren drank until her stomach cramped. The water tasted of iron and mint. Life returned in painful increments. "I need proof," she said. Cael stood across from her, cleaning black blood from his blade. "You need sleep." "Sleep will not stop Celeste from touching the Thorn Crown tomorrow." "Neither will staggering into court in a grave dress." Maren looked down at the ruined silk. Dirt streaked the bodice. Blood spotted the sleeves. Funeral roses clung to the hem like witnesses. "This dress is proof." "It is cloth." "It is my burial cloth." "The court will call it a forgery if Vespera tells them to." Maren hated that he was right. "Then what would they believe?" "Documents. Blood seals. Witnesses who do not depend on your family purse. A public contradiction Vespera cannot smother." She leaned forward despite the pain. "There was a confession ribbon at the funeral. Briarfall priests record final rites in silk and seal them under the altar. Vespera would have had to speak the cause of death." Cael's eyes narrowed. "If she lied in a death rite, the ribbon will hold the lie in her voice." "And if she mentioned fever while I was breathing beneath her feet, the court can be forced to hear it." The bells in the dead orchard rang once. Cael turned toward the door. Maren stood too quickly. The room tilted. "What is that?" "Boundary warning." Outside, between the black trees, a single silver hound stepped from the dark. Its muzzle was split from Cael's blade, but it was still moving. A strip of Maren's burial silk hung from its glass teeth. Behind it, three masked hunters appeared, crossbows ready. The lead hunter lifted a horn to his mouth. Cael's shadows rose from the floor. Maren's blood chilled, but her fear had a new shape now. The hunters had followed her. That meant they could be led. Used. Trapped. "Do not kill all of them," she said. Cael looked at her. "Why?" "Because one needs to run home and tell Vespera the door opened for me." The horn blew. The attack began, and Maren made her first choice as a living threat.