This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(78)

Marie took my face in her hands and I wound my arms around her neck. “I’ve stolen more moments than I can count,” she said. “But these past few weeks with you were the best of them.” She gently slipped the vial of Living Elixir from my hand.

Circe moved to my side and put her arm around me.

“Tell your mom I said hi.” She kissed me and then was standing opposite Persephone before I could blink.

Circe held me tight as I struggled against her. “Marie! Please! This is what the Fates showed you?” I turned to Circe. “We have to find another way!” She simply shook her head and tightened her grip on me.

Marie uncorked the vial and deposited the contents of the Living Elixir in the soil next to the Mother. Persephone took a glinting object from her pocket and drug it across her palm. She handed the knife to Marie, who repeated the action, and as they held their hands over the Mother, Marie locked eyes with me. She smiled the way she had when we’d first met. Like I was the only thing she could see, like I was the only thing that mattered.

Marie and Persephone allowed their blood to flow onto the surface of the Heart, and in the light of the full moon, in a garden of poison on an island that wasn’t supposed to exist, the Mother—the original piece of the Absyrtus Heart—began to beat.





CHAPTER 22

The pulse rocked the ground under my feet, and I clung to Circe as we struggled to keep our footing. The sound reverberated through the enclosure and in my bones. I stumbled back and fell hard on the ground. The Mother shifted on its stalk, and as the fresh infusion of blood moved through it, it sprouted a hundred new tendrils that latched onto Marie and Persephone.

I scrambled to my feet, but the roots of the Heart had risen out of the ground and wriggled on the surface like serpents. I tried to find a path through to Marie, but they cut me off at each turn. I frantically searched for her in the dark and found her standing rigid next to the Mother. Curling, nearly transparent vines had sprouted from the upper chambers of the Heart and attached themselves to Marie’s arms and legs. She didn’t fight them. She just stood there, her eyes wide and black. The tendrils penetrated her skin like needles, and something flowed away from her through the tubelike structures. Something viscous and crimson—blood. The Heart was draining Marie and Persephone.

I kicked aside a tangle of writhing roots and pushed my way up the side of the mound. The ripple of heartbeats shook the soil loose beneath me and my feet sank into the nearly liquified dirt. I fought my way through and reached Marie just as her legs gave out. She fell into my arms and we both tumbled to the ground. Cradling her as best I could I pulled her to my chest. Her eyes were open but she wasn’t looking at me or anything else. Her breaths came in ragged tears. I put my face in her hair, breathed her in. Her fingers twitched at her sides as the life drained out of her.

I pressed my lips to the cool skin of her forehead. She sighed.

And then she was still.

The vampiric vines detached themselves from her and from Persephone, who lay lifeless in Circe’s lap. Circe had managed to make her way up the opposite side of the mound and into the same state of shock and sadness that I was in.

The tendrils retreated, and the Heart itself began to sink into the top of the mound, like it was being pulled inside by an unseen hand. I scrambled back, pulling Marie’s lifeless body along with me.

As the Heart disappeared in the dirt, the beating became muffled and distant, but the shock of each pulse still rippled through the ground. The mound collapsed in on itself, and then suddenly, everything went eerily still. The beating stopped. The network of roots retreated beneath the ground, and the other plants settled until the only noise I could hear was Circe’s gasping sobs and my own heart, not just beating, but breaking.

I gazed around the garden in a state of hazy grief. Circe rocked back and forth, cradling Persephone in her arms. The moon had risen high above us and its dappled silvery light now flooded the enclosure.

Marie was gone.

Persephone was gone.

And I didn’t have my mom back.

I’d failed everyone I loved, and I didn’t know how I was going to face Mo when I went home. I promised her I was going to bring Mom back, and I hadn’t been able to do it. And I’d have to tell Alec and Nyx I couldn’t save Marie. I’d have to live with that, myself.

“What did we do wrong?” I sobbed.

Circe turned to me. “I—I don’t know.”

I rested my hand on Marie’s chest and stared down at her face. She looked like she was sleeping. I leaned down, buried my face in her hair, and cried until there were no tears left.

“Briseis.” Circe’s voice cut through the night and reached me in the depths of my unbearable sadness.

Something was wrong.

I looked up to see movement in the dark. The roots of the Heart had retreated below the surface of the soil and went still, but something was still moving under the dirt. The ground bubbled up like it was being displaced from somewhere below. It took me only a second longer to realize that something was rising from beneath the place where the mound had been.

Suddenly, the beating of the Heart picked up, strong and steady. I gripped Marie’s shirt and held my breath.

A hand—covered in tattered, broken flesh—clawed its way out of the dirt.

I opened my mouth to call to Circe but no sound came out. Fear had stolen any rational thoughts I might have had in that moment. All I could do was watch as the hand, connected to an arm, attached to a torso, emerged from the earth.