Page 271 of Caelum

When she passed it over, his attention switched from her to the ring, and Eve smirked at me as she took off her jacket, revealing the markings that had proclaimed him as her victim.

The seven of us moved around her in a semicircle, while his focus remained on the ring, as we slipped silently into position as rehearsed.

The words Avalina had translated slipped into my mind, staying at the forefront of my memory as though there were a chalkboard in front of me I could read from.

The words had to be perfect.

We’d learned that from the wish we’d made back at Caelum. Words Bartlett had congratulated Eren on choosing because wishes were finicky.

And this was not the moment for finicky.

“With the…”

“…blood of…”

“…the Father to…”

“…guide him, we…”

“…wish for…”

“…Drekavac…”

“…to return home.”

Seven voices spoke at once, and the second the words fell from our lips, Adamescu’s head tipped up in surprise. We spoke in a language as old as him, a language that would be the end of him.

The second the wish was out there, red flashed in Drekavac’s eyes.

“You think to contain me?” he growled, his Ghoul half flaring to life in the face of the threat.

But it was too late.

Even as fear swamped me that the wish hadn’t worked yet again, that we couldn’t do what Bartlett and Avalina believed us capable of, Eve let out a scream.

The Original spun to face her, and his eyes became round as her ink, her fucking ink, began to move.

Before our eyes, her hands glowed as the leaves, attached to endless reams of branches, spilled down from her fingers. Morphing from the lightinto a physical entity, and even as Adamescu made a running jump to attack her, a knife appearing in his hand from out of nowhere, the branches hit him.

In seconds, he was hurling himself at us, and then he was wrapped in an endless ribbon of leaves. They went around and around him, coddling him into a papoose worthy of a baby. But the minute they covered him from top to bottom was the second they began to tighten.

Before our eyes, the branches squeezed. Growing tighter. And tighter. Until there was a scream, this time from Adamescu, and then there was no more.

The branches caved in on themselves, surging into a flame so hot that my skin felt scorched. Noticing from the scent filling the room that the paint on the walls had begun to melt, scorched by the intense fire incinerating the Original Ghoul, I dragged Eve back, but the branches were attached to her.

There was no escape.

But as quickly as the flames surged into being, they disappeared. In the blink of an eye, they were there and then they weren’t. As the heat died, the fire ceased, and there stood the cocoon of branches and leaves. They appeared intact until, for no reason at all, they shattered into a million pieces.

We watched as, like glass, they dropped to the ground, but even as they revealed a pile of ash that we had to assume was Adamescu, a wind appeared from nowhere. Just as the fire had burned brightly, this whipped around, creating a tornado within the four walls of Adamescu’s office.

The wind separated the two entities.

Branches and leaves seemed to swirl close to the ground, whereas the ashes surged to the fore. A flash of light blinded us, and though mygouilleraged, I had to drop my hand from Eve’s to cover my eyes from its unearthly glow.

When I looked next, the haze from the ashes had disappeared, and the branches were retracting up Eve’s arms.

She held them out so we could see, and just as they slipped back into her skin, they began to retract once more, disappearing until Dre rasped, “Look at her chest.”

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