Page 61 of Unbroken
But he only knew how to destroy with them. They’d never been intended to heal.
“No,” he said again. Rain pounded on his skin, but he barely noticed it. Throwing back his head, he screamed into the sky above him. “NO!”
The frantic rustling of leaves penetrated the haze of despair closing around him. Turning his head, he saw the tree straining to reach them. Reach Ves.
“Can…can you help?” he asked. But it couldn’t answer; perhaps its mouths weren’t made for human speech, or it simply didn’t have a mind that worked that way.
Praying he didn’t hurt Ves even more, Sebastian grabbed him beneath the arms and heaved him across the trampled grass toward the tree. As soon as they were in range, the tree wound its weeping-willow-like branches around Ves and drew him to its trunk. Another branch flailed through the grass, then came up with what Sebastian recognized as the kind of spout used to tap sugar maples.
With a convulsive movement, the tree drove the spout deep into its own trunk.
Almost immediately, sap began to drip from the spout. It tried to move Ves into position; Sebastian hurried to help it, tipping Ves’s head back and opening his mouth so the sap could flow onto his tongue.
It might not work. The sap had invigorated flowers, turned a human woman into something very like a Dark Young, but what it would do to an actual child of the Black Goat he didn’t know. He only knew there was no other chance to save Ves.
“Come on,” he whispered, rubbing at Ves’s shoulder. “Come on, please, angel, please.”
For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then Ves sputtered, choking on the sap.
Sebastian’s heart leapt. “No—swallow, love, there you go. It’s all right.”
Ves swallowed convulsively several times. His eyes flew open, and he blinked in confusion, first at the tree, then at Sebastian.
“What the—?” He tried to sit up; Sebastian pushed him back down.
“It’s all right,” he said, unable to hold back tears of relief. “Just rest. Have a little more sap.”
Ves’s brows knitted together in confusion. “Victoria?”
“Dead.” The wounds on Ves’s face had healed, and his scalp was sealing back together. “The tree—your sibling—saved you.”
The tree caressed Ves’s face with a few of its branches, then stroked Sebastian’s hair. The WHS might have used its sap for evil, but the tree itself was innocent of their crimes.
Ves reached up and pulled the spout out with a single jerk. The tree shuddered, but its bark rapidly closed over the wound.
“Where’s Mother?” he asked.
Sebastian looked around, but Lenore hadn’t followed him. “I don’t know. She, uh, she Bound the Book of Blood to me, though.”
“Ah.” Ves frowned a little. “I’m sure she’s lurking around somewhere.”
“Probably.” The rain was easing off, thunder marching away toward the ocean. He stood up, then helped Ves to his feet. “Come on, angel. Let’s get you home.”
CHAPTER 28
“I still feel bad for Victoria,” Ves said several days later, as they strolled across the grounds of what had been the Fuller estate. The Endicotts were in the midst of quietly making arrangements to purchase it, though how he didn’t know, considering they’d burned Fuller’s body in the incinerator and the man was still alive as far as the rest of the town knew. Magic or forgery, or magical forgery, he assumed. Either way, as soon as they’d learned there was an unoccupied mansion with a Dark Young planted on the property, Rupert had put plans in motion to acquire it for the family.
As for what that meant for his half-sibling in the garden…well, that did worry him. He’d already set himself the task of visiting at least once a week to make certain they were treating it well.
Sebastian walked with his arm linked through Ves’s. “I love you,” he said, “and I love your compassion. But she tried to kill you—she nearly succeeded! I have no regrets for destroying her.”
“I know, and I don’t want you to. You saved my life.” He’d never fought another Dark Young, never imagined he’d have to. The match had been close, but he hadn’t been prepared to kill her, even though she had no such qualms of her own.
They reached the entrance to the maze and started inside. “What Fuller and the others did to her…it was terrible,” Ves went on, trying to sort through his own feelings. “She wasn’t like me, she wasn’t born a Dark Young. She lost control of her own body, had to see it twisted into something not only alien to her, but that other humans found terrifying as well. Of course she lashed out.”
They reached a dead end and went back to try again. “I know,” Sebastian said. “And I understand. The WHS used her, then turned their backs on her. I’d want revenge, too, in her case. But I draw the line at trying to murder you, especially because you wanted only to help her.”
Almost dying hadn’t been fun by any stretch of the imagination. Still… “I represented the nightmare scenario—that she would have to live with this horrible thing that had been done to her. That it couldn’t be reversed, couldn’t be healed. And yes, my circumstances are wildly different from hers, but I do understand why she felt as she did. I was born this way, and I still wanted to change. To be normal.”
