Chapter 25: Fallen Leaves - The Shadow of a Vicious King

POV: MAX

“I think we have everything,” Nick says, fastening his backpack and lifting it from the attic floor.

I’m carrying a similar one, stuffed to the brim with spell supplies, camping gear, and the like, but Nick stops cold when he sees the extra black satchel slung across my chest.

I adjust the strap, Lady’s weight curled against my ribs. The carrier shifts, and a deeply unimpressed mrrp rises from inside.

“Are you fucking with me?” he asks. “You’re bringing the cat?”

“I’m not leaving her,” I shoot back, shaking my head. “Not with that mist creep sniffing around the house like it’s kindling.”

Nick drags a hand down his face. “Max. We’re walking into Faerie without the first clue on how to defend ourselves. And your solution is a cat carrier? How did you even manage to get her inside?”

“I…drugged her,” I say defensively.

His head jerks up. “You what?”

“I spiked her milk with a touch of sleep potion. She’s fine. Just drowsy.”

I pet Lady’s head through the mesh part of the carrier to ease my guilt.

“Isn’t it enough that I agreed to take your ghost?” Nick blinks a few times before picking up the crate holding the Spindle of the Gods. “She’s a cat, Maxie. Why don’t you just leave the door open for her?”

I serve my brother a reproachful glare and grab the lantern. The usual heat that floods me whenever I touch it mingles with the restless energy already thrumming beneath my skin.

“Yes, she’s a cat. And she’s coming.”

Without another word, I forge ahead, heading straight for the black passage. With all these nerves rattling through me, I feel almost too large for the portal.

The black, shimmering glass is not glass at all. It’s not exactly liquid either, more like the sensation of being sucked into a vacuum and immediately spit out.

A hard exhale quakes my lungs, the world around me blooming with colors and sounds, like Dorothy stepping into Oz. The happy chirps of woodland birds greet me as I squeeze past the rough bark of a crevasse that splits the trunk of a giant tree in half.

A wall of tangled roots immediately blocks my path. I set the lantern down at my feet, plant both palms against the damp branches, and shove. The roots groan and resist before slowly shifting, parting just enough for me to pass.

Beyond them, the path opens into a meadow.

Leftover shadows from the event horizon dance along my skin for a moment, hopping from spot to spot until they wane.

“By the Dark One,” I breathe softly, barely aware of the loud rustle in the roots as Nick steps out behind me.

The incredible scenery of a forest flaunting every imaginable shade of red ravishes my eyes. The woods are locked in an endless autumn that paints the canopy, branches, and trunks in strokes of scarlet, ruby, maroon, orange, yellow, crimson, sienna, and burnt umber. Cold air sweeps past my face, carrying scents that cajole lost memories out of me. Pine resin. Autumn crocus. Iron-rich earth.

My body remembers this place, even if I spent my entire adult life turning my back on it.

This is the Red Forest. My birthplace. The land that would have welcomed me if history had been kinder.

“It’s…monumental,” I whisper.

Nick slips his hand in mine and gives it a meaningful squeeze. “It’s home,” he croaks.

A tremor runs through us both.

“The Red Forest…” E whistles in awe. “Very efficient branding.”

I release Nick’s hand and thread deeper into the clearing, Lady’s soft purring mellowing the loud beats of my heart. Leaves rustle in the trees. Shadows shift on the ground, the overcast sky glowing with a pale, unearthly light, and a lump forms in my throat.

I am home.

The air is richer here, and vibrations tickle the soles of my feet through my boots, as though the land itself is celebrating my return.

I remember our mother breathing this same air. I picture her life before she had us, before her unsanctioned pregnancy made her a prime target for the Reds. If not for the stupid laws they invented, her life wouldn’t have ended. I might have grown up here, without having to hide, to lie, and without shame in the power coursing through me.

We came here looking for freedom, for justice, for the parts of ourselves we never found in the mortal world, but we have to be careful. The bed of fiery leaves at my feet may be beautiful, but I can’t forget that the soil beneath it swallowed my mother’s blood.

“Mabel certainly hasn’t snuck anyone out of the Red Forest through this portal in ages,” Nick breathes. “Look at this mess.”

I spin around.

He’s caressing the branches of the tree hosting the obsidian passage, examining it from every angle. “A few more years, and those roots would’ve blocked the passage altogether.”

All this time, this portal remained dormant above my head, a few creaking steps and a warded trapdoor away, our birthright tucked into the rafters.

“Maybe she stopped using it at some point,” I murmur. “Maybe it became too dangerous.”

“According to her diaries, she considered closing the passage a hundred times over, but given how emotional I feel right now, I can see why she didn’t,” Nick says.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” I ask, dumbfounded that he could’ve already gone through so much of the text we found.

“No,” he admits with a lopsided grin.

He’s right about Mabel, though. “Mabs lived the better part of her life in this forest. Destroying her way home would’ve been like tearing out a part of herself.”

“I bet she even crossed the passage once in a while.”

I nod at that. I bet she did, too. Just far enough to feel the bed of leaves beneath her bare feet, to touch the land and bring a little of its power back with her.

No wonder she was still the most powerful witch alive.

I take another step forward and glance behind me. The black shimmer we traveled through disappears, and the tree becomes indistinguishable from the other root-bound trunks around us. No visible seam remains.

The passage is buried beneath an illusion, warding runes likely shielding the opening from sight. I circle back, and the obsidian shimmer reveals itself again.

Nick drops his bag onto the forest floor and pulls out a thin leather-bound book full of colored tabs. “According to the map, there’s a safehouse nearby, but we should seal the passage behind us before we go any further.”

I swallow hard.

“Seal it?” E asks, mirroring my unease.

“Yes. The obsidian passage will not be destroyed when the Mist King shows up to collect the spindle and decides to make good on his threat to burn the house down. Logic dictates he could potentially use it to follow us here once the house is gone,” Nick says, flipping through the book. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want this creep to pick up our trail. When I combed through Mabel’s Book of Shadows and the other grimoires last night, I found a closing rite written in case she ever needed to cut the house off from Faerie for good.”

“But can you do that?” E muses, clearly unconvinced.

Without missing a beat, my twin glances up from the page. “Aye. All bridges between worlds are forged in shadow yet answer to blood. Wards drawn to keep strangers out are painted in blood, each line akin to a key turning in a lock. Closing an obsidian passage is like turning that key one final time and snapping it off in the mechanism.

“Bloodraven blood is the only ingredient needed to seal the portal forever, and the ritual looks easy enough. We can easily manage it between us.”

He’s kind to say us when he’s never known me to be particularly talented at witchcraft. Almost all my successful spells were cast in the last week.

“But a bridge shattered is not easily mended,” E says quietly. “If you close the passage, it’ll leave us stranded here.”

Nick nods in agreement. “Once sealed, only the Shadow King may reopen it. If we do this, there’ll be no easy retreat. No panicked dash back to the house, to Scotland. Once we seal it, we can’t go back.”

My fingers drift to the curve of Lady’s body through the carrier, and I ground myself in the warmth of her fur and the soothing rhythm of her breathing. Then, I rest the lantern on the ground for a moment and tighten the straps of my backpack around my shoulders. The weight reminds me that I packed everything that mattered. Mabel’s pictures. My tarot cards. Spare clothes. Herbs and medicine. The tiny fragments of a life I could carry away before the Mist King reduced the rest to ash.

Some part of me must’ve known I wasn’t going back.

“Let’s do it now, before we change our minds,” I grumble.

Nick doesn’t hesitate. He slices his palm and lets his blood drip at the base of the tree. I follow suit and imitate him until our blood seeps into the roots and moss, dark and bright all at once.

“Dark One, heed our prayers,” I say, putting the spell in motion.

Nick begins the chant he found in Mabel’s book, and I join him on the second line, our voices threading together in a way only twins can manage.

“Shadows found and shadows grown,

Take this path and make it none.

Blood to root and root to stone,

Dark One, close our blackest road.”

Shadows burst outward from the trunk in jagged veins, splitting through fallen leaves as though a mirror has cracked beneath our feet. The earth darkens wherever the black lines spread, racing toward us fast enough that I stumble back with a curse and skip over one before it can brush my boots. The obsidian surface at the heart of the tree ripples, distorts, then caves inward with a low, intimate shudder.

Roots twist around themselves and seal the path closed, spiraling into blackened whorls. The spilled blood flares scarlet, then gutters out, sinking into the earth with a hiss until nothing remains.

The birds begin to chirp again, but dark scars remain carved at the base of the tree trunk.

“Mabel is going to kill us when she finds out,” I say with a cringe.

The passage was likely woven by her second husband—or rather, her false husband and father to her children, the late Shadow King.

Nick wipes his bloodied hand on his pants and meets my eyes. There’s no triumph in his face, only resolve. “We had to, Max.”

Our only way home is gone.

Behind us stands an ordinary tree.

Ahead, the Red Forest awaits.

“Look.” Nick points to a dark shape at the very back of the meadow.

A derelict cabin stands beyond a thin row of trees, tucked beneath the sprawling trunk of a gigantic rowan. It’s not one I remember. It’s bigger than the cabins we grew up in, wider at the base, with a double-slanted roof. Still, it’s unmistakably a witch’s hut. One of us lived here once upon a time, before the covens fell and the new order outlawed our way of life.

We move toward it, our boots brushing through tall grass gone copper and brittle.

“And this is the creek from the map,” E says from the top of the ravine.

I climb the mossy hill and look down. A rumbling creek cuts through the earth and slithers toward the cabin, its water tinged red as it slides over slick stones. The air turns colder near it, thick with the scent of wet earth and rot. The bend in the stream forms a perfect U, just like the one featured on Mabel’s map.

“Oof.”

The violent rustle of a heavy weight sliding down the ravine slices through the air. Leaves and grass crumple inward under sudden pressure. Branches snap, wet earth gives way in clumps, and bushes fold and break around the invisible outline of a body barreling downhill. It slips, rolls, catches briefly on a root, then tumbles the rest of the way into the creek with a loud splash, muddy water bursting outward across the stones.

For a breathless moment, all I can do is stare at the imprint E left in the crushed leaves and the ripples spreading across the water.

E fell.

The realization hits harder than the sound of his body slamming into the creek.

I put down his lantern and scramble down the slope, my heart hammering. “Are you alright?”

Water rushes around my ankles, mud sucking at the soles of my boots.

“Yes… I think I—I slipped.” His voice is rough, edged with a hint of irritation but softened by awe.

He shifts, and dark sludge curves around something solid beneath the water. “Fuck, it’s cold.”

My stomach flip-flops, and I reach forward. My fingers meet nothing at first, then collide with the firm line of a shoulder. Warm. Shaking.

I trace the slope of his arm, then the solid width of his chest beneath clothing I still cannot see. My palm drags over soaked fabric and hard muscle, and E inhales sharply.

I’m trembling as much as he is as I map him with my hands, inch by impossible inch. I’ve touched him before, but never like this. There’s nothing standing between us now, and it’s not just the parts I reach for that exist, but all of him.

Nick appears at the top of the ravine with both daggers unsheathed. His gaze sweeps the clearing, hunting for a threat.

“What happened?” he asks.

“E fell.”

“You fell?” Nick echoes, disbelief sharpening his voice. “But you’re dead.”

“Gravity still applies to ghosts here, apparently,” E says joyfully, like he can’t believe his luck. “Maybe spirits are more powerful in Faerie.”

Nick’s eyes flick to the churned earth, to the water parting around invisible legs, to my hands pressed against empty air.

His jaw ticks before he sheathes the daggers. “Wonderful. You’ve rediscovered gravity and hypothermia. Now get out of the damn creek. We don’t have time for a swim.”

“I can feel everything,” E says, awe still bleeding through his voice. “The mud. The leaves. The ground under my feet.”

Leaves crunch and mud splatters where his invisible hands probe the riverbed, squishing it between his fingers. He pushes himself up from the ground, water dripping from his invisible frame.

Scrambling for traction, I grip E’s lower arm, the faint trail of hair beneath my fingers turning my insides to mush. I can barely see straight, let alone climb out of a slippery pit with dignity. A shiver races up my spine, part fear, part heat, part something I refuse to name. My cheeks burn. My ears flush. The lump in my throat pulses hard enough to hurt.

“I’m going to check out that cabin,” Nick shouts from above.

“Hold on. We’re coming,” I call.

Nick turns on his heel and strides ahead anyway, vanishing from view.

E leans closer, and my fingers slide over the soaked fabric of his shirt on their way up to his shoulder as I try and fail to steady myself.

Then he lifts me.

Just like that.

A startled cry pops out of my mouth. “What in the name of darkness⁠—”

Serpent flames stir in my blood, coiling up my spine and limbs, leaving me trembling in his arms while my heart explodes against my ribs.

“E, wait.” I press my open palm to his rock-hard chest in half protest. “I can walk.”

“What’s the matter, little fox? Caught in a snare?” he murmurs, his voice warm against my ear.

There’s a confidence to him that wasn’t there before as he carries me bridal style, steady and unflinching, up the slope and out of the ravine.

My mind races with dangerous thoughts. Sinful thoughts. Impossible thoughts.

As we reach the top, my stomach flips. “Let me down,” I whisper.

Nick is almost at the cabin, thankfully with his back turned to us.

“Oh, I get it. You don’t want him to know about us,” he chuckles against my ear. “I’m your filthy little secret.”

I bite my bottom lip. Us.

The word echoes low in my belly.

But I’m not invisible because I can still see myself, which means the second Nick turns around, he will see me hanging in midair, too.

“Let. Me. Down.”

“If you insist.”

E sounds more amused than not.

After he puts me back on dry land, his invisible fingers lace with mine, and my heart somersaults. No more warm-jelly sort of sensation. Just long, warm, hard fingers.

Something irrevocable shifts between us.

Before, I was the fixed point he orbited, and we were bound by rules neither of us fully understood. I decided when to reach for him, when to let him close, when to retreat.

When he upset me, I could step away.

That balance is gone now. I’m no longer the only one capable of closing the distance.

A man denied his own body for that long will hunger for agency with frightening intensity. He doesn’t have to wait for my invitation to touch me anymore, and the thought fills my blood with fire.

Decades without physical contact must change a man forever, years without the simple ability to act.

Needs and cravings don’t fade when they’re denied. They fester.

I feel stripped of a safeguard I didn’t realize I was relying on, left bare in a way that unsettles me. Before, there had always been limits between us, invisible walls I could pretend kept me safe from whatever this is becoming.

I’m not blind to the danger. My ghost saved me in more ways than one, yes, but he’s not harmless. It may be him I need guarding against now—not out of malice, but because the depth of his need is an abyss I might fall into and never climb back out of.

He told me in no uncertain terms that I looked better in ruins, and warned me in a dream that he breaks the ones he loves. Somewhere beneath the surface, the Fae prince is stirring, and I don’t know if his fondness for me will be enough to keep him from destroying me, too.

Whatever happens with E now, it’s no longer something I can manage from a safe distance.