Page 39 of Tangled at the Root
“Don’t.” I freeze. It barely sounds like her. I can’t stop how hard I’m breathing, how hard and fast my heart is racing. “Don’t move.”
“It’s time, isn’t it?” I ask just to convince myself that it’s really her, my raspy voice lower than a whisper. “For … for the sacrifice?”
She doesn’t answer.
Wait.
For a moment, my fear is forgotten, my eyebrows furrowing with a frown.
“What did you do when you were twenty?”
It takes her a moment to speak, like she’s forgotten how. “What?” The word comes out thick, low, almost slurred.
“When you were twenty,” I repeat, feeling strangely calm, though my pulse hasn’t stopped thundering. I think back quickly. “It was close to the end of term. You left school for a while, remember? Your mother had come to get you. You told me you were going to see your grandmother that weekend. That it was a family thing.”
The memory is sharp and clear. She hadn’t wanted to go. She’d told me all the things her mother had said about her grandmother, how she was too old-fashioned—how she was mean and a bully, and hated when things didn’t go her way; that was why they never visited her anymore.
The apple unfortunately didn’t fall too far from the tree, Genevieve had muttered bitterly, and I’d pretended not to hear. She never spoke about her upbringing; her mum hadn’t evenknown I existed. Everything I’ve suspected about how she’d been raised has always remained that—a suspicion.
The shadow ripples. My pulse jumps. “I-I … I don’t—” Something that looks like a hand lifts up to the shape of her head, by her temple. “No. I don’t think I left school. I don’t remember.” Her voice is sounding less hoarse and gravelly with every word.
“The dagbato demands a sacrifice every ten years to every child born,” I quote. It hadn’t been long after her twentieth birthday back then. She must’ve gone to complete the ritual. To give the dagbato the sacrifice.
What had she done when she’d been ten?
What had she beenforcedto do?
She’s shaking her head, both hands clutching her temples.
None of that matters right now.
“What are the details of the ritual?” I ask, needing us to move fast. “Lights, please,” I say desperately, though a part of me thinks its futile. It’s been so responsive to my needs without me having to ask, after all.
Which is why I jolt and cry out when the lights abruptly come on, nearly blinding me. Thanks to my wards, they’re as bright as they’re supposed to be.
My eyes immediately fly to Genevieve when they adjust. I suck in a sharp, painful breath.
She’s at least a foot taller. Her arms are so long her curled fingers are brushing against the ground. Multiple, beady black eyes bulge on her face like a multitude of dark boils, her mouth now a raw, red slit, her nose missing.
My gorge rises. I swallow it right back down.
“The ritual, Genevieve,” I say, pretending I’m in control, pretending my hands aren’t shaking.
They clench into fists when Genevieve’s hands move. Powerful dark claws extend from her fingers, scraping against the marble with hair-raising screeches.
Those beady black eyes stare almost unseeingly at me.
“Genevieve!” I gasp frantically. “The ritual! We need tohurry.”
Her shoulders shift. Feathers sprout all over her arms and her back, tearing through her tank top. Her legs bend at the knee, like she’s preparing to run.
It hits me like a boulder to the face.
At some point while I’d been performing the cleansing ritual—perhaps even before then—Genevieve had already made a choice.
She notices the slowly dawning horror in my expression, and suddenly, she’s back to her human self, no anomalies in sight, her ripped tank top the only evidence there ever was. Her beautiful brown eyes are defiant and sad, but without a hint of remorse.
“No,” I whisper.
