Page 75 of Dragon Cursed
His hands went to the back of her chair.He gripped the wood."I am aware of this.Go on."
"Forests die."Niamh's voice was gentle but her eyes hadn’t lost their sharpness."Groves age out.The natural order is one of cycles.All trees, all forests stands for its time.Then it is fire, or it is rot, or it is reseeded by something new.The magic of the place sleeps and rises in something else.That is how it is meant to go."
"My sister was thekeeper.She was meant to —"
"She was meant to ease the transitions.She wasn’t meant topreventthem."
"That is not —"
"The forest she loved was an old one."Niamh's finger had landed on the page."It was approaching its time.She used the relic to hold it long past its time.She used the relic to keep the old magic in place when the old magic was meant to bereturningto the earth.She thought she was protecting it."
"She was."
"She wasrefusing to let it go."
"No."
"Alsander."
"No."
His knuckles had gone white on the chair.Poppy could see the tendons standing out in his hands.
"My sister loved that forest.She loved it before she loved anything else.She would not have —"
"That is exactly what the book says she did, dear.Becauseshe loved it that much."
"It is wrong."
"It is not wrong."Niamh's voice had gone quiet.Almost kind."Alsander.I have not lied to you yet.I am not going to start now.The book is unambiguous.The relic wasn’t meant to be used the way she used it.The relic was meant to ease transitions, not prevent them.When she used it tohold, the relic curdled.The magic in it turned."
She paused.
"And the thing that came up out of the dark to confront her —"
"Don’t say his name in this house."
"I wasn’t going to.He has many names.The book uses one I will not say either."
She closed the book under her hand.
"He is the corrective.He is the cycle's defender.When something refuses to die that should die,heis what comes for it.He is not, in his nature, evil.He believed your sister was the corruption."
She paused again.
"The book agrees with him."
Alsander made a strangled sound.
It was a small, awful sound — the sound a man makes when someone touches something broken in his chest and presses on it.
"My sister wasn’t the corruption," he said.“There is no way she was evil.She was good.She had nothing but love in her heart.”
"I didn’t say she was evil, dear.I said she loved too much.The two are not the same."
"Alsander."Poppy reached for his hand.
He let her take it.He didn’t look at her.
