After so much light, the clearing, the forest, the world—everything seemed darker now.

  “There is no magic stronger than that of Annwn. Nothing can defeat it, least of all a quarrelsome girl who cannot accept her own wretched weakness,” Lord Death told her. His sword appeared again in his hand, sparking with power. “Perhaps I won’t claim your soul at all. How well you would do as one of my Children.”

  Caitriona strained, arching her back to try to break the magic’s hold on her. The roots covered her mouth, silencing whatever words or spells still burned in her eyes.

  “Defiant to the end,” Lord Death drolled.

  I lurched toward Caitriona, trying to intercept him. Lord Death didn’t so much as glance my way. His hand rose, the stone glowed—I leapt away, but the roots tackled my center and banded around my waist. I fell forward as they dragged me back away from Caitriona.

  I fought for purchase in the rocks and decaying leaves. Mud packed painfully beneath what remained of my broken fingernails. Vines of death magic yanked me back. My jeans tore against the rocks, taking my skin with them and leaving a trail of blood in my wake.

  Help me, I thought. Help me, please.

  “What a disappointment you have revealed yourself to be,” Lord Death told Caitriona. He brought the point of his sword down to her throat.

  Close your eyes, a voice whispered in my ears. The words were carried in the wind, in the mist. Let go of your fear. You know what must be done…

  The tightness in my chest, the tremor that moved through my hands—it had a name now.

  Fear.

  Release it, the voice whispered. Release yourself.

  My past. The powerlessness I’d felt as a little girl trying to cobble together the life I thought I wanted.

  Release it.

  My present. The dread that held me back, that clouded how I saw myself.

  Release it.

  The wall came crumbling down inside me, and I felt then what waited for me on the other side. The magic that was mine alone, sleeping in the darkness beneath the snow. The decay waiting to be transformed by the coming of spring.

  The magic that existed in all natural things, in their life, was also the potential in death to transform into something else.

  “This is your final chance,” Lord Death’s voice rumbled nearby.

  In Avalon, there had only been one creature that lived beyond his control. One that had transformed herself.

  The memories of High Priestess Viviane’s revenant flooded my mind, but there was none of the terror I’d felt as I faced her. She had remade herself from a rotting wasteland, reassembled a body out of dead bark, mud, long-withered grass. Her soul defiant to the end.

  Now I dreamt her as she should have been, blooming with life. Her body regenerated, the roots defining her limbs renewed, becoming young and green, the crumpled wet leaves a blooming flower. I imagined others growing up from the decay littering the woods, standing beside her. Their bodies new, strong. Under my command.

  I forced my eyes open.

  “Kiss…iron…you…bastard…,” Caitriona ground out around the root. From her vantage point, something caught her eye and she froze.

  A hand made of roots and green leaves rose from the dirt behind Lord Death’s feet, its long, sinewy fingers unfolding as ribbons of braided grass. The palm, then the wrist, an arm—and a head, crowned with flowers. The revenant had no face as she rose, but she glowed with some inner magic.

  Concentrating, I imagined the hand flexing, then closing in a fist around Lord Death’s ankle. Through the tether of magic between me and the revenant, I pulled.

  He stumbled back with a noise of surprise. The only thing more satisfying than the way his eyes widened was the sight of the other silhouettes rising from the earth, taking shape in the mist. One by one, my creatures blossomed up from the ground.

  Lord Death hacked at the revenant with his sword. “Damn you—damn you—what devilry is this?”

  The magical restraints binding my waist eased as his attention splintered. I scrambled to my feet, but the roots seized me again, punishing in their grip. The revenants’ bodies shuddered, threatening to fall to pieces without my focus to direct them.

  Before I could center myself, to tighten my grip on the magical tethers, lights streaked around me, weaving through the tortured branches of the trees toward Lord Death.

  No—not to him. To the revenants. To the bodies I’d created.

  The tethers I’d been fighting to hold on to went slack, and instinctively, I released them. The spirits of the priestesses of Avalon streaked across the night air, sinking through the skin of leaves, mud, and roots of my revenants. The bodies I’d made turned iridescent as the souls settled into them, their forms stabilizing, steadying, even without my control.

  With a furious howl, Lord Death flung Caitriona away, sending her soaring back through the trees.

  The vines that were wrapped around my center jerked hard enough to knock the breath from me. They dragged me toward Lord Death as he sliced at the revenants with growing agitation. Each time he succeeded in severing a limb, it grew back, stronger and faster.

  Digging my feet into the ground did nothing to slow Lord Death’s magic as he dragged me into his outstretched arm. One of the revenants grabbed me, tugging me back, but the force of his magic was such that it ripped the revenant’s arms from its body. New limbs grew from flecks of bark to replace them.

  “You are under my command!” he bellowed at a revenant. The leaf-laden arm ripped the sword from his other hand, sending it scuttling into the forest.

  I slammed into Lord Death’s side and immediately shoved against him, trying to escape the disgusting feel of him against me. Instead, he hooked his armored forearm around my neck, pressing my face against the curve of his freezing breastplate.

  “I’d thought to free Creiddylad’s soul in Annwn,” he seethed at me, “but I’ll take pleasure in doing it here.”

  Threads of black lightning crawled over his fist. I let my legs go limp, trying to use the element of surprise to drop out of his hold. Instead, his other hand closed over the back of my neck, twisting in my hair. Where my blood dripped over the earth, clover and thistle and roses sprouted, reclaiming the burned ground.

  Lord Death drew his arm back, the magic crackling as it intensified. Poised to strike. He leaned too far back for me to reach the crown on his head, but he’d left his chest open.

  I ripped the pendant’s chain from his neck. He swore viciously as I threw it into a nearby cluster of stones.

  The revenants fell upon us, clawing at his face, his scalp, ripping at the ties of his armor. And in the struggle, I heard a voice emerge from the revenant tearing at his shoulder.

  “I was Betrys, you cut me down, but here I stand—”

  I reared back in surprise, but Lord Death’s grip only tightened, tearing some of my hair out at the root.

  “I was Rhona—” came another. “You took my life, but I remain—”

  “I was Seren, and I am alive—”

  “Mari—”

  “Arianwen—”

  Their voices were melodious, echoing, threading through one another like a tapestry, a song of mist and memory, each verse bold, the chorus carrying those same words, again and again. Here I stand. I remain. I am alive.

  “I was the Sorceress Seraphine—”

  “—the Sorceress Briar—”

  “You may have killed me,” came Lowri’s voice, “but I endure—”

  “Enough!” Lord Death bellowed. A torrent of pressure and light burst around us as Annwn’s magic tore through the revenants, rending them into ash and shredded leaves. But the moment they struck the ground, I re-formed them.

  “No,” Lord Death began, trying to summon the souls of the dead to him with his raised fist. “Obey me—”

  The lights danced in the air around us.

  “We were never yours.”

  My heart clenched painfully in my chest. Flea.

  The souls of Annwn fluttered down through the tear in the sky like snow, screeching through the darkness. The longer that gateway remained open, the more malicious spirits would flood into our world to torment the living.

  The revenants circled around us, closing in slowly. Lord Death surveyed them all, his stolen face pale. His gaze caught on something beyond them—a dark figure crouched on a boulder, mostly hidden by the tangle of bramble and roots.

  What I could see of his skin was mottled with bruises. Blood streaked down his face from the cut on his cheek. He held the pendant and its crimson stone aloft over his head. The crystal cast an eerie glow over him.

  “Bledig,” Lord Death’s voice boomed. “Bring it to me! Bring it here!”

  The young man looked up. His words were soft at first, lost to the wind and the fury of the Children. But as he spoke them again, and again, they grew in power. In certainty.

  “My name is Cabell.”

  He brought the pendant down against the rocks, smashing it and smashing it until the cracking stone was drowned out by Lord Death’s primal scream of fury.

  Souls burst out of their prison, whirling around the clearing, or flying into the sky, chasing those that had escaped the world beyond.

  Cab, I thought, overcome.

  For a moment, the grip on me eased. I tried to reach my brother—only to collide with Lord Death’s fist as he punched it through my chest.

  Agony seared my every sense, billowing out from the center of my chest like a dying star.

  I was distantly aware of Cabell’s cry of “No!”

  My gaze drifted down slowly and I choked on my breath. There was no blood. Lord Death hadn’t pierced the skin or broken through my ribs, but his hand was inside me, gripping something. Not my heart. Not my lungs or any other organ, but something vital all the same.

  His face leered at me. The revenants were tearing at his skin, leaving the cuts to weep blood. He seemed oblivious to the gashes, even as he licked at the gore trailing over his lips.

  I couldn’t speak. The moment he shifted his fist to pull it free, it was like my skin was being flayed from the inside. Nothing existed outside that pain.

  “Harvesting a soul is quick work,” he snarled at me. “But you—you will suffer.”

  His hand pulled back slowly, so slowly, as if trying not to tear the delicate substance as he peeled.

  The revenants encircled me, trying to pull me free of him, but it only made the suffering that much sharper. Then Caitriona and Olwen were there, each gripping my arms, desperately trying to pull me free, shouting something I couldn’t hear above the roar of pain in my skull.

  At the darkening edge of my vision, a small girl appeared. Her short white-blond hair fluttered around her face. Her knees and shins were bruised, her shoes dusted with old grass and burrs. A too-big plaid raincoat hung from her shoulders. The fear and pain on her face were so sharp, it cut my heart.

  Me.

  I looked at her, not at the monster.

  You’re safe, I told her. Don’t be afraid.

  Creiddylad had faced him alone, but I wasn’t.

  I felt it now. The decay, not just in his soul, but the physical body he wore. King Arthur had died, and though magic had preserved his body, the traces of that death still lingered in him. And now those faint threads of rot were mine to seize. And through the haze of torment, I imagined it—I saw it so clearly—his organs hardening with bark, his bones turning to vines.

  “I was Creiddylad,” I gasped out. “You stole her life, but I’m alive. We are alive.”

  Lord Death’s eyes bulged as he felt it. The vines that were spreading from his ribs, wrapping around his lungs, threading through soft viscera and muscle. He opened his mouth to speak, only to gag on the branches crawling up his throat. Blood poured from his mouth, his nose. The roots and branches bulged sickeningly beneath his skin, tearing through at his shoulder, pushing his icy breastplate into me. Branches broke his teeth as he leered down at me.

  Not enough! my mind cried.

  Even in the throes of his mortal body’s death, his soul still had its grip on mine. I saw it in his eyes, that triumph of death as he pulled harder, harder—

  Olwen wrapped her arms around my center. Caitriona plunged her sister’s dagger into his face, his neck, wherever she could reach.

  My thoughts shattered. I couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating the light that flared suddenly behind him. If Neve was really standing there, clutching Excalibur’s hilt in her hand, her face glowing in the radiance of her magic.

  A single thought blazed through my mind.

  Together, to the end.

  “Strike true!” Caitriona roared.

  I lunged up and forward, ripping the horned crown from Lord Death’s head and flinging it away just as Neve surged forward with what remained of Excalibur.

  The blade broke through his armor. His back arched as it sliced into his spine, as that blue-white light billowed inside him. Lord Death’s breath came as a gurgling gasp. Blackened blood, now foul and rancid, spilled over his lips. The vines I’d made hardened like stone.

  His hands twisted in the fabric of my coat, fingers bruising as they clamped around my arm. Trying, with his last breaths, to drag me to hell with him. His lips formed the same word, the same demand, over and over.

  “Crei…ddy…lad…”

  The skin of his face turned as purple as a bruise, shriveling against the bone. Sheaths of skin melted from his arms and neck, their edges burning away with molten silver fire. He gasped, his burning lips seeming to seek mine.

  “Crei…ddy…” His expression was horrible, a pale mimicry of love. The obsession had festered in him so long, it became a fever that burned away any other path he might have taken.

  Caitriona dropped the dagger, returning to my side. But as hard as she and Olwen pulled, they couldn’t free me.

  “Release her!” Neve screamed at Lord Death’s smoldering form. She ripped Excalibur from his shuddering body, and this time, drove it through his skull.

  Children screeched from beyond the forest, wailing as they tried to reach their master.

  I shoved at the armor covering his shoulders and chest, beating a fist against them until they crumbled like dried leather. There was a sharp grunt of “Hah!” and suddenly I was free, falling back against Caitriona and Olwen as the three of us hit the soft bed of the forest floor.

  “Crei…”

  His face was nothing more than bone and stringy globs of muscle and hardened vine. Only those pale eyes were left to show any sign of shock as his body fell into a pile of ash, killing the grass and flowers that had only just bloomed.

  The cries of the Children fell silent; the forest stilled.

  Neve dropped Excalibur as she rushed toward us, and the darkness returned.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Depends,” I choked out. “Is it over?”

  “He is dead, yes,” Olwen said.

  I gave her a pained look.

  “Truly dead,” Olwen clarified. She kicked at the pile of bloodied ash and cinders. “Neither he nor Arthur will lay eyes upon this world again.”

  I searched the trampled, bloodstained ground for any piece of him that remained. But there was nothing left of King Arthur’s body.

  “No—wait!” Caitriona gasped out. I turned to follow her line of sight, my heart wedging back up into my throat.

  The revenants draped themselves over the scorched trees that surrounded the clearing, the rolling mounds of boulders. Their human shapes softened as they were reabsorbed back into the earth, like the final sigh before the descent into sleep. Where there had been ruin, there were now roses, wildflowers, ferns taking root.

  “Oh,” Olwen whispered, a portrait of unbearable tenderness, and pain.

  The lights of the dead rose from the soft lips of petals and stroked the vivid green of the leaves. They drifted into the woods, weaving through the bodies of the old oaks. They were leaving us.

  “No!” Caitriona called, leaping from rock to rock after them. Olwen rose and followed her. I clutched Neve’s arm, using her to hold me upright. I knew she must have been confused, but just then she was silent, watching the scene play out in front of us.

  “Cait,” Olwen said, a tear streaking her face. “We have to let them go.”

  Caitriona didn’t listen. “No, please—wait!”

  The lights slowed, bobbing in the air as a soft breeze whistled through the tree branches. I followed the sisters but stopped some distance away. The souls surrounded the priestesses, illuminating their devastation.

  “Don’t go,” Caitriona pleaded, reaching for them as if to gently cradle them between her palms. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—I failed you all.” She gasped out the words, sobbing, “Please don’t leave me.”

  Olwen wrapped her arms around her, and Caitriona slumped against her.

  The voices were as soft as summer rain, echoing and airy. Their familiar tones made my chest squeeze, but it only took three words for Olwen to begin weeping.

  “We love you—”

  “You are our sisters, always—”

  “We will be in every breeze that dries the tears from your cheeks—”

  “We will be the steady ground beneath your feet, when you feel you cannot stand a moment more—”

  “—in the warmth of the sun that drives out the cold from your bones—”

  “You will hear us in the birdsong that wakes you from a dark dream—”

  “—and with each echo of your heartbeat—”

  Caitriona sank to her knees, and Olwen sank with her. Both accepting the comforting embrace of the earth as the souls of their sisters began their final ascent into the starry night. They whispered, each voice bright with joy.