Page 40 of Tangled at the Root
“Rosemary—” Her voice still holds a hint of animal. A hint of danger.
“No,” I repeat. Oh God. Oh God. I can’t breathe. I can’t believe—“No. I’m not letting you.”
“You said it yourself,” she rasps, “That I should accept it. This is me accepting it.”
“No. This isn’t—”
“Keep her there,” Genevieve whispers, then she disappears.
Something in my chest snaps when I feel her leave the boundary of the wards.
“No!” I try to move but the floor rapidly sinks, pooling like liquid over my feet and wrapping around my ankles, threatening to solidify. “Don’t youdare,” I hiss viciously.
Shockingly, the house obeys. I nearly fall trying to free my legs, then I’m running into the foyer. The stairs are completely gone.The floor moves underneath my feet, tugging me in the right direction.
I race into the study.
“Come on!” Genevieve is yelling at the ceiling. “Where the fuck are you? I’m not doing it! I’m not upholding my end of the bargain! Where the fuck are you? Come and kill me!”
“NO!” I hold my trembling hands up but it’ll be useless. I don’t know if I can adequately protect us both outside of my wards.
Genevieve … is … she’s changing, morphing through every shape she—her ancestors?—have taken, growing feathers, scales, beaks, claws, and fangs—numerous living beings, both real and fabled, blurring, melting together, her anchor to her human form rapidly fading.
Even through the mess of rapidly shifting, unrecognisable flesh, I can feel her anguish. Her desperation and exhaustion.
My eyes burn. “Genevieve.”
“Where are you, you bastard!”
The longer she begs without a response, the more my suspicions from earlier are confirmed.
“Genevieve,” I try again, quietly. “I don’t think the dagbato is here.”
The thing in front of me stops morphing. She’s towering nearly as high as the ceiling, her entire body covered in dark fur. Her eyes are that of a cat’s, while a snake’s fangs poke dangerously out of her mouth. Her body language screams confusion.
“Thereissomething wrong with the house, but it’s not because of the dagbato,” I explain, my voice calmer than I feel. “I don’t think it’s here. It’s not tangled with the house’s eshé at all.” Her grandmother must’ve either lied, or been mistaken. The dagbato can’t be powerful enough to not only hide its aura from me, but also sink deeper into the eshé of the house every time I tried to yank it out. If it had that much power, it would have freed itself by now, and Genevieve would be dead. I’d probably become abuffet, trapped in this house until it either got its fill, or grew bored and left, ready to ravage the rest of the world.
She falls abruptly, nearly making me cry out, except, no, it’s just her height dropping back to her normal six feet. She’s gripping her skull, moaning, her form never completely settling.
She twists away, her back to me. “Get away from me.Please.”
It’s the rawness in her voice that does it—the sudden realisation that she doesn’t want me tosee.
I’m stalking up to her and yanking her down by the neck, squeezing the back of her throat hard, then harder, pressing our foreheads together.
She tries weakly to squirm away, but I don’t let her. Her heaving chest is already slowing to match mine, even though I’m breathing almost as hard as she is.
“Genevieve.” My voice is too thick. I swallow. “You can. I promise you can. Just do what you need to do to me. I’ve taken worse, I promise.”
“What’s that supposed mean?” she snarls.
“Nothing,” I say, a little too quickly. “Just—I can take it, Genevieve. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not going to kill you just because you can’t actually be killed.” Talking seems to help anchor her, her body shifting back into the form I know and love. Her eyes are completely black, all her teeth sharp and pointed.
“That’s exactly why I want you to do it.”
“I’m not going to let you treat your life like it doesn’t fucking matter, like killing you is just some easy, frivolous thing just because—”
