Page 102 of When Ashes Fall

“I didn’t do this!” I shouted at him. “For once, stop believing the worst in me! I would never do this!”

“You’d better hope not.”

Despite my lingering sorrow for the tree, I glowered at him. “Take me to the worst of the roses.”

“I’ll show you,” Bertie said as she flew closer. “This way.”

Rising, I didn’t look at Knox as I followed Bertie from the room. Zephyr flew on the other side of me as Gizzi turned on my shoulder to keep his eyes on Knox.

All the other plants in the room and the ivy encircling the banisters were also dying. Many of their leaves littered the ground.

When I first stepped into this room, it was like entering an indoor forest. Now, it was like entering a tomb.

I was surprised to discover the colored sand still scattered across the ground. The sprites had been too distracted and busy to clean up after their prank, and everything remained untouched. Time froze the second Atlas burst in to tell us about the dying roses.

Bertie led the way to the courtyard off the long hallway. The insidious sensation of impending doom crept up my neck as we walked.

She stopped near a rose with no petals left. It drooped over as its stem gradually crumbled beneath the weight of what remained. A single leaf clung to it, but all the thorns remained.

I didn’t want to touch it, but I had to. Bracing myself, I knelt beside the rose and reached for the decaying stem.

As soon as I touched it, what remained of the flower crumpled beneath my fingers. I recoiled as the ashy remnants scattered across the ground.

Unable to move, I stared at the rose in horror. It took a few moments before I hesitatingly stretched my trembling fingers toward it. I dipped the tips of them into the remains; they were silken against my skin, but no emotions radiated from them.

I rubbed the black ashes between my fingers as I examined them. There were no bony remnants, but it was as if someone had cremated the shifters. A sick feeling settled in the pit of my stomach as I lowered my fingers.

Am I somehow doing this? Is there some way I’m killing them without realizing it?

I recalled sitting in the tree while its life flowed through its limbs and into me. I’d strengthened myself by absorbing its energy.

Did I take too much? Is my ability to connect with dead things leaking into the world and poisoning it so that I was also killing things?

Are they dying because of me?

The possibility turned my blood to ice and sent my brain screeching in a hundred different directions. I strained to deny the possibility while also trying to find some other reason this was happening.

But I had nothing. Absolutely nothing other than death and decay.

I couldn’t bring myself to wipe the ashes off on my pants, but I couldn’t stand having it on my fingers anymore either. This was a living, breathing shifter at one time, and then my mother came along, and now I had.

If I could talk to the dead, could I also talk to the shifter who once resided in this flower? I struggled to form a question that wouldn’t make the others suspicious and could get this dead shifter to talk to me.

“Are there others like this?” I asked.

When no one answered me, I turned to discover them all staring at the fallen rose with a mixture of shock and sorrow.

Bertie flew down to stand on the ground; she was impossibly drained of more color and life. “There are a few this bad throughout the castle.”

“Do you think they’re dead?” I asked.

It was clear to me they were, but I waited to hear something from someone else… someone no longer on this plane. Silence from beyond met my question, but Bertie answered me.

“Don’t you?”

“Yes,” I reluctantly admitted.

I rested my fingers on the ground before rising. More dying roses speckled the courtyard, but I didn’t dare approach them. If I were the one raining death down on them, then I couldn’t get any closer.