Chapter 3

"You' re being selfish, Willow," Arthur said later, his voice laced with disdain. He stood over me, where I lay on a couch in the less-used part of the house. Evelyn, he reported, was resting after inhaling some of the smoke from the Redwood boughs. He claimed she felt a slight easing of her breath.

"Evelyn is suffering, and all you can think about are your old stories and that broken trinket."

He accused me of hoarding the tree' s "magic," of trying to keep its "healing properties" for myself.

"You always resented Evelyn, didn' t you?" he sneered. "Now you' d rather see her die than share a bit of this so-called sacred protection."

The accusations were baseless, twisted. My family' s pact was about protection, not hoarding. It was about a balance, a respect he was shattering.

"This land, this tree, it was meant to protect the Beaumonts," he continued, his voice rising. "Evelyn will be a Beaumont. She deserves its help more than your sentimental attachment."

He was demanding I surrender not just the tree, but my entire heritage, my very essence, to his infatuation.

I was too weak to argue, too heartsick. The pain from The Patriarch' s wounds was a constant throb within me. My hair was now streaked with so much grey it looked like ash. My skin was papery.

But a flicker of defiance remained.

"It' s... not... for... this..." I managed to whisper, each word an effort. "The pact... is about life... not destruction..."

He scoffed. "Your pact. Your superstitions. They mean nothing against a real life, a real illness."

I closed my eyes, the image of The Patriarch' s scarred bark burning behind my eyelids. The once vibrant aura around the grove felt dim, tainted.

The agony was immense, a crushing weight on my chest, a hollowness where the amulet used to rest.

I could feel The Patriarch' s distress as if it were my own. Each fallen branch, each piece of stripped bark, was a wound on my soul.

And through my suffering, a chilling certainty formed.

This path Arthur had chosen, this desecration, it wouldn' t end well. Not for him. Not for the Beaumonts. The land itself would not forgive this. Black smoke from the burning boughs seemed to curl in my mind's eye, a dark omen for their future.