CHAPTER 9: THE LAST RITUAL

The Blood Vow

The grove's singing swelled, shaking petals from the willows in a suffocating rain. Julian knelt at the center of the clearing, his body more thorn than flesh now, the flower in his eye socket pulsing in time with Sabrina's corrupted heartbeat.

Before them, the child—their child—unraveled its roots into the earth, forming a living altar of tangled hair and bones.

"The ritual is simple," it whispered, its voice now a chorus of every Whitfield and Thorne who had come before. "One of you must die to break the cycle. The other must live to tend the grove."

Sabrina's breath hitched. The roots beneath her skin squirmed in anticipation, feeding her visions of what each choice would bring:

Option 1: Julian dies by her hand. His thorns become the next guardian tree, his screams its whispering leaves. She lives forever as the grove's grieving bride, planting new seeds in the fertile earth of her own womb.

Option 2: She lets Julian kill her. Her body becomes the soil, her bones the next cage. He becomes the grove's wrathful king, his love curdled into something sharp and hungry.

The child smiled, its hollow chest cavity echoing with the sound of a baby's laugh.

"Or…" it crooned, "you can join properly. Become what you were always meant to be."

It pressed one root-hand to Sabrina's belly, the other to Julian's thorn-pierced chest.

"Let the grove bind you forever."

The Forbidden Third Choice

Julian's remaining eye locked onto Sabrina's. Even now—especially now—his gaze burned with the same intensity as when he'd first kissed her under these very trees.

"You knew," he rasped, thorns tearing his throat with every word. "From the beginning, you knew it would come to this."

Sabrina's tears were black sap now. "I thought I could change it. I thought if I bound you to me, the grove would take me instead of—"

The child shrieked, its roots constricting around them both. "CHOOSE!"

In that suspended second, Julian did something unthinkable.

He kissed her.

Not gently. Not sweetly. A claiming, brutal and bloody, his thorned tongue lashing against hers, his fingers digging into the roots beneath her skin. When he pulled back, his voice was raw with defiance:

"We choose each other."

Then—

He slammed their joined hands into the child's chest.

The Unmaking

The scream that followed was not human.

The child unraveled, its roots shriveling, its stolen faces melting like wax. The grove shook, the willows bleeding sap from every crevice as the ancient magic rebelled against itself.

Sabrina felt it first—the splintering inside her. The roots in her womb withered, the blossoms on her skin crumbling to dust. Julian's thorns shattered, his eye socket weeping clean blood at last.

The child's voice faded to a whisper:

"You can't… kill… love…"

Then, with a final gasp, it disintegrated, leaving only:

A lock of Julian's hair

Sabrina's first ribbon

A single, shriveled berry

The grove fell silent.