The Knife's Kiss
The silver blade slid between Sabrina's ribs with the tenderness of a lover's caress.
Julian's hand shook, his tears sizzling where they hit the exposed roots beneath her skin. Sabrina arched against him, not in pain—but in terrible relief, her back bending like a willow in storm winds.
"Deeper," she gasped, her breath scattering black petals across his face.
The child at her breast wailed, its thorny mouth tearing free in a spray of golden sap. Lyra scrambled forward, catching her sister with unnatural grace, crooning as the infant's cries shifted into giggles.
"Shhh," Lyra whispered, licking the sap from the baby's face. "You'll get your turn."
The First Flame
Sabrina's blood was lighter than air, each drop floating upward like embers before bursting into violet flame. Where it touched the grove:
Willows screamed, their bark peeling back to reveal faces beneath
Elias' bones rattled, forming one final word: "FINALLY"
Lyra's skin bubbled, revealing something older underneath
Julian pressed his forehead to Sabrina's as the fire spread, their shared breath turning to smoke and poetry.
"You planned this," he realized. "From the beginning."
Sabrina smiled, her teeth blackening at the roots.
"Love is just sacrifice with pretty ribbons," she murmured.
Then the flames took her words.
The Last Gift
As Sabrina burned, she reached inside herself—past ribs, past muscle, past the grove's clinging roots—and pulled free one last secret:
A seed.
Not willow. Not thorn. But apple, red and gleaming like a heart plucked whole from a chest.
She pressed it into Julian's palm, her fingers crumbling to ash as she did.
"Plant it where we loved first," she whispered.
Then—
She came apart.
Lyra's Choice
The fire wanted the child.
Julian saw it in the way the flames curled toward Grandmother, in how Lyra hissed and hunched over her sister.
"No!" Lyra screamed, her voice splintering into echoes. "She's mine!"
Then—impossibly—she ripped her own chest open, shoving the infant into the hollow where her heart should be.
The grove shrieked its approval.
Lyra smiled, her violet eyes dimming to brown as she collapsed into the flames.
"Now we match," she told the ashes.
EPILOGUE: THE FIRST SEED
Five Years Later
The new schoolteacher paused beneath the solitary apple tree at Shadowmere's edge. Its branches hung heavy with fruit, each one streaked with violet veins.
"Don't touch those, Matty," she warned her son.
But the boy was already reaching, his fingers closing around the ripest one—
—which split open at his touch, revealing a single violet eye blinking up at him.
From the woods beyond, something laughed.
TO BE CONTINUED IN
ECHOES OF THE SHADOWED GROVE:
BOOK OF HUNGRY BLOSSOMS