“Who wants to start?” Solomon asked.
No one spoke up. Darius shifted uncomfortably in his chair, unwilling to share his story and his parts in what was now happening to the Greenweald.
“All right,” Solomon said, “then I elect Jocasta. You’ve been to Glittering Birch and have returned. What’d you find there?”
Jocasta settled back into her chair and looked at each of them first. Darius couldn’t tell if she was simply being dramatic, or if she was considering her sway over each of them here. Finally, she spoke.
“Evil,” she said. “Sounds melodramatic, I know, especially from me, but I’m going to speak the truth about what I saw. And felt. To begin with, Jamshir is beyond help. His madness is absolute, and I don’t think he even recognizes what’s going on around him as reality. If anything, I think he’s a pawn.”
“He is,” Darius put in.
Solomon’s eye on him made him uncomfortable again, and he searched for Willow’s hand. She took it, and her calm, reassuring presence gave him the courage to continue. “We can get more into my role in all this later, but Jamshir is a puppet. Malachi, the Head of House Subtle Hemlock, did it.”
“All right,” Solomon said. “I don’t think that absolves him of all guilt, but we can all agree that Jamshir’s not the real danger here, correct?”
Nods and mutters of agreement came from around the table.
“What else?” Solomon asked Jocasta.
While she relayed the story of the hunter, as Solomon called them, and how she’d followed Jamshir to the room with the gates, Darius let his eyes roam around the room.
Everyone was intent on what Jocasta was saying.
Especially Orlando.
“Wait,” Orlando said, interrupting Jocasta’s story after the fight with the hunter. “What did you say happened with Shireen?”
“She ran,” Jocasta replied.
Orlando opened his mouth, but Jocasta held up her hand to stop him.
“Wait. I don’t mean ran like she was scared. She wasn’t. She ran like she needed to get away from it for her own good. Maybe mine, too. I don’t know.”
Orlando glared at her for a moment, then motioned that she should continue her story.
Darius continued to watch him. Orlando kept his gaze focused on Jocasta, but after a moment, he looked down at the table. His chest heaved in a silent sigh and his eyes closed. When he opened them, he looked directly at Darius.
Caught staring, Darius flushed and tore his gaze away. The anger in Orlando’s eyes was palpable, and Darius couldn’t blame him.
When he dared to glance back, Orlando was again staring at the table.
“We saw gates almost identical to those,” Solomon said when Jocasta finished. “In an entirely different world.”
“Almost?” Willow asked.
“Different colors in them,” he answered. “Except for the big one that made Jocasta ill. That one was the same. I think you’re all right however. I think those colors indicate where the gates lead.”
“Shireen didn’t bring something back with her, then?” Orlando’s voice held an almost pathetic amount of hope.
“I don’t know,” Solomon said. “Her bringing it back might have enabled a gate to open to Towering Oaks, or it was in addition, or …. I just don’t know.”
“That’s not really important,” Thaddeus said. “What is, is what we’re going to do about it.”
“That’s a good question,” Solomon said. “What can we count on from Whispering Pines for help?”
“Us,” Jocasta said. “Haven’t you been listening? Whispering Pines is as bad as Glittering Birch. It’s gone.”
Solomon cocked his head. “No, no one said that. Or if they did, I missed it. What do you mean gone?”
“Everyone there is infected by whatever this is,” Thaddeus said. “I couldn’t find anyone other than us who wasn’t.”
“I need to go there, now.” Solomon stood and began moving around the table toward the door.
“Wait,” Willow said. “Solomon, stop. And tell us what it is.”
“Celia. She wouldn’t come here with me. She said she was going home to Whispering Pines!”
Darius felt like a fool. He heard Solomon tell Thaddeus that Florian’s daughter had returned. It never occurred to him, or apparently anyone else, that she went there, rather than staying with Solomon.
“I’ll go,” he heard himself say.
“What?” Willow turned to him in disbelief.
“She doesn’t know me, has no reason to dislike or mistrust me. I’ll bring her back here.”
“It’s not safe—" Willow began.
“It will be fine. I’m going to get her and bring her here. Thaddeus and Melanie know my story, or at least enough of it to get the idea across. Keep talking. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Without waiting, he rose and left the room. Behind him, the voices rose to indistinct mutters heard through the door. He was surprised that Solomon let him go this easily but was grateful for it.
Maybe this was the first act of atonement in a long line of them.
His second came a moment later when he saw Samuel approaching him.
“Samuel,” he said, which was as far as he got before the thin, mild-mannered man hit him.
It was a surprisingly powerful blow and knocked Darius into the wall and off his feet. Before he could rise, Samuel kicked him in the stomach.
Darius retched, his arms wrapping around his middle.
For a brief moment, his power flared up and he started to enter Samuel’s mind. He could freeze him, walk away without any more confrontation, or make him go to sleep, or …
He did none of it. He lay on the floor, holding his aching stomach, feeling the throb of the bruise rising along his jaw and waited.
Samuel stood in front of him, his chest heaving and fists clenched at his sides.
“You think I’m weak,” he spat. “The things you did. I’m not weak! You’ll find out. When Solomon is in charge again. When Lady Shireen is back with Lord
