AN: 

Endings are the hardest thing for me to write. As I wrote this, I realized i was rushing a lot of it, so I ended up rewriting the last four chapters twice. Please, I hope you enjoy what I have written! 

Comment and likes are always, always appreciated and make me literally smile. 

"Please, can we—" Petyr cut himself off with the huff of his words. "Can we stop? I need a moment to catch my breath."

Marjorie froze mid-stride. For the last hour, she acted off of her nerves alone. Until Petyr spoke, she ignored the pain forming below her ribcage, an ache that asked her to stop.

Despite all of her attempts to conjure the skill to track Vivian, no sign of the Spark came—even with Fenris's encouragements.

"We are stopping?" The Wolf said, frustration thinly hidden in his words. "I can carry you, Petyr, all you have to do is kindly ask."

"Die," The Woodsman growled. In efforts to ease his harsh breathing, he pressed his fingers flat against the rough bark of a pine and leaned close to the ground.

Marjorie was inclined to agree with her friend.

Fenris was a harsh contrast against the humans. He remained unaffected by their trekking, despite only wearing nothing more than the maimed black cloak. Like always, he found no use for shoes, but still climbed through all terrain with an almost supernatural ease.

Her own feet were sore with overuse. Droplets from the river were trapped in her boots, rubbing against her wool sock and creating an aggravated burn across the roof of her feet.

"It is all right to stop for now, Petyr," Marjorie said. "Just for a moment, at least." She walked to where he leaned against the tree and unceremoniously dropped to the ground in a heap of her red cloak.

She pressed her spine against the tree, and then shot away from the wood. An almost painful jolt of warmth shot from the bark and into her skin.

"Petyr!" Marjorie shouted.

The Woodsman stared at Marjorie, confused at her reaction to the tree. He still pressed his palm against the bark, unaffected by whatever sizzled into her.

"Does it not hurt you?" She stared at his fingers, waiting for them to finally react from the inevitable pain.

But instead, only a worried expression crossed Petyr's handsome face. "How are you feeling, Marjorie?" the Woodsman asked. "Would you like to sit back down for a moment?"

"Do you not feel it, Petyr?" She asked, this time pressing on his knuckles and digging his skin into the wood. "It is more than just a mere thrumming now; it is a violent beating this time."

"Marjorie, what are you speaking about?" Fenris asked, his head cocked to the side.

She curled her hand around the Wolf's and pressed his flush against the bark.

"There is always a heartbeat," Marjorie whispered, her gaze climbing up to the Wolf's. Nothing but amusement reflected in his expression. "But now it's like... a drum."

Fenris narrowed his eyes, but pressed his fingers tighter into the wood, until his nails were lost to the white bark. His brows furrowed, proof that he tried to find the same strange current of energy.

"Marjorie, I don't feel anything at all," Fenris admitted after a long moment.

"But the trees," she murmured. "They have a heartbeat—like they are part of a living thing—"

"Touch it again," Fenris whispered.

"What?" Marjorie took a step back from the towering pine. "No, it seems... different this time, dangerous even."

Fenris's grasp wrapped around her thin wrist. Before she had time to yank away from his hold, he pressed her hand against the pine. It was as though a boiling hot undercurrent flushed out every vein in her arm, driving out every inch of coldness her body felt. The unexpected warmth traveled up to her collarbone, until it settled like a stone trapped in her tight throat.

"What are you doing to her?" Petyr shouted somewhere far from where Marjorie must be, completely enveloped in a new world or strange energy.

"Calm down," Fenris said, but he wasn't answering the Woodsman. Instead, he leaned close to her ear, his hot breath lighting up the nape of her neck. Her fingers burned like the tip of lightning. "It is your Spark. It wants to show you where to go."

He released her hand. It flew black into her chest, unscathed aside for the bandages from the night before.

"Look, Marjorie," Fenris whispered in awe. His pointer finger gently tilted her chin up, toward the towering trees.

Where a forest of red once existed, now a bright stripe of white cut the world in half. Despite the Blood Moon hanging proudly in the crimson sky, the willowy trunks returned to their nature coloring. They shone brightly as if stars came down to earth and traded each pine a place in the heavens.

"It's a map," Marjorie realized. "They are pointing us to Vivian."

"Sometimes you just have to listen to the forest," Fenris said. He laid a heavy hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

***

Mirkwood did not last forever. Eventually, the trees ran out, leaving them to rely on Fenris's nose once again. He took his time. With each scent trail he caught, the Wolf tested the air in all direction before he took a single step forward.

Once they passed the thickest part of the river, they arrived in Woodsman Landing, where the red world was blanketed in an unfamiliar quiet. Nothing, not even the rustling of wind, sounded.

"Marjorie," Petyr whispered. He wrapped his hand around her elbow and reeled her close to him. He spoke his next words directly into her ear. "I have a bad feeling."

"I do as well," she admitted in a low voice.

Woodsman Landing was a flat, rolling valley filled with tree stumps from past Woodsmen. Just days before, sheep and cattle grazed with shepherds from Core sticking close behind. But without the quiet crackles and cries of gentle, wild life, the Landing turned uncharacteristically empty.

"She is close," Fenris announced from where he crouched low to the ground. "Up there."

The Wolf pointed to where the valley ran into a slow incline, a rocky hill that despite the thick terrain, a gravel path carved out the only way up. At the precipice of the hill, an ancient Scrub Oak curled up at awkward, gravity-defining angles. And at the base of the tree was a familiar pad of soft grass, where Marjorie and the Woodsman spent days on end together, feeling at home beneath the forgiving shade of the evergreen.

"Oak's Point," Marjorie whispered. "She took them to Oak's Point."

***

They climbed up slowly, careful not to allow the rustling of their feet give them away. With one foot ascending up and up and up, the metallic stench of blood grew until it covered every hint of dirt and grass and sweat.

It seemed natural, the blood in the red air.

"This way," Petyr whispered once they neared the end of the trail. He nodded his head into the direction of where thick thistle bushes grew tightly together. At the bottom of the dark thorns, an animal burrowing hole the same width of Marjorie's shoulders. "It leads to an overlook of the hill's top. This is the only path we can take without fear of Vivian discovering us."

"It looks painful," Marjorie whispered, already curling her cloak tightly around her limbs to shield from any of the needle-sharp points.

"Painful yet plausible," Petyr said. He unrolled the cuff of his tunic and fastened them tight against his wrists.

Fenris wordlessly bent down to the ground and placed himself into the mouth of thistles. His bare knees offered no protection against the stray thorns sticking up from the ground. He continued his crawl, until the end of his black cloak disappeared completely from view.

Petyr was next, following the same way but ripping off the bottom of his pants to wrap around his palms like makeshift gloves. Marjorie did not move from where she stood until he vanished, too.

Now, she was alone.

The choice to run or to crawl weighed on her mind. How easy it would be to simply turn on her heels and never look back. If she ran, neither of them would drag her back to Vivian.

Instead, they would die trying to accomplish only what she could do: Kill the witch.

Marjorie folded herself down until she stood on her hands and knees and entered into the thorns.

***

Marjorie first crouched, then walked bent in half, until she stood up to her full height. The thistles thinned out until they faded completely. With their disappearance, Petyr and Fenris came into view, crouching behind a low bushel of dark thorns.

She opened her mouth to speak, but Fenris turned around. His pointer finger flew to his lips, wordlessly asking her to remain quiet. Marjorie tip-toed forward, careful to sidestep any cracking foliage.

"Look," Petyr mouthed.

Her gaze followed where he nodded.

A congregation of villagers were corralled closely together, all of their heads bowed down. For a quick beat, it appeared almost peaceful. As if they joined together in prayer to Mother.

Marjorie breathed in.

The heady, hot stench of blood crawled into her nostrils, thrice as strong compared to the bottom of the valley.

Where the tall Scrub Oak interrupted the landscape, a small stack of ten bodies piled. Six men. Three women. One child.

Their chests were bare, with an ugly, red wound gaping just an inch from their sternum. No expression was present on their faces, just the cold, empty absence of life.

The slaughter had begun.

The remaining, living villagers were not bowed down in prayer, but forced to remain where they were. Their arms bent behind their backs with their wrists shackled to their ankles. The intense angle meant they had no other choice but to be at the mercy of their tight restraints.

Vivian was noticeably absent, perhaps just lurking behind the Scrub Oak or bending low to choose her next victim. The unknowing tortured Marjorie. Would she appear behind them? A blade in her hand with enough strength in her body to pierce all three of them.

"Where are the soldiers?" Petyr's words brought Marjorie out of her growing anxiety.

"Figments," Fenris answered, eyes plastered to the villagers. "They were magicked."

"She did this all herself?" Marjorie whispered in awe.

The Wolf nodded.

She brought a ship to the shores of the Mother River filled with men clothed in silver armor, ready to die in her name. She fooled the entire villager, Marjorie and Petyr too, leading them to a merciless slaughter disguised as an escape.

Marjorie curled her fingers into her palms until tiny, puckered crescent cuts shaped in the tender skin there. What was Vivian capable of? A sick thrill crawled through her bones, like the quick moments spent before bile climbed up one's throat.

Magick becomes limitless. Magick becomes limitless. Magick becomes limitless.

Fenris word's played over and over in her mind like a crescendo of tangible fear.

Could Marjorie even move anymore? She tested the idea and attempted to spread her fingers out. Nothing happened. Only panic.

Her breathing quickened.

Limitless. Limitless. Limitless—

"Marjorie," Fenris's whisper found her.

She snapped her attention to his cool gray gaze—the same shade of a calm sky before a storm.

"Take this," Fenris whispered. His lips touched the sensitive shell of her ear, the touch served an unexpected anchor back to the dirt and the thistles and the rise and fall of his chest. She wanted to curl into the sureness of his touch, to forget the fear that tried to swallow her hole, but instead, she opened her hands.

He dropped something heavy and compact into her palm. She looked down. In her grasp lie a sheathed dagger, the same width of her finger and the length of her entire forearm. The base was forged from a sawed antler. The bumps were smoothed down to allow her fingers to fold over sharp ridges meant to defend from predators or bout with another angry buck.

She clenched her hand into a tight fist over the weapon, but it did not feel correct trapped between her fingers.

It felt... dangerous, as if it spilled blood before.

"Petyr will help free the villagers," Fenris announced in a low voice. "Majrorie, you will follow me at a distance. Cling to the shadows, we do not want her to see you. When she chooses her next sacrifice, I will attack. Once I subdue her, I will bare neck." He curled his hands over hers, where the blade weighed heavily in her grip. "You will slit her throat, Marjorie. You will kill her."

The knife seemed to shapeshift in mass. It was denser now, packed with the fate it carried.

Although her lips turned numb at the thought of killing another—being responsible for one more death—she drew her mouth into one tight line. Perhaps this could make up for all the breath Marjorie stolen. Vivian's death would be the end, the last chapter of a predestined fate.

"All right." Marjorie nodded. "I can do that."

"Of course, you can." Fenris lifted his hand up and patted it on her shoulders. "You were made for this."

She smiled at the sureness of his words, but doubt settled in her stomach like heavy river stones. Before Fenris, she never believed in fate before, yet she stood at the precipice of her own—willing to fling herself into a destiny she did not choose.

She was made to kill a witch.

Tonight, she would kill a witch.

"There she is," Petyr whispered. He pointed to where Vivian stood, looking over her prisoners and tapping her chin thoughtfully.

The witch wore her dark hair long and black, resembling the thick reeds in Mother River that ran together in one, beautiful matted patch beneath the water. She wore a simple light dress—it could be silver, but the red moonbeams made it appear an inviting pink. There was no armor. She did not need any. Her power leaked over in waves, as though it were palpable. Like Fenris, she wore no shoes. Perhaps that was something all creatures of Magick did—they tethered themselves to the earth and listened to the gentle thrum of energy with the soles of their feet.

She circled her prisoners like a predator sweeping in on helpless prey. But... something was familiar in the way she studied them. The sharpness of her gaze reminded Marjorie of the villagers, of how they spent their meager earnings on innocent sacrifices. Marjorie held her breath—she was guilty of the same cruelness, trading in a few coins for a raven.

That was it.

Vivian wanted mercy just as desperately as everyone else.

The witch leaned down, her long dark locks following the movement, and plucked out a flaxen-haired woman by the shackles. The woman screamed at her choice, filling up the quiet valley with a noise that stirred the acid in Marjorie's stomach.

Vivian ignored her shrieks. She took her shackles and dragged her across the forest floor and lifted her on the flat top of a trunk. Its circumference was the same length of Petyr's body, plenty of room to splay a person out.

"She is... she is going to sacrifice her," the Woodsman whispered, a sharp anger in his voice.

The woman screamed on the smooth wooden top and lashed out, her hands curled into fist. The witch froze, and then, smiled. She grabbed the villager by her light hair and shoved her face down onto the trunk.

The small movement made Marjorie's eyes widen.

The villager's hair was not flaxen. The red moon tinged it.

It was blond. Like Petyr's.

"Is that—" Marjorie whispered.

"Mother!" Petyr screamed it, unable to stop himself from standing and baring his axe. Rage lit up his face, like a flickering flame collapsing on itself, growing with burning, black embers and gray ash.

"You fool!" Fenris hissed. His hand wrapped around the man's wrist and yanked him back down behind the thistle.

Marjorie couldn't move. Her terrified gaze remained on the witch. Vivian's dark eyes burned into hers, hot like an iron branding to the skin.

"Hello Wolf," Vivian bellowed into the night air with a pale, cupped hand around her lips. "I see you brought your little Red and Woodsman."